Fertility decline occurred in most Western European societies since the mid-seventies of the last century generated a fervent research tradition about fertility determinants. Reasons for childlessness remain, on the contrary, relatively unexplored and lack of children is commonly perceived as an endogenous component of fertility. In arguing that mechanisms behind the two phenomena are different, the objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at examining determinants of childlessness by specifically focusing the attention not only on the role of individuals’ characteristics but also on the institutional and normative context in which people perform their childbearing decisions. Second, the paper aims at exploring whether the micro- and macro-level determinants that lead a woman to be childless differ from factors that affect the number of children she has. By linking childlessness with fertility determinants, the general scope is to investigate, and account for, differentials in increasing childlessness levels across European societies and to test whether childlessness and fertility can be interpreted as two endogenous phenomena.