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Title: Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births: Evidence for a Class Gradient
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. England, Paula A.
McClintock, Elizabeth
Shafer, Emily Fitzgibbons
Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births: Evidence for a Class Gradient
In: Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America. Marcia J. Carlson and Paula England, eds., Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011: 21-49
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Age at First Intercourse; Contraception; Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Locus of Control (see Rotter Scale); Mothers, Education; National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth); Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Socioeconomic Status (SES)

In this chapter we focus on a more causally �upstream� set of causes for class differences in family patterns. As we will show, more-advantaged youths begin engaging in intercourse slightly later and, as young adults, use birth control (contraception and abortion) more consistently. As a result, they are much less likely to become parents early, or to have unintended births at any age. While early births are not always unintended, and not all unintended pregnancies are early, the two phenomena are empirically linked: a national survey asking women about their childbearing between 1997 and 2002 found that 78 percent of births to women under age 20 resulted from unintended pregnancies, compared to 45 percent among women 20� 24, and 24 percent among women 25� 44 (Kissin et al. 2008). This is probably because few see the teen years as appropriate for childbearing, and because anyone who has a high propensity for unplanned pregnancies because of inconsistent contraceptive use will probably have an unplanned pregnancy shortly after the initiation of sexual activity. As Bongaarts (1978) has pointed out, sex and birth control are the proximate determinants of fertility. It follows that class differences affecting early fertility must operate through these proximate determinants. Once premarital sex is ubiquitous, unintended fertility is particularly likely to flow from lack of consistent use of birth control.
Bibliography Citation
England, Paula A., Elizabeth McClintock and Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer. "Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births: Evidence for a Class Gradient" In: Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America. Marcia J. Carlson and Paula England, eds., Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011: 21-49