The proposed study will investigate both how the characteristics of a woman affect the likelihood that she will give birth to a wanted, mistimed, or unwanted child, and the effects of being wanted, mistimed or unwanted on a child's cognitive, behavioral, and emotional development. The analysis of determinants of birth planning success will be guided by a conceptual model that holds that a woman's characteristics affect the likelihood of a given birth planning status by defining the consequences of such a birth for the mother. The examination of the consequences of the planning status for the child will be guided by a conceptual framework specifying that the developmental resources that a mother anticipates to be able to provide to her child constitute the linkage between the planning status of children and their developmental outcomes. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and its 1986 and 1988 child assessments will be used. The use of these data provide an opportunity to improve upon the past research in several ways. By measuring the birth planning status during pregnancy for a large majority of births, this study overcomes biases in the classification of births (as wanted, mistimed or unwanted) that could arise from recall errors or from a redefinition of the planning status due to the characteristics of the child. These longitudinal data also allow us to measure the determinants of the planning status of births prior to the conception, thus avoiding errors due to ambiguities regarding the temporal ordering of birth planning status and its determinants. Third, the measures available in the NLSY that tap the quality of the family environment allow the testing of specific hypotheses about the mechanism through which birth planning status may affect developmental outcomes in children.
| Baydar, N (1995) Consequences for children of their birth planning status. Fam Plann Perspect 27:228-34, 245 |
