Kerry Franzetta

Contraceptive use patterns across teens’ sexual relationships: The role of relationships, partners, and sexual histories

By using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine how adolescent relationship characteristics, partner attributes, and sexual relationship histories are associated with contraceptive use and consistency, incorporating random effects to control for respondent-level unobserved heterogeneity. Analyses show that teens’ contraceptive use patterns vary across relationships. Teens with more-homogamous partners, with more-intimate relationships, and who communicate about contraception before sex have greater odds of contraceptive use and/or consistency. Teens in romantic relationships, and who are older when engaging in sex for the first time, have greater odds of ever using contraceptives but reduced odds of always using contraceptives. Teens continue habits from previous relationships: teens with experience practicing contraceptive consistency and females who previously have used hormonal contraceptive methods are better able to maintain consistency in subsequent relationships. Also, relationship and partner characteristics are less important for females who previously used hormonal methods.

The relationship context of nonmarital childbearing in the U.S.

Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort data, we present estimates of nonmarital births in the United States in 2001, both within and outside of cohabiting unions. We additionally examine how mother and father characteristics are associated with the relationship context at birth, and assess racial/ethnic differences in these relationships. We find that 52% of nonmarital births (and 19% of all births) occur within cohabitating unions—a substantial increase in cohabiting births since the early 1990s. The increase in cohabiting births among white and Hispanic women largely reflects a shift from marital to cohabiting births, while the increase in cohabiting births among black women largely reflects a shift from single to cohabiting births. Mother and father characteristics, including marital and fertility histories, are associated with relationship status at birth. However, with the exception of mother’s education, only the association between father characteristics and relationship status at birth vary by race and ethnicity.

Higher-Order Fertility Among Urban Fathers: An Overlooked Issue for a Neglected Population

The study includes a longitudinal sample of 1,989 fathers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study and examines factors associated with fathering a higher-order birth (three or more children) and compares these factors to those predicting any subsequent birth. Also, the article examines differences by marital status. Logistic regression analyses indicate the likelihood of fathering a higher-order birth is greater among more disadvantaged men in urban contexts, those with lower levels of education, the unmarried, minorities, and those exhibiting higher levels of depressive symptomology. This suggests that the men likely to be least prepared to father large numbers of children have an elevated probability of having a higher-order birth. This study provides continuing evidence that several aspects of mens lives in urban contexts have important influences on their decisions to have a higher-order birth, and suggests that policies or programs that address fertility issues should include fathers where and when feasible.