Women's Education, Spousal Agreement on Future Fertility Intentions, and Contraceptive Use in Pakistan.

In less egalitarian countries such as Pakistan, reproductive behaviors are gendered, with couples often disagreeing about their fertility goals. However, the dramatic changes in women's empowerment and messaging around reproductive behaviors in Pakistan in recent years may have affected how women's own characteristics and their concordance with their spouse on fertility goals are linked to contraception. Using matched couple data from two cycles of the Pakistan Demographic Health Survey (1990-1991 and 2017-2018), this paper examines the relative influence of husbands' and wives' fertility preferences, as well as women's education, on contraceptive use using linear probability models. Disagreement between couples declined modestly, by about four percentage points, over time. When disagreement about future fertility intentions occurs, wife's fertility preferences are more strongly related to contraceptive behavior, and this association has not changed over time. Although contraceptive use is positively associated with education, the link between women's education and contraceptive use has weakened over time due to increased use among uneducated women. Pakistani women's own fertility preferences are reflected in their contraceptive behavior, and contraceptive use is increasing among all women, even less educated women. Diffusion processes are likely at play, though more work is needed to identify these processes and potential barriers to contraceptive use.

Black-White Differences in Pregnancy Desire During the Transition to Adulthood.

This article explores race differences in the desire to avoid pregnancy or become pregnant using survey data from a random sample of 914 young women (ages 18-22) living in a Michigan county and semi-structured interviews with a subsample of 60 of the women. In the survey data, desire for pregnancy, indifference, and ambivalence are very rare but are more prevalent among Black women than White women. In the semi-structured interviews, although few women described fatalistic beliefs or lack of planning for future pregnancies, Black and White women did so equally often. Women more often described fatalistic beliefs and lack of planning when retrospectively describing their past than when prospectively describing their future. Using the survey data to compare prospective desires for a future pregnancy with women's recollections of those desires after they conceived, more Black women shifted positive than shifted negative, and Black women were more likely to shift positive than White women-that is, Black women do not differentially retrospectively overreport prospectively desired pregnancies as having been undesired before conception. Young women's consistent (over repeated interviews) prospective expression of strong desire to avoid pregnancy and correspondingly weak desire for pregnancy, along with the similarity of Black and White women's pregnancy plans, lead us to conclude that a "planning paradigm"-in which young women are encouraged and supported in implementing their pregnancy desires-is probably appropriate for the vast majority of young women and, most importantly, is similarly appropriate for Black and White young women.

Unintended Childbearing and Marital Instability: An Emphasis on Couples' Intentions.

The birth of a child can negatively impact relationship functioning, especially if one or both partners did not intend to have a child. As such, unintended or disagreed-upon births may elevate the risk of dissolution. In this paper, we use the National Survey of Family Growth to consider how married couples characterize the intendedness of their first birth and examine its linkage with dissolution. Nearly one-third of first marital births are unintended by at least one parent. When fathers do not intend the birth, regardless of whether or not mothers do, couples report an elevated risk of dissolution.

Dimensions of Reproductive Attitudes and Knowledge Related to Unintended Childbearing Among U.S. Adolescents and Young Adults.

Measures of attitudes and knowledge predict reproductive behavior, such as unintended fertility among adolescents and young adults. However, there is little consensus as to the underlying dimensions these measures represent, how to compare findings across surveys using different measures, or how to interpret the concepts captured by existing measures. To guide future research on reproductive behavior, we propose an organizing framework for existing measures. We suggest that two overarching multidimensional concepts-reproductive attitudes and reproductive knowledge-can be applied to understand existing research using various measures. We adapt psychometric analytic techniques to analyze two data sets: the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study (RDSL). Although the specific survey measures and sample composition of the two data sets are different, the dimensionality of the concepts and the content of the items used to measure their latent factors are remarkably consistent across the two data sets, and the factors are predictive of subsequent contraceptive behavior. However, some survey items do not seem strongly related to any dimension of either construct, and some dimensions of the two concepts appear to be poorly measured with existing survey questions. Nonetheless, we argue that the concepts of reproductive attitudes and reproductive knowledge are useful for categorizing and analyzing social psychological measures related to unintended fertility. The results can be used to guide secondary data analyses to predict reproductive behavior, compare results across data sets, and structure future data collection efforts.

Is Variation in Biological and Residential Ties to Children Linked to Mothers' Parental Stress and Perceptions of Coparenting?

Mothers with children from prior relationships or with stepchildren may perceive greater challenges in parenting than their counterparts in less complex families. We use the Families and Relationships Study (FRS) to analyze parental stress and perceptions of co-parenting among cohabiting and married mothers with resident minor children (N = 679). Compared to mothers with only shared children, parental stress and perceptions of co-parenting generally do not differ when mothers have children from prior unions. However, mothers with resident stepchildren evaluate the distribution of childcare as less fair, consider their partners as less reliable co-parents, and rate their partner more poorly as a co-parent relative to those with no stepchildren. These findings suggest that creating a stepfamily through one's own children may not present additional parenting challenges or stressors whereas having stepchildren introduced through a partner may be linked to a different, and less positive, parenting experience.

A Research Note on Income Pooling in Partnerships: Incorporating Nonresident Children.

Income pooling is a common behavior among couples. However, cohabiting and married individuals in more complex families, namely those with stepchildren, are less likely to pool incomes. Similarly, income pooling might be unlikely when there are nonresident children, who could potentially draw resources outside the household, yet prior work has largely overlooked the role of nonresident children. We take advantage of a unique data set, the Family and Relationships Study, which allows us to not only identify shared and unshared children (i.e., stepchildren) within the household but also unshared children outside the household. Focusing on cohabiting and married individuals (N = 4,408), we find that those with resident unshared children are less likely to pool incomes but that nonresident children are unrelated to income pooling. The results confirm that household-level complexity is a key factor in couples' economic decision making.

Adolescent Reproductive and Contraceptive Knowledge and Attitudes and Adult Contraceptive Behavior.

Objectives Ineffective and inconsistent contraceptive use is common among adults, perhaps due to limited knowledge about reproduction and unfavorable attitudes toward contraception. Knowledge and attitudes are first developed in adolescence. We test whether adolescent knowledge and attitudes have long-term implications for adult contraceptive behavior. Methods Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health, our analytical sample (n = 6662) consists of those asked sex and contraception questions at Wave I (1995; students aged 15 and older) and who were sexually active and not pregnant at the time of the Wave IV (2007-2008) survey. We examined whether adolescent attitudes toward contraception, knowledge of condoms and reproduction, and confidence in contraceptive knowledge were predictive of adult contraceptive efficacy and consistency using logistic regression. Results In models adjusted for a range of socioeconomic, demographic, and life course factors, favorable attitudes toward contraception in adolescence increased the odds (aOR 1.21, CI 1.08-1.36) of using more effective methods rather than a less effective or no method of contraception in adulthood, as did more accurate condom knowledge (aOR 1.07, CI 1.00-1.14) and more accurate reproductive knowledge (aOR 1.07, CI 1.00-1.13). Adolescents with more favorable attitudes toward contraception also used contraception more consistently as adults (aOR 1.27, CI 1.14-1.43), as did those with more accurate condom knowledge (aOR 1.10, CI 1.03-1.18). Conclusions Attitudes towards contraception and knowledge about condoms and reproduction acquired during adolescence are predictive of adult contraceptive behavior. Results suggest that comprehensive sex education during adolescence could improve effective contraceptive behavior throughout the life course.

MARRIAGE AND DISSOLUTION AMONG WOMEN'S COHABITATIONS: VARIATIONS BY STEPFAMILY STATUS AND SHARED CHILDBEARING.

Cohabiting unions increasingly involve children, either born during the union and/or from prior relationships (i.e., stepchildren). Drawing from arguments about the institutionalization of cohabitation and stepfamilies as well as the family systems perspective, this paper examines dissolution and marriage risks among women's cohabiting unions by stepfamily status, configuration (which partner has children) and shared intended and unintended fertility using the 2006-2013 National Survey of Family Growth. A minority (32%) of 1st cohabitations, but the majority of 2nd (65%) and 3rd (75%) cohabitations, are stepfamilies. Stepfamily cohabitations are less likely to transition to marriage compared to non-stepfamily unions, especially among complex stepfamilies (both partners have children), but neither stepfamily status nor configuration affect dissolution. Shared intended and unintended births are associated with dissolution and marriage risks but largely only for non-stepfamily cohabitations, suggesting that shared childbearing is only indicative of the institutionalization for cohabitations that are not stepfamilies.

Is Stepfamily Status Associated With Cohabiting and Married Women's Fertility Behaviors?

Children from prior relationships potentially complicate fertility decision-making in new cohabitations and marriages. On the one hand, the "value of children" perspective suggests that unions with and without stepchildren have similar-and deliberate-reasons for shared childbearing. On the other hand, multipartnered fertility (MPF) research suggests that childbearing across partnerships is often unintended. Using the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth and event-history models, I examine the role of stepfamily status on cohabiting and married women's fertility and birth intendedness, with attention to union type and stepfamily configuration. Adjusting for covariates, women in stepfamily unions are more likely to have a first shared birth in a union than women in unions in which neither partner has children from past relationships, but stepfamily births are less likely to be intended than unintended. Further, this association varies by union type: married women have similar birth risks across stepfamily status, but births are less likely to be intended in marital stepfamilies. For cohabitors, women in a stepfamily are more likely to have a birth than women in nonstepfamily unions, with no differences in intendedness. Configuration (whose children and how many) also matters; for instance, women with one child from a past relationship are more likely to have a birth and to have an intended than unintended birth than women with other stepfamily configurations. It appears that children from either partner's prior relationships influences subsequent fertility decision-making, undermining the utility of the "value of children" perspective for explaining childbearing behaviors in complex families.

Shifts in Higher-Order Unions and Stepfamilies among Currently Cohabiting and Married Women of Childbearing Age.

Shifts in union formation and childbearing have undoubtedly altered the prevalence and structure of higher-order unions and stepfamilies, but no study has examined trends over time. Comparing the 1988 and 2011-2013 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), I produce estimates of repartnering and stepfamily formation among currently partnered women aged 15-44. The percentage of intact unions that are remarriages stayed stable (around 27-28%), but a growing proportion of currently married and cohabiting women had another cohabiting partner in the past. The percentage of intact unions that are stepfamilies increased from 24% to 31%, with an increase in cohabiting stepfamilies from 19% to 39% of all stepfamilies. Further, while the majority of remarriages are stepfamilies, the majority of women's stepfamilies are no longer remarriages due to union formation among never-married parents. Cohabiting (but not marital) stepfamilies also exhibited changes in which partner had children and in shared childbearing.

Revisiting retrospective reporting of first-birth intendedness.

Because birth intendedness is typically measured retrospectively, researchers have raised concerns about the accuracy of reporting. Our objective was to assess the stability of intendedness reports for women asked about the same birth at different times. We used data from Wave III (2001-2002; ages 18-24) and Wave IV (2007-2008; ages 25-32) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative school-based sample first surveyed in 1995. For the 1,463 women who reported a first birth by Wave III that could be matched with the same birth reported at Wave IV, we examined whether intendedness was characterized consistently at both waves. We constructed descriptive measures of consistency in reporting and estimated logistic regression models predicting changes in reports. Nearly four-fifths of young mothers did not change their reports across waves, with about 60 % reporting their first birth as unintended. However, 22 % of women changed the intendedness categorization of their first birth between surveys. Women who initially reported the birth as intended were more likely to recategorize the birth as unintended than vice versa. With the exception of race and employment, most socioeconomic and demographic characteristics were unrelated to the likelihood of recategorizing first birth intendedness in multivariate models. Most reports of birth intentions are stable, but there is a nontrivial degree of inconsistency. Cross-sectional reports may either under- or overestimate the prevalence of unintended fertility. It remains to be seen whether, and how, consistency of reports is linked to maternal and child health and well-being.

New Partners, More Kids: Multiple-Partner Fertility in the United States.

Declining rates of marriage and overall increases in union instability, combined with high levels of unintended and nonmarital fertility, create the possibility for parents to have children with more than one partner, called multiple-partner fertility, or MPF. The unique characteristics of families with MPF present data and other logistical challenges to researchers studying the phenomenon. Drawing from recent studies and updated data, I present new estimates of MPF that show that about 13 percent of men aged 40 to 44 and 19 percent of women aged 41 to 49 have children with more than one partner, with a higher prevalence among the disadvantaged. Compared to parents with two or more children by only one partner, people with MPF become parents at younger ages, largely with unintended first births, and often do so outside of marriage. This article touches on the implications of MPF for families and concludes by discussing the theoretical difficulties in studying MPF and the challenges it presents to public policy.

FERTILITY AND THE STABILITY OF COHABITING UNIONS: VARIATION BY INTENDEDNESS.

An extensive body of research demonstrates that children increase the stability of marriage. However, it is not clear whether the theories explaining greater marital stability among parents can be applied to the increasing number of cohabiting couples who have children, as cohabitation plays more varied roles in the family system than marriage. Furthermore, theories about children and marital stability often assume that births are intended, which is less likely to be the case for cohabiting than for marital births. Using data from the 2002 cycle of the National Survey of Family Growth, we find that intended and disagreed-upon pregnancies (but not unintended pregnancies) reduce the risk of dissolution relative to women who have no pregnancy or birth. Relative to non-fertile couples, all pregnancies increase the risk of marriage over staying cohabiting, but couples with a birth show little difference in the odds of stability or transitions once the child is born. However, relative to an intended birth, having an unintended or disagreed-upon birth increases the risk of dissolution. These findings suggest that normative pressures influence the union behaviors of cohabitors during pregnancy, while selection processes and rational choice considerations play a greater role after a birth.

Educational experiences and American young adults' childbearing goals: A research note.

Objective: This research note describes the relationship between young adults' educational experiences and childbearing goals in the U.S. Background: In the U.S., education is associated with later childbearing and fewer children, but the relationship between education and fertility desires and intentions is less well-understood. This article contributes to the research literature by illustrating variation in prospective fertility goals by education, focusing on the early life course in order to understand young adults' goals before they have been shaped by parenting and extensive workforce experiences. Method: This analysis uses data from the National Surveys of Family Growth (1995-2019), a nationally representative survey, to study fertility desires and intentions among childless U.S. men and women ages 19-24. Predicted probabilities demonstrating differences in fertility goals by educational experiences, from three sets of multivariable analyses (logistic regression predicting fertility desires and intentions, separately, and negative binomial regression predicting intended parity), are shown. Results: Men and women with a bachelor's degree and those enrolled in college do not have lower fertility goals than those without a degree and not enrolled; if anything, more educated individuals are slightly more likely to desire (for men only) and intend children and to have slightly larger intended family size. Conclusions: Education gaps in fertility in the United States are not attributable to differences in early-life fertility goals.

Evolving Fertility Goals and Behaviors in Current U.S. Childbearing Cohorts.

In the post-Recession era, U.S. fertility rates have continued to fall. It is unclear if these declines are driven by shifts in fertility goals or growing difficulty in achieving goals. In this paper, we construct synthetic cohorts of men and women to examine both cross-cohort and within-cohort changes in fertility goals using multiple cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth. Although more recent cohorts exhibit lower achieved fertility at younger ages than earlier cohorts at the same age, intended parity remains around two children, and intentions to remain childless rarely exceed 15%. There is weak evidence of a growing fertility gap in the early 30s, suggesting more recent cohorts will need considerable childbearing in the 30s and early 40s to 'catch up' to earlier goals, yet low-parity women in their early 40s are decreasingly likely to have unfulfilled fertility desires or intentions to have children. Low-parity men in their early 40s, though, are increasingly likely to intend children. Declines in U.S. fertility thus seem to be largely driven not by changes in early-life fertility goals so much as either a decreasing likelihood of achieving earlier goals or, perhaps, shifts in the preferred timing of fertility that depress period measures.

Unintended fertility and the stability of coresidential relationships.

Having an unintended birth is associated with maternal and child health outcomes, the mother-child relationship, and subsequent fertility. Unintended fertility likely also increases the risk of union dissolution for parents, but it is unclear whether this association derives from a causal effect or selection processes and whether it differs by union type. This article uses data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to compare union stability after intended and unintended births in coresidential relationships. Results show that coresidential couples are more likely to break up after an unintended first or higher-order birth than after an intended first or higher-order birth, even when accounting for stable unobserved characteristics using fixed-effects models. The negative association is stronger for marriages than cohabitations, despite the overall higher dissolution rate of cohabiting unions. We conclude that unintended fertility at any parity is disruptive for coresidential couples in ways that increase the risk of union dissolution.

The Formation and Realization of Fertility Goals Among a US Cohort in the Post-Recession Years.

The United States has experienced a sustained fertility decline, with those currently in their childbearing years facing unique constraints. Drawing from the Theory of Conjunctural Action and the Narratives of the Future framework, this work considers how objective and subjective socioeconomic conditions, psychosocial characteristics, and perceptions of well-being are linked to mothers' and childless women's (a) prospective fertility intentions during the Great Recession, (b) realization of those intentions in the post-Recession period, and (c) fertility intentions toward the end of the reproductive years, using Waves IV and V of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The results confirm the role of standard socioeconomic measures and also highlight the importance of subjective measures. In general, more advantaged women were more likely to intend to have (more) children at both waves and to have children between waves. Furthermore, women who already had children by the Great Recession were more likely than their childless peers to have a(nother) child in the post-Recession period. As this cohort approaches the end of its childbearing years, having unfulfilled fertility plans from earlier in the reproductive life course is a strong predictor of continuing to intend at least one birth.

Cognitive schemas and fertility motivations in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While current evidence indicates that the United States did not experience a baby boom during the pandemic, few empirical studies have considered the underlying rationale for the American baby bust. Relying on data collected during the pandemic (n = 574), we find that pandemic-related subjective assessments (e.g., self-reported stress, fear of COVID-19 and relationship struggles) and not economic indicators (e.g., employment status, income level) were related to levels of fertility motivations among individuals in relationships. Analysis of within-person changes in fertility motivations shows that shifts in the number of children, increases in mental health issues and increases in relationship uncertainty, rather than changes in economic circumstances, were associated with short-term assessments of the importance of avoiding a pregnancy. We argue for broadening conceptual frameworks of fertility motivations by moving beyond a focus on economic factors to include a cognitive schema that takes subjective concerns into account.

Adolescent reproductive attitudes and knowledge effects on early adult unintended and nonmarital fertility across gender.

Theory and evidence suggest strong short-term effects of attitudes toward, and knowledge about, reproduction on women's fertility. Adolescent attitudes and knowledge may also have longer-term implications about the contexts women perceive as appropriate for childbearing and their capacity to manage their preferences. Although previous research on men's fertility is limited, theory would suggest the links between adolescent attitudes and knowledge and subsequent fertility would also exist for men (though perhaps in different ways given the gendered meanings of sex, contraception, and reproduction). We analyze the relationship between reproductive attitudes and knowledge in adolescence and unintended and nonmarital first and second births in early adulthood, using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 9,431). Adolescent reproductive attitudes, especially life course consequences of early childbearing, predict the intendedness and marital status of first and second births. Adolescent reproductive knowledge is more often linked to the context of second births than first births. These associations vary by gender, but the overall results suggest that fertility schemas developed during adolescence predict behavior into early adulthood.