Where Should Babies Come From? Measuring Schemas of Fertility and Family Formation Using Novel Theory and Methods

<p>Current theories of marriage and family formation behavior tend to rely on the assumption that people can and do consciously plan both fertility and marriage and post-hoc intentions should align with a priori reasons for action (Fishbein & Azjen 2010). However, research shows this is not always the case and researchers have labeled inconsistencies between pre- and post- reports of intentions and behavior as retrospective bias. Researchers such as Bongaarts (1990) have tried to create models that minimize this "bias".</p><p> The Theory of Conjunctural Action is a new model that can explain, rather than explain away, this "bias" (Johnson-Hanks et al. 2011; Morgan and Bachrach 2011). This new theoretical innovation uses insights about the workings of the mind to gain a greater understanding of how individuals report family formation decisions and how and why they might change over time. In this theory, individuals experience conjunctures (or social context which exists in the material world) and use cognitive schemas (or frames within the mind through which individuals use to interpret the world around them). These schemas are multiple and the set can change over time as individuals incorporate new experiences into them. </p><p> In this dissertation, I explore how and why pre- and post- reports of intentions may be different using insights from the Theory of Conjunctural Action. In the second chapter, using data from the NLSY79 and log-linear models, I show that there are considerable inconsistencies between prospective and retrospective reports of fertility intentions. Specifically, nearly 6% of births (346 out of 6022) are retrospectively reported as unwanted at the time of conception by women who prospectively reported they wanted more children one or two years prior to the birth. Similarly, over 400 births are retrospectively reported as wanted by women who intended to have no more births one or two years prior (i.e., in the prior survey wave). The innovation here is to see this inconsistency, not as an error in reporting, but as different construals of a seemingly similar question. In other words, women may not be consciously intending births and then enacting these intentions; rather women may have different schemas (or meanings) of prospective and retrospective measures of fertility intentions.</p><p> The next chapter uses this same data to test if women use different schemas to guide their reporting of prospective and retrospective fertility intentions. Again, using insights from the Theory of Conjunctural Action, I expect that different schemas (represented by different sets of variables) predict prospective and retrospective wantedness differentially. I show that retrospective reports of wantedness are guided more by age, marital status, education, job satisfaction, and educational enrollment at birth, while prospective wantedness was guided more by number of children desired and how many children they currently have. I show four logistic models predicting wanted verses unwanted births. I then compared the model fit of logistic models predicting prospective wanted verses unwanted births using the hypothesized prospective and retrospective schema variables and I did the same for the models of retrospective wantedness. I find that when women report retrospective wantedness, they are guided more by the hypothesized variables. </p><p> Finally, in the last empirical paper, because schemas are difficult to measure, I build a methodology, Network Text Analysis, to measure schemas and to understand the schemas surrounding marriage and fertility for low-income Blacks who have not yet had children. I use interview data from the Becoming Parents and Partners Study (BPP), a sample of young, unmarried, childless adults with low incomes. I use these data to explore schemas of childbearing and marriage. Contrary to previous findings that low-income parents do not link marriage and fertility and have different requirements for marriage and fertility, I find that marriage and childbearing are indeed linked and have similar requirements for low-income Blacks prior to childbearing. Low income Blacks hold quite traditional views about the role of marriage and its sequencing vis-à-vis fertility. I argue that the material constraints to marital childbearing may lead to non-marital births and thus respondents sever schemas connecting marriage and childbearing and adopt other schemas of childbearing to provide ad hoc justifications for their behavior.</p>Dissertatio

Perceptions of the Research Climate in Universities and National Research Institutes: The Role of Gender and Bureaucracy in Three Low-Income Countries

This article examines the relationship between sex and sector of employment and perceptions of the research climate among a sample of researchers in three lowincome areas: Ghana, Kenya, and Kerala India. Using data gathered in 2010 from scientists working in universities and national research institutes, we address the following questions: 1) Are there differences in men’s and women’s assessment of the research environment in terms of their satisfaction with funding, ratings of problems associated with communication and coordination, and sense of autonomy? 2) Do contextual factors— primarily sector of employment but also controlling for home region—account for these differences? 3) Does the effect of sex vary across sector and location? 4) Are there other factors—family status, education, and experience—that mediate the relationship between sex, context and perceptions of the work environment? Findings indicate that female scientists’ satisfaction with funding is governed by national context rather than institutional context, while their sense of autonomy and experience with problems related to communication and coordination is governed by institutional contexts. By engaging with the literature on the gendered nature of bureaucracy, our results provide insight into the features of organizations that shape male and female researchers’ experiences

Female Same-Sex Sexual Desires: An Evolutionary Perspective

This thesis examines the evolution and adaptive function of female homosexuality. Biological, sociological, evolutionary, socioecological, and sociobiological theories are discussed. To assess the evolution of female homoerotic behavior, primate and human behavior are examined. Because the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the evolution of female same-sex relations, particular emphasis is placed on chimpanzees and bonobos, species in which these relations have been extensively documented. It is proposed that human females form homoerotic relationships to achieve independence from males and maintain alliances. If sufficient resources are present, aggregates of females can control their most significant resource-sex. Sex is utilized to recruit new females, to maintain alliances within the aggregate, and to distribute to males in exchange for strategic resources. This thesis concludes with several suggestions for future research

Is Baby a Blessing? Wantedness, Age at First Birth, and Later-Life Depression

Research has found that both unintended and nonnormatively timed births have negative consequences, yet little is known about how birth timing and intention jointly influence mothers\u27 mental health. This study explored how the interaction between intention and age at first birth influenced depression 5 to 13 years later by analyzing the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,573). We found that mistimed births, when compared with wanted births, were associated with depression, but only for normatively timed transitions to motherhood. Surprisingly, teen mothers who had unwanted births had better later-life mental health than teens who had wanted or mistimed births. Among women with wanted or mistimed first births, increasing age at birth was associated with lower probabilities of depression. Most, but not all, of these effects were explained by selection factors and life circumstances. Results show the importance of examining joint effects of first birth wantedness and timing

Prospective versus retrospective measurement of unwanted fertility: Strengths, weaknesses, and inconsistencies assessed for a cohort of US women

Background: Unwanted fertility is the key concept necessary to assess the potential impact of more perfect fertility control. Measuring this continues to be a significant challenge, with several plausible competing measurement strategies. Retrospective strategies ask respondents, either during pregnancy or after birth, to recall if they wanted a(nother) birth at conception; these reports are likely to be biased by an unwillingness to label a pregnancy or birth as unwanted (rationalization bias). Prospective strategies avoid this bias by questioning respondents prior to pregnancy, but reports are obtained months or years before pregnancy and so may not accurately reflect wantedness at conception. Objective: We describe systematic errors associated with each strategy, show correspondence between strategies, and examine predictors of inconsistency. Methods: Using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we compare retrospective and prospective reports for 6,495 births from 3,578 women. Results: The prospective strategy produces a higher percentage of unwanted births than the retrospective strategy. But the two reports of wantedness are strongly associated - especially for the second birth (vs. other births) and for women with stable (vs. unstable) expectation patterns. Nevertheless, discordant reports are common and are predicted by women's characteristics. Conclusions: Retrospective measures are biased by rationalization; prospective measures are biased when women change their expectations prior to conception. For practical and theoretical reasons, we argue that retrospective measurement is more promising for assessing wantedness. Contribution: We highlight shortcomings in both approaches. Demographers may find ways to measure wantedness more accurately, but many of the measurement problems seem intractable

Has the Internet Reduced Friendship? Scientific Relationships in Ghana, Kenya, and India, 1994-2010

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. Has the Internet changed the pattern of social relations? More specifically, have social relations undergone any systematic change during the recent widespread diffusion of new communications technology? This question is addressed using a unique longitudinal survey that bookends the entire period of Internet diffusion in two African nations and one Indian state. We analyze data on nine professional linkages reported by a population of agricultural and environmental scientists in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala over a sixteen-year period (1994-2010). Factor analysis reveals two clusters of relationships, one interpretable as traditional scientific exchange, the other indicating mediated forms of collaboration. While collaboration increases in frequency, friendship declines. We interpret this shift as a consequence of communications technology that facilitates formal projects, reducing the affective dimension of professional association

Has the Internet Reduced Friendship? Scientific Relationships in Ghana, Kenya, and India, 1994-2010

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. Has the Internet changed the pattern of social relations? More specifically, have social relations undergone any systematic change during the recent widespread diffusion of new communications technology? This question is addressed using a unique longitudinal survey that bookends the entire period of Internet diffusion in two African nations and one Indian state. We analyze data on nine professional linkages reported by a population of agricultural and environmental scientists in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala over a sixteen-year period (1994-2010). Factor analysis reveals two clusters of relationships, one interpretable as traditional scientific exchange, the other indicating mediated forms of collaboration. While collaboration increases in frequency, friendship declines. We interpret this shift as a consequence of communications technology that facilitates formal projects, reducing the affective dimension of professional association