PROMISES THEY CAN KEEP: LOW-INCOME WOMEN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD MOTHERHOOD, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE

Socio-Economic Differences in the Prevalence of Single Motherhood in North America and Europe

The study focuses on understanding the association between parental socio-economic status (SES) and the likelihood of women experiencing a first birth while single, and identifying societal factors that influence this association in 18 North American and European societies. Previous research has shown that single motherhood occurs disproportionately among those from with lower a lower parental SES. The study assesses whether this is caused by parental SES differences in the risk of single women experiencing a first conception leading to a live birth or by parental SES differences in how likely women are to enter a union during pregnancy. Additionally, an assessment is made of whether cross-national differences in these associations can be explained by a country’s access to family planning, norms regarding family formation, and economic inequality. Across countries, a negative gradient of parental SES was found on the likelihood of single women to experience a first pregnancy. The negative gradient was stronger in countries with better access to family planning. In some countries, the negative gradient of parental SES was aggravated during pregnancy because women from lower parental SES were less likely to enter a union. This was mostly found in societies with less conservative norms regarding marriage. The results suggest that certain developments in Western societies may increase socio-economic differentials in family demography.

Socioeconomic Status and Intimate Relationships

The ways that couples form and manage their intimate relationships at higher and lower levels of socioeconomic status (SES) have been diverging steadily over the past several decades. At higher SES levels, couples postpone marriage and childbirth to invest in education and careers, but they eventually marry at high rates and have relatively low risk for divorce. At lower SES levels, couples are more likely to cohabit and give birth prior to marriage and less likely to marry at all. This review examines how SES comes to be associated with the formation, development, and dissolution of intimate relationships. Overall, research has highlighted how a couple's socioeconomic context facilitates some choices and constrains others, resulting in different capacities for relationship maintenance and different adaptive mating strategies for more and less advantaged couples. A generalizable relationship science requires research that acknowledges these differences and one that recruits, describes, and attends to socioeconomic diversity across couples.

Tough Choices: Exploring Decision-Making for Pregnancy Intentions and Prevention Among Girls in the Justice System

Despite California's declining teen pregnancy rate, teens in the juvenile justice system have higher rates than their nonincarcerated counterparts. This study explored domains that may shape decision-making for pregnancy prevention in this group. Twenty purposively selected female teens with a recent incarceration participated in hour-long semistructured interviews about their future plans, social networks, access to reproductive health services, and sexual behavior. Transcripts revealed that, contrary to literature, desire for unconditional love and lack of access to family planning services did not mediate decision-making. Lack of future planning, poor social support, and limited social mobility shaped youths' decisions to use contraceptives. Understanding this group's social location and the domains that inform decision-making for pregnancy intentions and prevention provides clues to help programs predict and serve this population's needs.

Race/Ethnic Differences in Nonresident Fathers' Involvement after a Nonmarital Birth

OBJECTIVES

This article examines how the levels of nonresidential father involvement (over child ages 1 to 9) differ by race/ethnicity (comparing White, Black and Hispanic fathers), and then considers how individual and couple characteristics may 'account for' any observed differences.

METHOD

Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,447) and random effects models were used to examine how nonresidential father involvement (with respect to time, engagement, shared responsibility, and coparenting with mothers) is differentiated by race and ethnicity.

RESULTS

Overall, Black nonresident fathers were significantly more likely to spend time and engage in activities with their children as compared to Hispanic fathers-but not White fathers. Black fathers also shared responsibilities more frequently and displayed more effective coparenting than Hispanic and White fathers.

CONCLUSIONS

Fathers' involvement with children is shown to differ across major race/ethnic groups, with implications for children as well as for future research and public policy.

What's Changed? A Comparison of Army Suicide Surveillance Data to Cases from 1975 to 1982

US Army suicide rates increased significantly in the last decade and have remained high. To inform future research hypotheses, Army suicide surveillance data (2012-2014) were compared to similar Army data for suicides from 1975 to 1982. Preliminary data suggest that suicide rates increased across most demographic groups, but may have decreased among divorced soldiers. Mental health utilization increased over time. Legal problems and physical health problems were identified in a higher percentage of cases in the recent data relative to the 1975-1982 era. Potential implications for suicide prevention are discussed.

The Influence of Parental Educational Attainment on the Partnership Context at First Birth in 16 Western Societies

In the US, growing up with parents with a low socio-economic status (SES) has been shown to increase the chance of having a birth outside marriage. However, less is known about the influence of parental SES in other Western countries. The current paper examines the association between parental educational attainment with the partnership context at first birth in 16 European and North American countries, by differentiating births within marriage, within cohabitation, or while being single. Moreover, we test whether the association between parental education and partnership context at childbirth changes over cohorts and whether its influence changes when controlling for own educational attainment. Data from the Generations and Gender Programme were used, as well as data from the American National Survey of Family Growth, the Canadian General Social Survey, and the Dutch Survey on Family Formation. The results show that in North American and East European countries, but not in West European countries, lower parental education increases the risk of having a birth within cohabitation. Moreover, in North American countries and half of the West and East European countries, lower parental education increases the risk of having a birth while being single. The association of parental education with the partnership context at birth tends to change furthermore over cohorts, although no clear pattern could be observed between countries. The study suggests that the intergenerational transmission of education is an important mechanism in explaining the influence of parental education, although other mechanisms also appear to be at work.

“Brenda’s Got a Baby”

This secondary analysis examines low-income, street-identified single Black mothers aged 18 to 35 years in Wilmington, Delaware. This study is guided by the following question: To what extent do family composition and criminal record/street activity shape notions of Black single motherhood? “Sites of resilience” theory informs this study by providing a reconceptualization of street life and the phenomenological experiences of street-identified Black women. This analysis draws on 310 surveys, 6 individual interviews, 3 dual interviews, 2 group interviews, and extensive field observations. Findings reveal how these women experience single motherhood within the context of blocked opportunity and structural inequality. Results also indicate that most women socially reproduced childhood attitudes and conditions, including “fatherless” homes and single motherhood. Use and sales of narcotics and incarceration were primary factors for why their children’s father didn’t reside in the home. Findings also suggest that number of children, arrest and incarceration rates, and educational and employment statuses are predictive of marital status in the women.

Social Norms and Stigma Regarding Unintended Pregnancy and Pregnancy Decisions: A Qualitative Study of Young Women in Alabama

CONTEXT

Social norms and stigma may play important roles in reproductive health behavior and decision making among young women in the U.S. South, who disproportionately experience unintended pregnancies. No research has described the presence and manifestations of social norms and stigmas associated with unintended pregnancy and related decision making from the perspective of this population.

METHODS

Six focus groups and 12 cognitive interviews were conducted between December 2013 and July 2014 with 46 low-income women aged 19-24 living in Birmingham, Alabama; respondents were recruited from two public health department centers and a community college. Semistructured interview guides were used to facilitate discussion about social perceptions of unintended pregnancy and related pregnancy decisions. Sessions were audio-recorded, and transcripts were analyzed using a theme-based approach.

RESULTS

Participants described community expectations that pregnancy occur in the context of monogamous relationships, in which both partners are mature, educated and financially stable. However, respondents reported that unintended pregnancy outside of these circumstances was common, and that the community expected young women faced with unintended pregnancies to bear and raise their children. Women who chose to do so were viewed more positively than were women who chose abortion or adoption. The community generally considered these alternatives to parenting unacceptable, and participants discussed them in terms of negative labels, social judgment and nondisclosure.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest a need to reduce stigma and create a social environment in which young women are empowered to make the best reproductive decisions for themselves.

Incongruent Teen Pregnancy Attitudes, Coparenting Conflict, and Support Among Mexican-Origin Adolescent Mothers

The current longitudinal study examined whether differences between Mexican-origin adolescent mothers and their mother figures (N = 204 dyads) in attitudes on the status attained through teen pregnancy were associated with conflict in their coparenting relationship and whether coparenting conflict was associated with adolescent mothers' perceptions of social support. Findings revealed that when adolescents held more positive attitudes than their mother figures about the status gained through teen pregnancy, they tended to report greater coparenting conflict with their mother figures. Furthermore, greater coparenting conflict was significantly associated with decreases in adolescents' perceptions of social support (i.e., emotional, instrumental, companion support) 1 year later. Findings underscore the importance of incongruent attitudes and the quality of coparenting relationships between adolescent mothers and their mother figures in relation to support processes. Findings are discussed with respect to understanding Mexican-origin adolescent mothers' social support in the context of family subsystem attitudes and interactions.

Nonmarital Relationships and Changing Perceptions of Marriage Among African American Young Adults

Cohabitation has become increasingly widespread over the past decade. Such trends have given rise to debates about the relation between cohabitation and marriage, in terms of what cohabitation means for individual relationship trajectories and for the institution of marriage more generally. Using recent data from a sample of almost 800 African Americans and fixed effects modeling procedures, in the present study the authors shed some light on these debates by exploring the extent to which cohabitation, relative to both singlehood and dating, was associated with within-individual changes in African Americans' marital beliefs during the transition to adulthood. The findings suggest that cohabitation is associated with changes in marital beliefs, generally in ways that repositioned partners toward marriage, not away from it. This was especially the case for women. These findings suggest that, for young African American women, cohabitation holds a distinct place relative to dating and, in principle if not practice, relative to marriage.

Bundles of Norms About Teen Sex and Pregnancy

Teen pregnancy is a cultural battleground in struggles over morality, education, and family. At its heart are norms about teen sex, contraception, pregnancy, and abortion. Analyzing 57 interviews with college students, we found that "bundles" of related norms shaped the messages teens hear. Teens did not think their communities encouraged teen sex or pregnancy, but normative messages differed greatly, with either moral or practical rationalizations. Teens readily identified multiple norms intended to regulate teen sex, contraception, abortion, childbearing, and the sanctioning of teen parents. Beyond influencing teens' behavior, norms shaped teenagers' public portrayals and post hoc justifications of their behavior. Although norm bundles are complex to measure, participants could summarize them succinctly. These bundles and their conflicting behavioral prescriptions create space for human agency in negotiating normative pressures. The norm bundles concept has implications for teen pregnancy prevention policies and can help revitalize social norms for understanding health behaviors.

Black-White Differences in Attitudes Related to Pregnancy Among Young Women

In this article, we use newly available data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study to compare a wide range of attitudes related to pregnancy for 961 black and white young women. We also investigate the extent to which race differences are mediated by, or net of, family background, childhood socioeconomic status (SES), adolescent experiences related to pregnancy, and current SES. Compared with white women, black women generally have less positive attitudes toward young nonmarital sex, contraception, and childbearing, and have less desire for sex in the upcoming year. This is largely because black women are more religious than white women and partly because they are more socioeconomically disadvantaged in young adulthood. However, in spite of these less positive attitudes, black women are more likely to expect sex without contraception in the next year and to expect more positive consequences if they were to become pregnant, relative to white women. This is largely because, relative to white women, black women had higher rates of sex without contraception in adolescence and partly because they are more likely to have grown up with a single parent. It is unclear whether attitudes toward contraception and pregnancy preceded or are a consequence of adolescent sex without contraception. Some race differences remain unexplained; net of all potential mediators in our models, black women have less desire for sex in the upcoming year, but they are less willing to refuse to have sex with a partner if they think it would make him angry and they expect more positive personal consequences of a pregnancy, relative to white women. In spite of these differences, black women's desires to achieve and to prevent pregnancy are very similar to white women's desires.

Low-income women's navigation of childbearing norms throughout the reproductive life course

Shifts in family structure have affected age norms about both teenage childbearing and reproductive sterilization, but we lack research examining how childbearing norms are connected across the reproductive life course. Drawing on interviews from 40 low-income women in Colorado, we explored linkages between early childbearing and the desire for early sterilization. Specifically, we examined two narratives women use to negotiate competing norms throughout the reproductive life course. The low-income women in our study characterized their teenage childbearing experiences negatively and justified them using a "young and dumb" narrative. Women also asserted that reversible contraceptives do not work for them, using a "hyper-fertility" narrative to explain both their early childbearing and their desire for early sterilization. Our results illustrate the influence of mainstream social norms about childbearing timing on low-income women's lives and provide evidence of how women use narratives to explain and justify their violation of childbearing norms.

Understanding multiple levels of norms about teen pregnancy and their relationships to teens' sexual behaviors

Researchers seeking to understand teen sexual behaviors often turn to age norms, but they are difficult to measure quantitatively. Previous work has usually inferred norms from behavioral patterns or measured group-level norms at the individual level, ignoring multiple reference groups. Capitalizing on the multilevel design of the Add Health survey, we measure teen pregnancy norms perceived by teenagers, as well as average norms at the school and peer network levels. School norms predict boys' perceived norms, while peer network norms predict girls' perceived norms. Peer network and individually perceived norms against teen pregnancy independently and negatively predict teens' likelihood of sexual intercourse. Perceived norms against pregnancy predict increased likelihood of contraception among sexually experienced girls, but sexually experienced boys' contraceptive behavior is more complicated: When both the boy and his peers or school have stronger norms against teen pregnancy he is more likely to contracept, and in the absence of school or peer norms against pregnancy, boys who are embarrassed are less likely to contracept. We conclude that: (1) patterns of behavior cannot adequately operationalize teen pregnancy norms, (2) norms are not simply linked to behaviors through individual perceptions, and (3) norms at different levels can operate independently of each other, interactively, or in opposition. This evidence creates space for conceptualizations of agency, conflict, and change that can lead to progress in understanding age norms and sexual behaviors.

The social context and meaning of virginity loss among African American and Puerto Rican young adults in Hartford

We describe virginity loss experiences of inner-city minority youth to understand the meaning attributed to first sex and the social and structural factors that contribute to early sexual debut. We interviewed 62 18-25-year-old African American and Puerto Rican Hartford men and women about their sexual and romantic life histories. Transcripts were coded in ATLAS.ti and analyzed for themes about virginity and sexual debut. We found different conceptions of virginity as a stigma to be lost, a normal part of growing up, and a gift to be given. The normative experience was consensual, early, and unplanned sexual debut. Inner-city minority youth have similar feelings, motivations, and experiences of sexual debut as non-ethnic youth reported in the literature except they are far younger. We discuss structural factors that affect inner-city sexual scripts for early sexual debut and identify it as a health inequity.

Examining the antecedents of U.S. nonmarital fatherhood

Despite the dramatic rise in U.S. nonmarital childbearing in recent decades, limited attention has been paid to factors affecting nonmarital fatherhood (beyond studies of young fathers). In this article, we use data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort to examine the antecedents of nonmarital fatherhood, as compared to marital fatherhood. Overall, we find the strongest support across both data sets for education and race/ethnicity as key predictors of having a nonmarital first birth, consistent with prior literature about women's nonmarital childbearing and about men's early/teenage fatherhood. Education is inversely related to the risk of nonmarital fatherhood, and minority (especially black) men are much more likely to have a child outside of marriage than white men. We find little evidence that employment predicts nonmarital fertility, although it does strongly (and positively) predict marital fertility. High predicted earnings are also associated with a greater likelihood of marital childbearing but with a lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Given the socioeconomic disadvantage associated with nonmarital fatherhood, this research suggests that nonmarital fatherhood may be an important aspect of growing U.S. inequality and stratification both within and across generations.

The Specter of Divorce: Views From Working- and Middle-Class Cohabitors

Young Americans increasingly express apprehension about their ability to successfully manage intimate relationships. Partially in response, cohabitation has become normative over the past few decades. Little research, however, examines social class distinctions in how emerging adults perceive challenges to sustaining intimate unions. We examine cohabitors' views of divorce and how these color their sentiments regarding marriage. Data are from in-depth interviews with 122 working- and middle-class cohabitors. More than two thirds of respondents mentioned concerns with divorce. Working-class women, in particular, view marriage less favorably than do their male and middle-class counterparts, in part because they see marriage as hard to exit and are reluctant to assume restrictive gender roles. Middle-class cohabitors are more likely to have concrete wedding plans and believe that marriage signifies a greater commitment than does cohabitation. These differences in views of marriage and divorce may help explain the bifurcation of cohabitation outcomes among working- and middle-class cohabitors.

Who Matters for Children's Early Development? Race/Ethnicity and Extended Household Structures in the United States

Taking advantage of recent data that permit an assessment of the importance of extended household members in operationalizing the relationship between family structure and children's early development, this study incorporated coresident grandparents, other kin, and nonkin to investigate the associations between extended household structure and U.S. children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes at age 2. Analyses assessed whether these relationships differed for Latino, African American, and White children and tested four potential explanations for such differences. Nationally representative data came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort of 2001 (N ≈ 8,450). Extended household structures were much more prevalent in households of young African American and Latino children than among Whites. Nuclear households were beneficial for White children, but living with a grandparent was associated with the highest cognitive scores for African American children. Nuclear, vertically extended, and laterally extended households had similar associations with Latino children's cognitive and behavior scores. Results suggest that expanded indicators of household structure that include grandparents, other kin, and nonkin are useful for understanding children's early development.

Cohabitation and Children's Externalizing Behavior in Low-Income Latino Families

We consider the association of cohabitation experience with externalizing behavior among children of Latina mothers whose ethnic origin is in Mexico, Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic. Data were drawn from three waves of the Three-City Study (N=656 mother-child pairs). Children of Mexican-origin mothers had higher externalizing problems in childhood and adolescence when their mothers were born in the United States or immigrated as minors. For children of Caribbean-origin mothers, being born to a cohabiting or married mother had a statistically equivalent association with externalizing behavior when mothers were born outside the mainland United States (Dominican and island-born Puerto Rican mothers). Children of mainland-born Puerto Rican mothers had more behavior problems when their mothers cohabited at birth.

Marriage and Child Well-Being: Research and Policy Perspectives

Over the past decade, the linkages between marriage and child well-being have attracted the attention of researchers and policy makers alike. Children's living arrangements have become increasingly diverse and unstable, which raises important questions about how and why family structure and stability are related to child outcomes. This article reviews new research on this topic, emphasizing how it can inform policy debates about the role of marriage in reducing poverty and improving child outcomes. It also pays special attention to new scholarship on unmarried, primarily low-income families, the target of recent federal marriage initiatives, to appraise the potential contributions of family research to ongoing policy discussions.