Moving beyond elaborate description: towards understanding choices about parenthood

Abstract

The Fertility and Family Survey project of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) was conducted between 1988 and 1999 in collaboration with national population research centers, statistical offices, and university departments from 23 UNECE countries (plus New Zealand). Drawn from the end-of-project scientific conference held in May 2000, 10 solicited and 13 contributed papers (presented respectively in Volumes I and II) address the following themes: partnership behavior, fertility behavior, partnership and fertility behaviors as independent processes, methodological issues of behavior research, and research and policy agendas for the future. The solicited papers largely focus on issues raised by the project itself, while the papers in Volume II explore wider issues of research or country-specific results