Family Planning

In the past two decades, several fertility variables have been shown to have an effect on marital stability: presence or absence of children. child spacing, birth timing, and total number of children. Only one paper can be found that directly implicates the planning component of fertility, and then only from a theoretical perspective. This paper studies the effect on marital sta. bility of the planning of fertility. The research upon which this paper is based was done in Spokane County in Spring 1977. A random sample of divorced persons(N = 165) was compared to a matched group of persons who had not divorced (N = 102). It was found that it was not possible to predict marital stability from knowledge of number of children, presence or absence of children, or timing of childbirth in relationship to marriage date. A significant predictor of marital stability, however, was found to be whether or not the children were planned. Several implications of these findings for social work practice and for family planning clinics are discussed.