Paternal Multiple Partner Fertility and Environmental Chaos Among Unmarried Nonresident Fathers

'Baby mamas' in Urban Ghana: an exploratory qualitative study on the factors influencing serial fathering among men in Accra, Ghana

BACKGROUND

Biological fathering, especially in patrilineal societies, was traditionally acceptable only in the context of marriage to the mother of the child. Many men were polygynous, often staying in one household with all their wives and children. However, this phenomenon has been on the decline in recent times, mainly due to Christianity, which encourages monogamy while frowning on polygyny. The Ghanaian family has for the past few years been undergoing changes due to migration, urbanization, and industrialization. With an increase in non-marital births and the dissolution of marital unions, multi-partner fertility is likely to increase. Contemporary Ghanaian perspectives on the circumstances that lead men to engage in paternal multi-partner fertility, otherwise referred to in this study as serial fathering, are scanty, hence this study examines the factors that lead to serial fathering among Ghanaian men.

METHODS

The study employed the qualitative method, using in-depth interviews with twenty (20) serial fathers and a focus group discussion with seven (7) women.

RESULTS

It was found that factors such as the attitude of women in relationships, the duolocal post-marital residential pattern, and the age at first birth are some of the reasons why some men father children with multiple partners.

CONCLUSION

The study concludes that both situational and personal factors account for the phenomenon of serial fathering amongst men in Prampram, Ghana, and these factors bring about distinctions in serial fathering as occurring either within or outside of marriage.

Exploring the associations between number of children, multi-partner fertility and risk of obesity at midlife: Findings from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)

BACKGROUND

Early parenthood, high parity, and partnership separation are associated with obesity. However, the emergence of non-marital partnerships, serial partnering and childbearing across unions, means that it is important to consider their association to obesity. This paper examined the associations between number of biological children and multi-partner fertility (MPF)-defined as having biological children with more than one partner, with obesity at midlife.

METHOD

The sample consisted of 2940 fathers and 3369 mothers in the 1970 British Cohort Study. The outcome was obesity (BMI 30 or over) at age 46. Fertility and partnership histories ascertained the number of live biological children and MPF status by age 42. The associations were tested using logistic regression adjusting for confounders at birth, age 10 and age 16. Adult factors recorded at age 42 including age at first birth, smoking status, alcohol dependency, educational attainment and housing tenure were considered as mediators.

RESULTS

For fathers, obesity odds did not differ according to number of children or MPF. In unadjusted models, mothers with one child (OR 1.24 95%CI 1.01-1.51), mothers who had two children with two partners (OR 1.45 95%CI 1.05-1.99), and mothers who had three or more children with two or more partners (OR 1.51 95%CI 1.18-1.93) had higher odds of obesity. In adjusted models, there remained an association between mothers with one child and odds of obesity (OR 1.30 95%CI 1.05-1.60). All other associations were attenuated when confounders were included.

CONCLUSIONS

Mothers who had children with multiple partners had higher odds of obesity. However this association was completely attenuated when parental and child confounders were accounted for; suggesting that this association may be explained by confounding. Mothers who had one child only may be at increased odds of obesity, however this could be due to multiple factors including age at first birth.

New Partner, New Order? Multipartnered Fertility and Birth Order Effects on Educational Achievement

A substantial amount of research shows that younger siblings perform worse than their older sisters and brothers in several socioeconomic outcomes, including educational achievement. Most of these studies examined stable families and excluded half-siblings. However, the increasing prevalence of multipartnered fertility implies that many children grow up in nonnuclear families. We examine whether there is evidence for birth order effects in this context, which offers an opportunity to test and potentially expand the explanatory scope of the two main theories on birth order effects. We use comprehensive Norwegian registry data to study siblings in the 1985-1998 cohorts born to mothers or fathers who parented children with at least two partners. We provide evidence for negative effects of birth order on lower secondary school grades in both cases. Children born to fathers displaying multipartnered fertility tend to have lower grades than older full siblings but perform more similarly or better compared with older half-siblings. For siblings born to mothers with the multipartnered fertility pattern, later-born siblings do worse in school compared with all older siblings. This indicates that negative birth order effects tend to operate either within or across sets of full siblings, depending on the sex of the parent displaying multipartnered fertility. We argue that these findings can be explained by a combination of resource dilution/confluence theory and sex differences in residential arrangements following union dissolutions. We also suggest an alternative interpretation: maternal resources could be more important for generating negative birth order effects.