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.

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

In the post-Recession era, U.S. fertility rates have continued to fall.

Desired Fertility and Educational Aspirations: Adolescent Goals in Rapidly Changing Social Contexts.

Objective: This article analyzes the relationship between educational aspirations and fertility aspirations early in the life course in three different settings.

Background: The negative relationship between women's educational attainment and childbearing is one of the most consistent associations in social science. Family scholars have a more limited understanding of the relationship between educational aspirations and fertility aspirations before childbearing or union formation.

Youth's Family and Non-Family Roles as Predictors of Subjective Adulthood in Three Low-Income Agricultural Settings.

Subjective adulthood, or feeling like an adult, captures identity development relative to the local context that shapes life course processes. Most research on this topic is conducted in wealthy developed countries. Instead, we draw on household-based survey data from the Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes project (FAMELO) to estimate ordinal logistic regression models predicting how often adolescents aged 11-17 in Jalisco, Mexico (n = 1,567); Gaza Province, Mozambique (n = 1,368); and the Chitwan Valley, Nepal (n = 1,898), identify as adults.

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).

Gender Differences in Adolescents' Work and Family Orientations in the United States.

We use the Education Longitudinal Study: 2002 to compare the perceived importance of work and family achievement among young women and men. We apply latent class analysis to identify distinct configurations of values, then examine associations between latent classes and educational and occupational expectations. Results show high ambitions for both work and family among both young women and men.

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.

Bridewealth Marriage in the 21 Century: A Case Study from Rural Mozambique.

Objective: This study examines trends over several decades in bridewealth marriage and analyzes the association of bridewealth with women's experiences in marriage in a rural sub-Saharan setting.

Background: Bridewealth - payments from the groom's to the bride's family as part of the marriage process - has long been a central element of kinship and marriage systems in patrilineal sub-Saharan Africa. This payment, which symbolizes the transfer of sexual and reproductive rights from the wife's to the husband's family, is grounded in a collectivist-oriented family system that closely ties women's status and value to their reproductive capacity.

Men's migration and women's mortality in rural Mozambique.

Labor migration is widespread and growing across the world. As migration grows, the economic outcomes of migration increasingly diversify, and so do its consequences for the well-being and health of both migrants and non-migrating household members. A considerable body of scholarship has examined the effects of migration on the physical and mental health of 'left-behind' household members.

Preferences, Partners, and Parenthood: Linking Early Fertility Desires, Marriage Timing, and Achieved Fertility.

In the United States, underachieving fertility desires is more common among women with higher levels of education and those who delay first marriage beyond their mid-20s. However, the relationship between these patterns, and particularly the degree to which marriage postponement explains lower fertility among the highly educated, is not well understood. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to analyze differences in parenthood and achieved parity for men and women, focusing on the role of marriage timing in achieving fertility goals over the life course.

Do Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Attitudes and Knowledge Predict Men and Women's Adult Sexual Partnerships?

Purpose: Adolescence is a key stage for forming knowledge and attitudes about sex and reproduction that may have long-term implications for adult sexual behaviors. Gender differences in experiences and socialization processes may affect the links between adolescent characteristics and adult behaviors.

Methods: By following adolescent virgins aged 15 years and older from wave I through wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (n = 4,152), we test whether adolescent boys' and girls' knowledge about, and attitudes toward, sex and reproduction influence the number of lifetime different-sex sexual partners and the likelihood of having concurrent sexual partners in adulthood, using negative binomial regression and logistic regression, respectively.

Changing Educational Differentials in Female Sterilization.

Context: Female surgical sterilization is widely used in the United States. Educational differentials in sterilization are large, but poorly understood. Improved understanding of these differences is important to ensure that all women have access to the full range of contraceptive methods.

Abortion Access in Ohio's Changing Legislative Context, 2010-2018.

To examine abortion utilization in Ohio from 2010 to 2018, a period when more than 15 abortion-related laws became effective. We evaluated changes in abortion rates and ratios examining gestation, geographic distribution, and abortion method in Ohio from 2010 to 2018. We used data from Ohio's Office of Vital Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Abortion Surveillance Reports, the American Community Survey, and Ohio's Public Health Data Warehouse.

Community gender systems and a daughter's risk of female genital mutilation/cutting: Multilevel findings from Egypt.

We tested a feminist social-ecological model to understand community influences on daughters' experience of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGMC) in Egypt, where over 90% of women ages 15-49 are cut. FGMC has potential adverse effects on demographic and health outcomes and has been defined as a human-rights violation. However, an integrated multilevel-level framework is lacking.

Community Influences on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Comparison of Four Francophone West African Countries.

Despite long-term efforts to encourage abandonment of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGMC), the practice remains widespread globally. FGMC is situated in specific social and historical contexts, and both prevalence and rates of decline vary widely across practicing countries. However, cross-national comparative research on the determinants of FGMC is sparse.

Pathways to Parenthood in Social and Family Context: Decade in Review, 2020.

Objective: This article reviews research from the past decade on patterns, trends, and differentials in the pathway to parenthood.

Background: Whether, and under what circumstances, people become parents has implications for individual identity, family relationships, the well-being of adults and children, and population growth and age structure. Understanding the factors that influence pathways to parenthood is central to the study of families and can inform policies aimed at changing childbearing behaviors.

When leaving is normal and staying is novel: Men's labor migration and women's employment in rural Mozambique.

Considerable cross-national research has examined the impact of international labor migration on livelihoods in sending households and communities. Although findings vary across contexts, the general underlying assumption of this research is that migration represents a novel income-generating alternative to local employment. While engaging with this assumption, we also argue that in many sending communities where labor migration has been going on for generations, it is the decision not to migrate and instead to pursue local livelihood opportunities that might constitute a true departure from the expected behavior.

Adolescent Fertility Attitudes and Childbearing in Early Adulthood.

Teens' attitudes about adolescent childbearing predict childbearing in the short term. If these attitudes reflect persistent goals and values, they may also be linked to later outcomes. To test long-term linkages, we analyze the association of adolescent fertility attitudes with actual and prospective fertility in adulthood using Waves I (1994-95) and IV (2007-08) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and focusing on men (N = 4,275) and women (N=4,418) without a teen birth.

Intimate Relationship Dynamics and Changing Desire for Pregnancy Among Young Women.

Context: Although substantial research has focused on unintended pregnancy among young women, less is known about the circumstances under which pregnancy is desired. Whether a young woman's pregnancy desire changes across her different relationships, or over time within a relationship, has not been directly assessed.

Methods: Data on intimate relationships and pregnancy desire were assessed weekly for 895 women aged 18-22 who participated in the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study in a county in Michigan (2008-2012).

Teen Girls' Reproductive Attitudes and the Timing and Sequencing of Sexual Behaviors.

Purpose: Teen girls consider not only health outcomes, such as pregnancy or contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI), but also social outcomes, such as guilt or embarrassment, when making decisions about sexual behaviors.

Methods: Following a sample of female virgins aged 15-18 years from wave I through wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 2,376), we tested whether adolescent girls' attitudes toward sex, contraception, pregnancy, and STIs influence the timing of coital debut, using discrete time event history logistic regression, and whether oral sex precedes coital debut, using logistic regression.

Results: Concerns about negative social consequences of sex were associated with later coital debut (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=.

Spacing, Stopping, or Postponing? Fertility Desires in a Sub-Saharan Setting.

A growing body of research has argued that the traditional categories of stopping and spacing are insufficient to understand why individuals want to control fertility. In a series of articles, Timæus, Moultrie, and colleagues defined a third type of fertility motivation-postponement-that reflects a desire to avoid childbearing in the short term without clear goals for long-term fertility. Although postponement is fundamentally a description of fertility desires, existing quantitative research has primarily studied fertility behavior in an effort to find evidence for the model.

Community Influences on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting in Kenya: Norms, Opportunities, and Ethnic Diversity.

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGMC) is a human rights violation with adverse health consequences. Although prevalence is declining, the practice persists in many countries, and the individual and contextual risk factors associated with FGMC remain poorly understood. We propose an integrated theory about contextual factors and test it using multilevel discrete-time hazard models in a nationally representative sample of 7,535 women with daughters who participated in the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey.

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.

Adults' Conceptualisations of Children's Social Competence in Nepal and Malawi.

Adults in Nepal ( = 14) and Malawi ( = 12) were interviewed about their views regarding social competence of 5- to 17-year-old children in their societies. Both Nepali and Malawian adults discussed themes consistent with those expected in collectivistic societies with economic challenges (e.g.

Does Postpartum Contraceptive Use Vary By Birth Intendedness?

Context: Women with an unintended birth have an elevated risk of subsequent unintended pregnancy, and multiple unintended pregnancies could exacerbate any negative consequences of such births. It is therefore important to understand whether postpartum contraceptive use differs by birth intendedness.

Methods: Data on 2,769 births reported in the 2011-2015 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth were used to examine postpartum contraceptive use.