Factors affecting early family formation: A path model

The age at which women initiate family formation has important social and economic implications. To explore factors that determine age at initiation of childbearing, a non-recursive path model was estimated using data for young women in the National Longitudinal Survey. Results suggest that the young woman's family of orientation has important effects on the age at which she begins family building, but that the process is not simple or direct. Age at first marriage, educational attainment, and age at family formation are strongly interdependent; however, the process seems to vary by race.Kristin A. Moore and Sandra L. Hofferth are affiliated with the Urban Institute, 2100 M. Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. Requests for reprints should be directed to Kristin Moore.     

Cohabitation and family formation in Japan

This article documents the prevalence, duration, and marital outcomes of cohabiting unions in Japan. It then examines the correlates of cohabitation experiences and also describes differences in the family-formation trajectories of women who have and have not cohabited. Cohabitation has increased rapidly among recent cohorts of women, and cohabiting unions in Japan tend to be relatively short in duration and are almost as likely to dissolve as to result in marriage. Life table analyses demonstrate that the cumulative probabilities of marriage and parenthood within marriage are roughly similar for women who did and those who did not cohabit. The most notable difference is in the pathways to family formation, with women who cohabited more likely both to marry subsequent to pregnancy and to delay childbearing within marriage. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that cohabiting unions in Japan are best viewed as an emerging prelude to marriage rather than as an alternative to marriage or singlehood. We conclude with speculation about the likelihood of further increases in cohabitation in Japan and the potential implications for marriage and fertility.     

Does It Matter What She Wants? The Role of Individual Preferences Against Unmarried Motherhood in Young Women’s Likelihood of a Nonmarital First Birth

Most young people in the United States express the desire to marry. Norms at all socioeconomic levels posit marriage as the optimal context for childbearing. At the same time, nonmarital fertility accounts for approximately 40 % of U.S. births, experienced disproportionately by women with educational attainment less than a bachelor’s degree. Research has shown that women’s intentions for the number and timing of children and couples’ intent to marry are strong predictors of realized fertility and marriage. The present study investigates whether U.S. young women’s preferences about nonmarital fertility, as stated before childbearing begins, predict their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth. I track marriage and fertility histories through ages 24–30 of women asked at ages 11–16 whether they would consider unmarried childbearing. One-quarter of women who responded “no” in fact had a nonmarital birth by age 24–30. The ability of women and their partners to access material resources in adulthood were, as expected, the strongest predictors of the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Nonetheless, I find that women who said they would not consider nonmarital childbearing had substantially higher hazards of fertility postponement and especially of marital fertility, even after controlling for race/ethnicity, mother’s educational attainment, family of origin intactness, self-efficacy and planning ability, perceived future prospects, and markers of own educational attainment and work experience into early adulthood.     

Traditional values prevail as education and contraception enter rural Bangladesh

This article discusses the findings of demographer Sajeda Amin, who examines the impact of large-scale social changes on family dynamics and living arrangements in two rural villages in Bangladesh. Amin focused on changes in dowry, education, living arrangements, and landlessness in 1991, 1995, and 1996. Education had the strongest impact on delaying marriage and childbearing and a weak impact on the adoption of contraception or desire for more children. Social changes did not effect traditional living arrangements. Dowry to the husband has replaced bride price, which is cash or valuables given to the wife's family. This shift is attributed to a marriage squeeze where the numbers of women outnumber men. Instead of shifting the age at marriage between girls and men, these communities continued to undervalue women and shifted the pricing system onto the girls' families. The dowry system has led to parents seeking grooms within the extended family, which custom dictates as worthy of a lower dowry, or within the village. The dowry system also leads to abuses, such as the prospects of multiple dowries through divorce. Amin's research finds that Bangladeshi girls benefit from advanced schooling through the delay in marriage and childbearing. Delays in marriage and childbearing have an immediate impact on population growth. However, the increased educational advancement for girls must include increased work opportunities. By combining education with work, the impact becomes long lasting and the economic benefits will encourage increased enrollment. Education serves an important role in defining women as valuable resources that can be a household asset rather than a liability.     

The family formation process among U.S. marriage cohorts

The family formation process is viewed as the progression of women through first marriage, first, subsequent, and last births and is examined for differential patterns of timing in 1930–1969 marriage cohorts. Based on the childbearing histories of approximately 17,000 white women once and still married, extracted from the June 1975 Current Population Survey, the study uses a dynamic model to show the varying importance across cohorts of the first birth interval as an important indicator of the total time spent in childbearing, social background effects in differentiating the timing of the first two births, and of prior birth transitions as affecting subsequent ones.     

Convergence on the two-child family norm in Australia

This paper examines childbearing patterns of ever-married women in Australia and establishes that during the process of fertility transition from high to low levels which largely began after 1971, significant changes occurred in the timing of the first birth after marriage, the length of the first and inter-birth intervals and the proportion of women progressing to have a first birth or births beyond the second. The analysis also confirms the predominance of the twochild family norm and shows the emergence of a converging trend on that family norm. The study applies the life tables technique to the marriage and birth history data collected in the Family Formation Survey conducted by the ABS in September 1986.     

A cohort analysis of the fertility of the July 1 People's Commune in Shanghai, County]

The survey was conducted in February-March 1981. The population of this commune at the end of 1980 was 18,608. The cultural and educational levels, economic condition, and work in family planning of this commune form a typical example among numerous similar communes in Shanghai County. The birthrate, natural growth rate, and average fertility rate began to decline in the later half of 1950s and reached the lowest level in 1974. The survey shows a delay in the marriage age. The fertility rate also dropped by 21.31% from 1963 to 1980. The average fertility rate dropped by 162.73% from 1963 to 1980. Among the women of childbearing age, 99% of them have a knowledge of birth control measures, 95% of them have used them before, and 78% are currently using them. All these figures show that the work in family planning in the commune has reached a high level by world standards. 3 factors which have a strong impact on fertility are: the economic and educational level, formation of population elements, and family planning work. A rise in the standard of living and improvement in education normally leads to late marriage and a decline in fertility. An increase in the number of women of childbearing age causes a rise in fertility. The population growth after 1974 is a reflection of this situation. The survey shows that the decline in fertility before 1973 was caused mainly by family planning work.     

Demographic correlates of group achievement: contrasting patterns of Mexican-Americans and Japanese-Americans

Patterns of family size, family stability, and timing of family formation characteristic of Mexican-Americans are contrasted with those of Japanese-Americans, and consequences of their demographic differences for group achievement are explored. Mexican-Americans are found to have a demographic system marked by young ages at marriage, young ages at beginning of childbearing, high rates of reproduction, and high rates of marital instability. Japanese-Americans display just the opposite pattern of behavior on each of these variables. Using existing research on determinants of individual achievement, reasons are then suggested why the demographic environment encountered by Japanese-American youth is more conducive to educational and economic achievement than is that encountered by Mexican-American youth.     

Adolescent fertility: worldwide concerns

There is growing concern over the adverse health, social, economic, and demographic effects of adolescent fertility. Morbidity and mortality rates ar significantly higher for teenage mothers and their infants, and early initiation of childbearing generally means truncated education, lower future family income, and larger completed family size. Adolescent fertility rates, which largely reflect marriage patterns, range from 4/1000 in Mauritania; in sub-Saharan Africa, virtually all rates are over 100. In most countries, adolescent fertility rates are declining due to rising age at marriage, increased educational and economic opportunities for young women, changes in social customs, increased use of contraception, and access to abortion. However, even if fertility rates were to decline dramatically among adolescent women in developing countries, their sheer numbers imply that their fertility will have a major impact on world population growth in the years ahead. The number of women in the world ages 15-19 years is expected to increase from 245 million in 1985 to over 320 million in the years 2020; 82% of these women live in developing countries. As a result of more and earlier premarital sexual activity, fostered by the lengthening gap between puberty and marriage, diminished parental and social controls, and increasing peer and media pressure to be sexually active, abortion and out-of-wedlock childbearing are increasing among teenagers in many developed and rapidly urbanizing developing countries. Laws and policies regarding sex education in the schools and access to family planning services by adolescents can either inhibit or support efforts to reduce adolescent fertility. Since contraceptive use is often sporadic and ineffective among adolescents, family planning services are crucial. Such programs should aim to reduce adolescents' dependence on abortion through preventive measures and increase awareness of the benefits of delayed sexual activity. Similarly, sex education should seek to provide a basis for intelligent, informed decision making. Programs tailored to reach teenagers in schools, recreational centers, and the workplace have particular potential.     

独生子女比例、婚育意愿变动对未来政策生育率的影响

苏州市是我国计划生育政策执行得最早、最严格的地区之一,也是我国经济最为发达的地区之一.目前苏州市第一代独生子女大规模进入婚育年龄,使得政策生育率自然升高,同时经济的迅猛发展使得独生子女的婚姻观念发生深刻的变化.本文试探将婚育人口独生子女比例、婚育意愿等因素纳入预测模型,以期使得预测方法和结论更加准确.文章认为,未来15年苏州政策生育率上升0.415,而考虑婚育意愿后,现实的生育率上升仅0.23,终身生育率仍在1.5个以下,人口再生产将长期处于低生育水平.     

Family structure and the transition to early parenthood

With the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce in the last quarter of the twentieth century, an increasing proportion of children have been exposed to a variety of new family forms. Little research has focused on the consequences of childhood family structure for men’s transition to fatherhood or on the family processes that account for the effects of family structure on the likelihood that young women and men become first-time unmarried parents, what we now call “fragile families.” The data come from the linked Children and Young Adult samples of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), which provide information on the children of the women of the NLSY79 from birth until they enter young adulthood. Females growing up with a single parent and males experiencing an unstable family transition to parenthood early, particularly to nonresidential fatherhood for males. For males, the effects are strongly mediated by parenting processes and adolescent behaviors and are shaped by economic circumstances. Having experienced multiple transitions as a child is associated with a reduced likelihood that males father their first child within marriage and an increased likelihood that they become fathers within cohabitation, demonstrating how changes in family structure alter family structure patterns over time and generations.     

Unemployment,Nonstandard Employment,and Fertility: Insights From Japan’s “Lost 20 Years”

In this study, we examine relationships of unemployment and nonstandard employment with fertility. We focus on Japan, a country characterized by a prolonged economic downturn, significant increases in both unemployment and nonstandard employment, a strong link between marriage and childbearing, and pronounced gender differences in economic roles and opportunities. Analyses of retrospective employment, marriage, and fertility data for the period 1990–2006 indicate that changing employment circumstances for men are associated with lower levels of marriage, while changes in women’s employment are associated with higher levels of marital fertility. The latter association outweighs the former, and results of counterfactual standardization analyses indicate that Japan’s total fertility rate would have been 10 % to 20 % lower than the observed rate after 1995 if aggregate- and individual-level employment conditions had remained unchanged from the 1980s. We discuss the implications of these results in light of ongoing policy efforts to promote family formation and research on temporal and regional variation in men’s and women’s roles within the family.     

The impact of economic resources on premarital childbearing and subsequent marriage among young American women

This paper extends previous work on premarital childbearing by modeling both the entry rates and the exit rates of unwed motherhood among young American women. In particular, I investigate the impact of economic resources on the likelihood of experiencing a premarital birth and then of subsequent marriage. Using a multiple-destination, multiple-spell hazard regression model and a microsimulation analysis, I analyze the accumulating effects of various economic variables. The results show that the economic resources are indeed important both for premarital childbearing and for subsequent marriage. However, the simulations show that large changes in these economic variables do not necessarily translate into large changes in nonmarital childbearing.     

Assessing the Predictive Value of Fertility Expectations Through a Cognitive–Social Model

This paper grounds its analysis in a novel model (Bachrach and Morgan in Popul Dev Rev, 39:459–485, 2013) that suggests that responses to questions about fertility intentions may reflect distinct phenomena at distinct points in the life course. The model suggests that women form "true" intentions when their circumstances make the issue of childbearing salient and urgent enough to draw the cognitive resources needed to make a conscious plan; before this, women report intentions based on cognitive images of family and self. We test the implications of this model for reported fertility expectations using NLSY79 data that measure expectations throughout the life course. We find that early in the life course, before marriage and parenthood, women’s fertility expectations are associated with family background and cognitive images of family and future self. Later in the life course, as women experience life course transitions that confer statuses normatively associated with childbearing—such as marriage—and parenthood itself, their reported expectations are better predictors of their fertility than before they passed these life course milestones. Our empirical results provide support for a model which has important implications for both the measurement and conceptualization of women’s intended and expected fertility.     

Selfish,Vengeful, and Full of Spite: The representations of women who have abortions on Turkish television

This article analyses the portrayal of women who have abortions in four recent Turkish television series, Gümü?, A?k-? Memnu, Han?m?n Çiftli?i, and Öyle Bir Geçer Zaman ki, all of which appeared between 2005 and 2011. It is clear from the varying storylines of these melodramas that the depiction of women who have abortions on Turkish television is decidedly negative. The women who have abortions are seen as defying cultural expectations to place motherhood before all else. They are portrayed as cheating on their husbands, having sex outside of marriage, and prioritizing career over marriage and family. The negative portrayal of women who have abortions in Turkish soap operas perpetuates the discourse on Republican womanhood, which prescribes motherhood as women's national duty and as being at the core of their identity.     

Some problems observed in the 1 percent sample survey of fertility in Shanghai]

From July to December of 1982, a sample survey of fertility was conducted of childbearing females between the ages of 15 and 49 in Shanghai. The results of this survey can be summarized by the following points: (1) The percentage of females of childbearing age is very high, and the situation in the suburbs is even more serious than that inside the city. This is the major reason for a large scale population increase in Shanghi. (2) The marriage rate is high, the divorce rate is low, and the people who remain single in their lifetime are few. This stable family and marriage situation provides a favorable condition for population growth. (3) The average marrying age for childbearing females has gradually risen in recent years, but this trend is now reversed. More and more people are getting married when they are young. (4) Fertility for childbearing aged females decreases according to the increase in their age. In the last two years, however, this downward trend has been reversed, and fertility is gradually increasing again. The above points show that family planning and birth control have entered the most crucial period in Shanghai. Efforts and enforcement should be strengthened in the area of family planning, and no relaxation should be allowed so that the goal of controlling rapid population growth may be achieved.     

Union Instability as an Engine of Fertility? A Microsimulation Model for France

Opportunities for conceiving and bearing children are fewer when unions are not formed or are dissolved during the childbearing years. At the same time, union instability produces a pool of persons who may enter new partnerships and have additional children in stepfamilies. The balance between these two opposing forces and their implications for fertility may depend on the timing of union formation and parenthood. In this article, we estimate models of childbearing, union formation, and union dissolution for female respondents to the 1999 French Etude de l’Histoire Familiale. Model parameters are applied in microsimulations of completed family size. We find that a population of women whose first unions dissolve during the childbearing years will end up with smaller families, on average, than a population in which all unions remain intact. Because new partnerships encourage higher parity progressions, repartnering minimizes the fertility gap between populations with and those without union dissolution. Differences between the two populations are much smaller when family formation is postponed—that is, when union formation and dissolution or first birth occurs after age 30, or when couples delay childbearing after union formation.     

Attitudes of welfare recipients toward marriage and childbearing

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) put the need for attitudinal change at the center of efforts to help welfare recipients become economically independent, avoid out-of-wedlock childbearing, and embrace marriage. In this paper, we focus specifically on attitudes, analyzing both differences in values and attitudes between welfare recipients and other women on the cusp of reform, as well as the effects of TANF reforms in two states on the attitudes and behaviors of women subject to the reforms. National data reveal few differences in values and attitudes between welfare recipients and other women once background characteristics are held constant. A majority of both groups believes that prospective parents should marry, but single parents can raise a child as well as married parents. Personal aspirations for marriage and further childbearing also are fairly similar. These similarities may be one reason that the literature has shown TANF to have limited effects on marriage and childbearing. A second set of analyses investigates the degree to which welfare recipients in Delaware and Indiana report that reforms affected their aspirations for marriage and childbearing. Self-reported impacts are greater for fertility than marriage attitudes. Even among those who report their attitudes were affected by reform, recipients appear to have difficulty acting on their marital and childbearing desires, dampening any effects on behavior. These findings reinforce the current sense among researchers and policy makers that more direct reforms are needed to have a substantial effect on marriage and out-of-wedlock childbearing.     

Attitudes of welfare recipients toward marriage and childbearing

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) put the need for attitudinal change at the center of efforts to help welfare recipients become economically independent, avoid out-of-wedlock childbearing, and embrace marriage. In this paper, we focus specifically on attitudes, analyzing both differences in values and attitudes between welfare recipients and other women on the cusp of reform, as well as the effects of TANF reforms in two states on the attitudes and behaviors of women subject to the reforms. National data reveal few differences in values and attitudes between welfare recipients and other women once background characteristics are held constant. A majority of both groups believes that prospective parents should marry, but single parents can raise a child as well as married parents. Personal aspirations for marriage and further childbearing also are fairly similar. These similarities may be one reason that the literature has shown TANF to have limited effects on marriage and childbearing. A second set of analyses investigates the degree to which welfare recipients in Delaware and Indiana report that reforms affected their aspirations for marriage and childbearing. Self-reported impacts are greater for fertility than marriage attitudes. Even among those who report their attitudes were affected by reform, recipients appear to have difficulty acting on their marital and childbearing desires, dampening any effects on behavior. These findings reinforce the current sense among researchers and policy makers that more direct reforms are needed to have a substantial effect on marriage and out-of-wedlock childbearing.     

Women are key players in the economies of East and Southeast Asia

In 1996, the East-West Center's Program on Population investigated the links between population change and economic growth in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. This document discusses the findings pertaining to women's changing marriage and childbearing patterns, education attainment, and labor force participation as well as changes in family life. In eastern and southeastern Asia, women are delaying marriage and having fewer children as a result of their overwhelming acceptance of modern contraception. Concurrently, women's secondary school enrollment has increased dramatically since 1960, and women have accounted for steadily increasing proportions of total labor force growth. Economic development has led to fewer women employed in agriculture and more in clerical positions. Women continue to be marginalized in low-paying manufacturing jobs and to lose these jobs more frequently than do men. Women's labor force participation continues to be dependent upon their child care responsibilities, but women are beginning to combine both activities with the help of live-in grandparents. Women have made an important contribution to economic growth in Asia. Policies should address job discrimination against married women, wage discrimination, the problems faced by young women who leave home for employment in the manufacturing and service sectors, and the lack of child care facilities.