Do perceptions of their partners’ childbearing desires affect young women’s pregnancy risk? Further study of ambivalence

Abstract

We explore whether young women’s perceptions of their sexual partners’ childbearing desires contribute to their risk of pregnancy. We used weekly journal data collected from 787 young women to measure their childbearing desires and their perceptions of their partners’ childbearing desires. We then conducted hazard modelling to predict pregnancy risk with variables based on interactions between the women’s desires and their perceived partners’ desires. Models that include perceived partners’ desires perform better than one based on women’s desires alone. The best model contains three significant predictors: one confirms the importance of pronatal, ambivalent, and indifferent desires for pregnancy risk; one indicates that the perceived partners’ antinatal desires reduce women’s pregnancy risk; and one suggests that women who both perceive their partners accurately and are in agreement with them have a lower pregnancy risk. The results indicate that perceived partner data can improve prediction and enhance our understanding of pregnancy risk.

Keywords:

• childbearing desires
• ambivalence
• indifference
• pronatalism
• antinatalism
• perception of partner
• pregnancy risk
• unplanned pregnancy
• accuracy of perception
• partner agreement

Notes

1 Warren B. Miller is at the Transactional Family Research Institute. Correspondence to: 229 Wixon Avenue, Aptos, CA 95003-4626, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Jennifer S. Barber and Paul Schulz are at the University of Michigan.

2 This research was supported by two grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD050329, R01 HD050329-S1, PI Barber), a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21 DA024186, PI Axinn), and a population center grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center (R24 HD041028).

3 The authors gratefully acknowledge the Survey Research Operations (SRO) unit at the Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, for their help with the data collection, particularly Vivienne Outlaw, Sharon Parker, and Meg Stephenson. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the intellectual contributions of the other members of the original Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study project team, William Axinn, Mick Couper, Steven Heeringa, Heather Gatny, and Yasamin Kusunoki, as well as the Advisory Committee for the project: Larry Bumpass, Elizabeth Cooksey, Kathie Harris, and Linda Waite. We also greatly appreciate the statistical consultancy of David J. Pasta, Vice-President, Medical Affairs Statistical Analysis, ICON Biostatistics & Programming.