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Preferences Against Nonmarital Fertility Predict Steps to Prevent Nonmarital Pregnancy

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Abstract

With nonmarital births comprising roughly 40% of all births, nonmarital childbearing has become a major part of the family formation landscape in the U.S. These elevated rates of nonmarital childbearing form the context in which young women both establish individual preferences about their own future family formation behaviors, and embark on their own sexual trajectories. Although previous research has shown that girls’ and young women’s attitudes about sex, contraception, and pregnancy predict their likelihood of having sex and using contraception, no research to date has investigated whether their preferences specifically about nonmarital childbearing may predict their sexual and contraceptive behavior. I use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, with a total of 6288 observations, to address this question. I investigate marital versus nonmarital sexual debut, and consistency of contraceptive use when never married and sexually active, by whether girls state a preference against nonmarital childbearing at ages 11–16. I find that girls who state a preference against nonmarital childbearing are relatively more likely to marry before first intercourse, to delay first intercourse while unmarried, and to use contraception consistently if they have sex while being never married.

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Notes

  1. A subset of respondents who were asked their preferences about nonmarital childbearing at Wave 1 were interviewed again 1 to 2 years later at Wave 2, and were asked this same question. Of these, about three-quarters (77.4%) maintained the same preference at Wave 2 as at Wave 1 (unweighted, results not shown). In addition, the number of individuals who changed their stated preference from preferring not to have a nonmarital birth at Wave 1 to being willing to consider it at Wave 2, and vice versa, were quite similar. The mean age of respondents who at Wave 1 said they would consider nonmarital childbearing (15.2) only differed by 0.4 years from the mean age of those who said they would not consider it (14.8) (results not shown).

  2. Because I limit the contraceptive consistency analytic sample at each Wave to girls who have never been married or had a birth, at each subsequent Wave, this analytic sample may become progressively more selective of individuals who either have particularly strong preferences against nonmarital childbearing, or are particularly dedicated contracepters. I conducted a sensitivity test—discussed in the Online Appendix—that suggests that although respondents in who remain unmarried and nulliparous at later Waves may be somewhat selective of stronger contracepters, the positive effect of preferences against nonmarital childbearing on contraceptive consistency remains consistent in earlier and later analytic samples.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for helpful comments from participants at the 2017 American Sociological Association annual meeting, as well as the published version’s anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful for support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development under population research infrastructure Grant R24-HD41041.

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    Rachel M. Shattuck

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Shattuck, R.M. Preferences Against Nonmarital Fertility Predict Steps to Prevent Nonmarital Pregnancy. Popul Res Policy Rev 38, 565–591 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09521-6

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