Adolescents' Views on Childbearing, Contraception, and Abortion in Two Post-Communist Societies

Drawing upon two identical surveys conducted among high school seniors in the Czech Republic and Armenia, the present study examines within-country and between-country differences in adolescents' attitudes toward childbearing, contraception, and abortion, and in their perceptions of trends in fertility, contraceptive use, and recourse to abortion after the fall of communism. Focusing in particular on the effects of gender and selected socioeconomic characteristics, I find greater gender differences in reproductive and contraceptive views among Armenians, but greater gender and socioeconomic diversity in abortion attitudes among Czechs. I explain how the detected patterns of variations reflect the embeddedness of adolescents' views within the social, cultural, and reproductive contexts of their respective societies.