Christie Sennott

Stability and Change in Fertility Preferences Among Young Women in Malawi

CONTEXT Although studies have demonstrated change in fertility preferences over time, there is a lack of definitive knowledge about the level and direction of change among individuals, especially young and unmarried women. Furthermore, little is known about the factors associated with changes in fertility preferences over time. METHOD The analysis uses the first five waves of data from a longitudinal study of a random sample of women aged 15-25 in southern Malawi. The data were collected four months apart over an 18-month period, between June 2009 and December 2010. Multinomial logit regression models were used to calculate relative risk ratios and identify associations between four categories of life events-reproductive, relationship, health and economic-and shifts in fertility timing preferences. RESULTS In each four-month period, more than half of the women reported changes in the desired timing of their next birth, and delays and accelerations in timing desires were common. Several life events, including having a child, entering a serious relationship and changes in household finances were associated with changes in the level and direction of fertility preference. CONCLUSION Shifts in fertility timing preferences often occur in response to changes in life circumstances. Understanding the reasons for these shifts may aid family planning providers in meeting womens contraceptive needs.

Young Women's Dynamic Family Size Preferences in the Context of Transitioning Fertility

Dynamic theories of family size preferences posit that they are not a fixed and stable goal but rather are akin to a moving target that changes within individuals over time. Nonetheless, in high-fertility contexts, changes in family size preferences tend to be attributed to low construct validity and measurement error instead of genuine revisions in preferences. To address the appropriateness of this incongruity, the present study examines evidence for the sequential model of fertility among a sample of young Malawian women living in a context of transitioning fertility. Using eight waves of closely spaced data and fixed-effects models, we find that these women frequently change their reported family size preferences and that these changes are often associated with changes in their relationship and reproductive circumstances. The predictability of change gives credence to the argument that ideal family size is a meaningful construct, even in this higher-fertility setting. Changes are not equally predictable across all women, however, and gamma regression results demonstrate that women for whom reproduction is a more distant goal change their fertility preferences in less-predictable ways.

Management of non-marital fertility in two South African communities

In this analysis, we draw on qualitative data to examine the management of non-marital fertility among young women in two rural, Black communities situated in different provinces of South Africa: KwaZulu–Natal and Mpumalanga. While the two communities share a history of economic and social disadvantage and limited access to the labour market, there are, nonetheless, distinctive features that are evident in the management of non-marital fertility. We show that young women in both communities aspire to an ideal ordering of events that places finishing education before getting married and having children, but this is not easily attained. However, there are important differences in the ways young women and their families respond to union formation and childbearing that often occurs outside of a recognised union. In Hlabisa, KwaZulu–Natal, formal processes for legitimising non-marital pregnancies through union recognition are still in place whereas, in Agincourt, Mpumalanga, more emphasis is placed on securing support and paternal recognition for the child rather than on cementing the union between the young woman and her partner. We also find that the older generation in Agincourt at times views education as a threat to marriage while this is not common in Hlabisa. Our findings have important implications for intervention programmes that often treat Black communities as homogeneous wholes.

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.

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.

Reconsidering Gendered Sexualities in a Generalized AIDS Epidemic

Using the threat of a severe AIDS epidemic in a collection of rural villages in South Africa, we illustrate how men and women reconsider gendered sexualities through conversations and interactions in everyday life. We draw from data collected by local ethnographers and focus on the processes through which men and women collectively respond to the threat posed by AIDS to relationships, families, and communities. Whereas previous research has shown that individuals often reaffirm hegemonic norms about gender and sexuality in response to disruptions to heteronormative gender relations, we find that the threat of AIDS provokes reconsideration of gendered sexualities at the community level. That is, our data demonstrate how men and women—through the interactions and exchanges that make up their daily lives—debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with social norms circumscribing gendered sexual practices in a context where the threat of a fatal disease transmitted through sex looms large. We argue that ethnographic data are particularly useful for capturing communal responses to events that threaten heteronormative gender relations and reflect on how our findings inform theories of gender relations and processes.

Death and Desirability: Retrospective Reporting of Unintended Pregnancy After a Child’s Death

Social scientists have long debated how to best measure pregnancy intentions. The standard measure relies on mothers’ retrospective reports of their intentions at the time of conception. Because women have already given birth at the time of this report, the resulting children’s health—including their vital status—may influence their mothers’ responses. We hypothesize that women are less likely to report that deceased children were from unintended pregnancies, which may explain why some cross-sectional studies have shown that children from unintended pregnancies have higher survival, despite the fact that longitudinal studies have shown the opposite is true. Using Demographic and Health Survey data from 31 sub-Saharan African countries, we confirm that mothers are less likely to report that deceased children resulted from unintended pregnancies compared with surviving children. However, the opposite is true for unhealthy children: mothers more commonly report that unhealthy children were from unintended pregnancies compared with healthier children. The results suggest that mothers (1) revise their recall of intentions after the traumatic experience of child death and/or (2) alter their reports in the face-to-face interview. The study challenges the reliability of retrospective reports of pregnancy intentions in high-mortality settings and thus also our current knowledge of the levels and consequences of unintended pregnancies in these contexts.

'Behaving well': the transition to respectable womanhood in rural South Africa.

Abstract Few studies of the transition to adulthood in Africa analyse young people’s own definitions of the events that confer adult status, and how adulthood is actually attained. This paper examines the experience of transitioning to womanhood in rural Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, drawing on interviews with 18 women aged 18–39. Three primary experiences characterised this transition: puberty and emerging body awareness, spending time with boys, and having a child. More important than the timing of these experiences, however, was whether women ‘behaved well’ and maintained respectability as they transitioned to adulthood. Behavioural standards reinforcing ideal femininity were focused on dress, manner and talk, and were particularly stringent for mothers. Findings emphasise the value of emic models of adulthood for understanding how youth experience this transition and provide an important counter-narrative to the literature focused primarily on the risk African youth face during this period of change in the life course.

The Sensitivity of Measures of Unwanted and Unintended Pregnancy Using Retrospective and Prospective Reporting: Evidence from Malawi

Abstract A thorough understanding of the health implications of unwanted and unintended pregnancies is constrained by our ability to accurately identify them. Commonly used techniques for measuring such pregnancies are subject to two main sources of error: the ex post revision of preferences after a pregnancy and the difficulty of identifying preferences at the time of conception. This study examines the implications of retrospective and prospective measurement approaches, which are vulnerable to different sources of error, on estimates of unwanted and unintended pregnancies. We use eight waves of closely-spaced panel data from young women in southern Malawi to generate estimates of unwanted and unintended pregnancies based on fertility preferences measured at various points in time. We then compare estimates using traditional retrospective and prospective approaches to estimates obtained when fertility preferences are measured prospectively within months of conception. The 1,062 young Malawian women in the sample frequently changed their fertility preferences. The retrospective measures slightly underestimated unwanted and unintended pregnancies compared to the time-varying prospective approach; in contrast the fixed prospective measures overestimated them. Nonetheless, most estimates were similar in aggregate, suggesting that frequent changes in fertility preferences need not lead to dramatically different estimates of unwanted and unintended pregnancy. Greater disagreement among measures emerged when classifying individual pregnancies. Carefully designed retrospective measures are not necessarily more problematic for measuring unintended and unwanted fertility than are more expensive fixed prospective ones.

Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence: A Social and Dynamic Perspective: Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence

Childbearing ambivalence is often conceptualized as a state of conflicting desires about having a child that is characteristic of particular individuals and/or life stages. This study proposes that childbearing ambivalence is dynamic and situational, resulting from the multiple socio-cultural frames surrounding childbearing. Using eight waves of prospective data from a population-based sample of young adults in Malawi, results show that 41% of women and 48% of men are ambivalent about childbearing at some point in the 2.5-year study. There is limited evidence that ambivalence is related to individual sociodemographic or psychosocial characteristics aside from gender; rather, ambivalence is tied to life course markers such as school enrollment and age. Additionally, life course transitions and changes in relationships, health, and economic factors are associated with the onset of ambivalence, supporting the theory that ambivalence is a dynamic state that men and women frequently pass through as their lives and circumstances change.