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Children’s Experiences After the Unintended Birth of a Sibling

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Demography

Abstract

This study examines whether children with a younger sibling whose birth was unintended experience larger declines in the quality of their home environment and larger increases in behavioral problems than children whose younger sibling’s birth was intended. We use data from the NLSY79 to estimate cross-lag regression models that assess changes in the home environment and children’s behavioral problems after the birth of a sibling (intended or unintended). Results are consistent with our hypotheses, finding that, indeed, unintended births have negative spillover effects. Compared with children whose sibling’s birth was intended, both boys and girls whose sibling’s birth was unintended experienced larger declines in the quality of their home environment, and boys had larger increases in behavioral problems. We also find some unexpected evidence that mistimed births may have larger negative effects than unwanted births. This deserves further research, and we offer some possible explanations that could guide those investigations.

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Notes

  1. High levels of immigration since 1979 mean that our results should not be interpreted as representative of all children in the United States in the corresponding age ranges. Rather, our sample is representative of children born to this particular cohort of women who resided in the United States in 1979. This is a limitation of the NLSY79 data, as well as of any other long-term, longitudinal study based on a cohort.

  2. The original 1979 cohort included oversamples of military personnel and economically disadvantaged whites that were later dropped.

  3. An abundance of existing research has suggested that childbearing preferences are complex and that our current measures of intention status are too narrowly defined (e.g., Bachrach and Newcomer 1999; Barber 2001; Bruce 1990; Casterline et al. 1997). Unfortunately, large, longitudinal, intergenerational data sets like the NLSY have not yet begun to include more complex measurement of this concept in their design. Although dichotomous measures of women’s feelings about their pregnancies are much simpler than the true feelings, analyses of more complicated measures in the National Survey of Family Growth indicate that these categorical measures correspond to the more complicated measures in predictable ways, and are a useful simplification (Abma et al. 2008).

  4. Which model is more appropriate is ambiguous. If families with unwanted and mistimed births are theoretically similar in terms of the mechanisms that might produce change, then it is best to combine them into a category called “unintended births.” However, if the theoretical reasons for expecting change are different for mistimed and unwanted births, then it is best to keep them separate. In some instances, the unintended nature of both types of births makes them similar in terms of many of the mechanisms producing family change. However, we present both models to investigate the extent of similarity.

  5. Mothers who resided with their parents are coded 0.

  6. We also re-ran all models with a measure of whether the mother lived with the child’s father. The results were quite similar; thus, we present only models including whether the mother lived with her spouse/partner. Also note that parents’ marital status at the birth was not a statistically significant predictor of the change in any of our dependent variables. We do not include marital status in our analyses, instead focusing on the correlated but distinct concept of parental living arrangements.

  7. Johnson (2005) advocates for a change score model, particularly when there is measurement error in the independent variables, or when important exogenous predictors of the outcome are unobserved. The cross-lag model more closely fits our hypotheses because a time-invariant variable (intention status) is our key predictor of interest and because we hypothesize about several pre-birth family and child characteristics. In addition, as Johnson’s (2005) simulation demonstrates, the null cross-lag model is estimated correctly, even in the face of substantial measurement error in the independent variables, as long as exogenous predictors (selection factors and stable individual characteristics) are well controlled. Because the data set used here was specifically designed to investigate child development indicators, including the quality of the home environment and behavioral problems, an extensive set of variables to account for the selection into unintended childbearing is included in the data set and in our models. If we instead implemented our independent variables as change scores (between the pre- and post-birth waves), this would include some change occurring after the birth of the sibling, which would be mediators in our model rather than exogenous controls.

  8. We also ran the models selecting one focal child-younger sibling pair from each family. The results were similar, so we present the models using all of the child pairs in the tables.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a center grant to the University pf Michigan (R24 HD041028), R01-HD39285 from NICHD (Barber), R01-HD39285 from NICHID (East), and APR-006013 from the Office of Population Affairs (East).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48106-1248, USA

    Jennifer S. Barber

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    Patricia L. East

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  1. Jennifer S. Barber
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  2. Patricia L. East
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Correspondence to Jennifer S. Barber.

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Barber, J.S., East, P.L. Children’s Experiences After the Unintended Birth of a Sibling. Demography 48, 101–125 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-010-0011-2

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