Taking evolutionary and interdisciplinary perspectives, this study views the reproductive result as an evolutionary outcome that may be affected by parental characteristics through cultural inheritance. We hypothesize that inheriting more cultural traits from parents leads to a greater resemblance between fertility outcomes of the offspring and their parents. In societies that experience a demographic transition, a greater resemblance can be indicated by a higher level of fertility of the offspring and a sooner transition from union formation to childbearing. We operationalize inheriting cultural traits from parents as reporting a religious affiliation the same as those of their parents. Through analyzing data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) Cycle 6, our results show that inheriting the same religious traits from parents does have an effect on one’s fertility. In particular, women who reported the same religious affiliations as those of their parents reported a greater number of children. They tend to have births inside, rather than outside, of marriage. Inside marriage, they are also more likely to give births sooner, rather than later. These findings support our hypotheses and help to build a theoretical framework that explains the changes in fertility outcomes from an interdisciplinary perspective. 1. Introduction The demographer Watkins (1990) [1] has developed the diffusion theory which considers culture and cultural norms to understand the causes of fertility decline in European countries from 1870 to 1960. She suggested that geographic diffusion of the innovation of fertility limitation within marriage was the key to fertility reduction in Europe. This argument, initiated by Watkins, has been labeled as a “diffusion/cultural perspective” to explain fertility reduction. After Watkins, several other studies followed a similar vein and confirmed Watkins' findings on the effects of culture on fertility at the (macro) societal level [2–5]. These studies, along with Watkins' research, emphasize the importance of culture and cultural norms as they influence fertility. They also imply that cultural norms coming from outside the family could be factors that have accelerated fertility decline. Thus far, however, no theoretical statements have been made to explain the mechanism why cultural norms inherited from nonparental sources or from outside of the family system have accelerated fertility reduction. In order to fill the voids of prior literature, this paper takes evolutionary and interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the
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