Intention and uncertainty at later stages of childbearing: the united states 1965 and 1970

While births may be dichotomous, fertility intentions are not inherently so. Intentions are predictions about the future and, as such, are couched in considerable uncertainty. Ignoring this uncertainty hides much of what could be learned from data on fertility intentions. This paper presents a model which allows analysis of the full range of intentions. After selecting a sample of women in the later stage of childbearing (e.g., those who intend fewer than two additional children) from the 1965and 1970 National Fertility Studies, it is shown that: (1) substantial portions of women at this stage of the reproductive life cycle were indeed uncertain of their parity-specific intention; (2) this certainty, like more firm intentions, varies by age and parity as the model predicts; and (3) there were significant shifts in the level of certainty between 1965 and 1970. Specifically, while intentions for third, fourth, and fifth births declined, more women “didn’t know” if they intended to have another child or not. Among those not intending another child, more seemed uncertain of this intention in 1970 than did comparable women in 1965. In contrast, those intending another child seemed more certain. These changes in intention and uncertainty indicate that the observed decline in intended parity was tentative. Post-1970 evidence suggests that this tentative decline has become an unequivocal one.     

Attitude strength moderates adverse effects to questionnaire design

ABSTRACT

The presentation and visual design of the “don’t know” category in rating scales on respondents’ behavior may have ambivalent effects. The hypothesis is that attitude strength toward the topic influences the respondents’ sensitivity to the graphical design of the scale. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire conducted among 307 German university students contained an experimental variation of the presentation of a “don’t know” category and its visual design. A multinomial logistic regression shows that presenting a “don’t know” category drives respondents toward extreme categories. The visual design of the “don’t know” category influences the distribution of responses, all the more that the respondents’ attitudes toward the item topic are weak.     

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 percent. 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.     

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.     

The demography of words: The global decline in non-numeric fertility preferences, 1993–2011

This paper examines the decline in non-numeric responses to questions about fertility preferences among women in the developing world. These types of response—such as ‘don’t know’ or ‘it’s up to God’—have often been interpreted through the lens of fertility transition theory as an indication that reproduction has not yet entered women’s ‘calculus of conscious choice’. However, this has yet to be investigated cross-nationally and over time. Using 19?years of data from 32 countries, we find that non-numeric fertility preferences decline most substantially in the early stages of a country’s fertility transition. Using country-specific and multilevel models, we explore the individual- and contextual-level characteristics associated with women’s likelihood of providing a non-numeric response to questions about their fertility preferences. Non-numeric fertility preferences are influenced by a host of social factors, with educational attainment and knowledge of contraception being the most robust and consistent predictors.     

The Intergenerational Effect and Second Childbirth: Survey Findings from the Shaanxi Province of China

Traditionally, the fertility behaviors of Chinese people have been deeply influenced by the entrenched patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal systems. Women’s fertility decisions and behaviors are significantly influenced by their parents and parents-in-law. Given the current social changes with low fertility levels and intentions in China, it is still unclear about the actual link between the fertility behavior and the intergenerational effect. Therefore, we utilize data from 1577 questionnaires, conducted in 2013 in the Shaanxi Province of northwest China about fertility intentions and behaviors, and use the event history analysis method and the Cox proportional hazard model to explore the association between intergenerational effects and women’s second childbirths. “The number of the parental generation’s children” and “the living arrangements of the parental generation” are employed to measure the intergenerational effect. The findings show that there is an existence of intergenerational transmission of fertility between women of childbearing age and their parents-in-law, rather than their biological parents when considering the effects of their parents-in-law. In addition, the study finds a significant correlation between women’s second childbirth and the living arrangements of their parents-in-law, but no significant association with the living arrangements of their biological parents. These results support that the patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal systems play a role in women’s fertility behaviors in contemporary China.     

The Effect of Couple Disagreement about Child‐Timing Intentions: A Parity‐Specific Approach

Using couple data from a longitudinal study conducted in Italy, a country with persistently low fertility levels, we examined the effect of partners' discrepant child‐timing intentions on reproductive behavior. We found that the effect of couple disagreement on subsequent fertility is parity‐specific and does not depend on whether only the male or the female partner intends to have a(nother) child. The disagreement tends to produce an intermediate childbearing outcome at parities zero and one, while the outcome is shifted more toward agreement on not having a(nother) child at parity two. The empirical evidence suggests that gender equality in reproductive decisionmaking is not driven by partners' equal bargaining power or partners' equal access to economic resources. The findings indicate that the predictive power of child‐timing intentions strongly improves if both partners' views are considered in fertility models, and thus support the adoption of couple analysis in fertility research.     

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.     

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.     

Determined to stop? Longitudinal analysis of the desire to have no more children in rural Mozambique

Classic demographic theories conceptualize desired family size as a fixed goal that guides fertility intentions over the childbearing years. However, a growing body of research shows that fertility plans, even nominally long-term plans for completed childbearing, change in response to short-term conditions. Because of data limitations, much of this research has focused on low-fertility contexts, but short-term conditions are likely to be even more important in high-fertility contexts. This paper uses three waves of survey data collected in rural Mozambique to study predictors of the desire to stop childbearing in a context of relatively high fertility and high individual and social instability. We use fixed effects models to assess how women’s desires to stop childbearing are shaped by demographic factors, household economic conditions, and health status, controlling for constant individual characteristics. Results provide evidence that fertility desires both reflect stable underlying goals and evolve in response to individual and social circumstances.     

Fertility decline in Scotland, England and Wales, and Ireland: comparisons from the 1911 census of fertility

Data on family size by year of marriage, age at marriage, and duration of marriage, from the 1911 Fertility Census, are compared between Scotland, England and Wales, Irish county boroughs, and the rest of Ireland. While means show significant inter-country differences, from the 1880s marked similarities are found across all the countries in the pattern of fertility decline, strongly suggesting significant fertility limitation in rural Ireland well before 1911. Noting the implications for the use of rural Ireland as a natural fertility population, the data are instead compared with the Coale-Trussell and Hinde-Woods schedules. The former provides more plausible results, which imply strong period rather than cohort effects in the fertility decline. Except in rural Ireland, little evidence is found for significant fertility limitation early in marriage among younger marrying couples, but many older marrying couples appear to have stopped childbearing at very low parities from an early date.     

Examining the Antecedents of U.S. Nonmarital Fatherhood

Despite the dramatic rise in U.S. nonmarital childbearing in recent decades, limited attention has been paid to factors affecting nonmarital fatherhood (beyond studies of young fathers). In this article, we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to examine the antecedents of nonmarital fatherhood, as compared to marital fatherhood. Overall, we find the strongest support across both data sets for education and race/ethnicity as key predictors of having a nonmarital first birth, consistent with prior literature about women’s nonmarital childbearing and about men’s early/teenage fatherhood. Education is inversely related to the risk of nonmarital fatherhood, and minority (especially black) men are much more likely to have a child outside of marriage than white men. We find little evidence that employment predicts nonmarital fertility, although it does strongly (and positively) predict marital fertility. High predicted earnings are also associated with a greater likelihood of marital childbearing but with a lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Given the socioeconomic disadvantage associated with nonmarital fatherhood, this research suggests that nonmarital fatherhood may be an important aspect of growing U.S. inequality and stratification both within and across generations.     

The effect of stepchildren on childbearing intentions and births

This article reports on a study of the effect of stepchildren (children from previous unions) on couples' fertility intentions and childbearing behavior using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The results indicated that stepchildren negatively affect childbearing intentions and childbearing risks. Intentions to have a child are weakened by one's own previous biological children and the previous biological children of one's current spouse or partner. This effect varies by the parenting configuration of the couple and gender of the respondent. Among couples with stepchildren, intentions remain high until each partner has had a biological child. Unlike women, men's previous biological children do not affect their intentions of having a child. Stepchildren exert a weak negative effect on couples' childbearing risks, and this effect is mediated by the couples' childbearing intentions. The findings suggest that stepchildren should be incorporated into future models of fertility.     

Options for Fertility Policy Transition in China

This article compares five currently debated scenarios for fertility policy transition in China, in terms of their implications for future population growth and population aging, the proportions of elderly living alone, labor force trends, pension deficits, economic costs, the marriage squeeze, and other socioeconomic outcomes. Based on these comparative analyses, the author concludes that China needs to begin a gradual modification of its fertility policy as soon as possible. He proposes a three‐stage “soft‐landing” strategy for fertility policy transition: (1) a 7‐year initial smooth transition period; (2) from approximately 2014‐15 to 2032‐35 a universal two‐child policy combined with late childbearing in both rural and urban areas; (3) after 2032‐35 all Chinese citizens would be free to choose family size and fertility timing. This strategy will enable China to have much more favorable demographic conditions and socioeconomic outcomes, as compared to keeping the current policy unchanged.     

Policies Addressing the Tempo Effect in Low‐Fertility Countries

The possible negative consequences of current low fertility levels are causing increasing concern, particularly in countries where the total fertility rate is below 1.5. Social inertia and self‐reinforcing processes may make it difficult to return to higher levels once fertility has been very low for some time, creating a possible “low‐fertility trap.” Policies explicitly addressing the fertility‐depressing effect of increases in the mean age at child‐bearing (the tempo effect) may be a way to raise period fertility to somewhat higher levels and help escape the “low‐fertility trap” before it closes. Reforms in the school system may affect the timing of childbearing by lowering the age at completion of education. A more efficient school system, which provides the same qualifications with a younger school‐leaving age, is potentially capable of increasing period fertility and hence exerting a rejuvenating effect on the age composition, even if the levels of cohort fertility remain unchanged. Such policies may also have a positive effect on completed cohort fertility.     

Assesssing Cohort Birth Expectations Data from the Current Population Survey, 1971–1981

Data from the fertility supplements to the Current Population Survey from 1971 to 1981 indicate that in the aggregate, the lifetime birth expectations of married women 18 to 39 years old in 1971 will closely approximate their completed cohort fertility. During this period, the youngest group of women, 18 to 24 years old, delayed their childbearing; their short-term expectations (1971–76) were not realized, but they made up enough births in the latter half of the decade to enable them to attain their lifetime birth expectations. In retrospect, the “failure” of birth expectations data to predict the “period” fertility downswing in the 1970s resulted not from poor predictions of married women, but rather from unanticipated marital and subsequent childbearing patterns of women who were single at the beginning of the decade. The authors conclude that birth expectations are useful predictors of completed cohort fertility, if adjustments are made to incorporate changes in the proportions married within the birth cohort.     

Individual and couple intentions for more children: A research note

The question, “Do you and your husband intend to have a (another) child?” has become standard on fertility surveys. It is almost always asked of the wife, but is treated as the couple’s joint intention. How reasonable is such an assumption? Do husbands’ and wives’ reports of couple intent correspond closely? Do spouses know the fertility wishes of their partners? Do they take these wishes into account when reporting couple intent? Analysis of a sample of fecund, white, urban U.S. couples shows each question answered affirmatively. Reports from either spouse appear to be good, although admittedly imperfect, indicators of couple intent.     

A Cognitive–Social Model of Fertility Intentions

We examine the use and value of fertility intentions against the backdrop of theory and research in the cognitive and social sciences. First, we draw on recent brain and cognition research to contextualize fertility intentions within a broader set of conscious and unconscious mechanisms that contribute to mental function. Next, we integrate this research with social theory. Our conceptualizations suggest that people do not necessarily have fertility intentions; they form them only when prompted by specific situations. Intention formation draws on the current situation and on schemas of childbearing and parenthood learned through previous experience, imbued by affect, and organized by self‐representation. Using this conceptualization, we review apparently discordant knowledge about the value of fertility intentions in predicting fertility. Our analysis extends and deepens existing explanations for the weak predictive validity of fertility intentions at the individual level and provides a social‐cognitive explanation for why intentions predict as well as they do. When focusing on the predictive power of intentions at the aggregate level, our conceptualizations lead us to focus on how social structures frustrate or facilitate intentions and how the structural environment contributes to the formation of reported intentions in the first place. Our analysis suggests that existing measures of fertility intentions are useful but to varying extents and in many cases despite their failure to capture what they seek to measure.     

“Open to all and everybody”? The Irish Film Board: accounting for the scarcity of women screenwriters

Despite the many social and cultural changes that have occurred in Irish society since the Irish Film Board was re-established in 1993, the Irish film industry remains strongly male dominated. Specifically, Irish women constitute a minority of produced screenwriters and writer/directors. This article contributes to an understanding of the discursive resources that key decision makers in the Irish Film Board draw upon in order to talk about gender. A number of interpretative repertoires are used to rationalize its position in relation to the dearth of women screenwriters, four of which are examined here: evasion and deflection; gender neutrality; project-led funding; and a difficulty making sense of entrenched gender issues, articulated here as “I don’t know.” Within the respondents’ repertoires an ideological dilemma can be identified in the conceptualization of gender as both relevant and irrelevant.     

Couple childbearing desires, intentions, and births

Using new panel data from the National Surveys of Families and Households, I investigate the effects of wives’ and husbands’ childbearing desires on their spouses’ intentions, and the effects of spouses’ desires and intentions on subsequent births. The results show clearly that husbands’ desires and intentions influence couples’ births, with approximately equal force to that of wives’ desires and intentions. When couples disagreed about wanting a child, each partners’ intentions were shifted toward not having a child; and disagreement in desires or intentions were reflected in birth rates that were lower than average. These patterns were generally not different for couples with more or less traditional gender roles or attitudes.