GETTING READY FOR PARENTHOOD : ATTITUDES TO AND EXPECTATIONS OF HAVING CHILDREN OF A GROUP OF NEWLY‐WEDS

Abstract

Concern with demographic prediction and projection has ensured a wide variety of studies of family building. These studies range from large‐scale surveys of fertility patterns to a number of in‐depth investigations of pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood. The former include cross‐sectional cohort surveys of fertility expectations, attitudes to family planning and contraceptive behaviours, where detailed reproductive histories have been obtained from a wide range of respondents and analysed by cohorts, based on the year of birth or age of marriage of the informant. However, a major defect in these surveys lies in the collection of accurate retrospective data, for example a middle aged married women having to give an account of her behaviour and/or attitudes when she first married twenty years earlier. The remedy suggested by Ryder and Westhoff is ‘to use comparable classification procedure in a longitudinal study, collecting data periodically from the same families as they progress through their family life cycles. Several such longitudinal surveys have been undertaken and they provide a more detailed picture of the process of family building. This concern with the dynamic aspects of having children is reflected in the more qualitative micro‐studies of pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood.

Citation

Mansfield, P. (1982), "GETTING READY FOR PARENTHOOD : ATTITUDES TO AND EXPECTATIONS OF HAVING CHILDREN OF A GROUP OF NEWLY‐WEDS", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 2 No. 3, pp. 28-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb020820