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"As women's expectations about their own future fertility tend to deviate systematically from realizations, these expectations cannot be used directly for forecasting purposes. This paper discusses a partial-adjustment approach for deriving forecasts from the expectations. The sensitivity of the results to various assumptions is examined. Empirical results obtained for the Netherlands seem promising."
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Past national surveys regarding birth expectations have usually been restricted to currently married women, a fact which has led demographers to question the usefulness of these data. Because the June 1976 Current Population Survey includes the expectations of all women in a cohort regardless of marital status, it provides the data needed to evaluate biases due to restricted survey universes. At older ages, where there are substantial differences in lifetime expectations between currently married and single women, there are relatively few single women; at younger ages, however, where the proportion of single women in a cohort is relatively large, the differences in expectations are small. This counterbalancing effect makes the lifetime birth expectations of currently married women a close approximation of all women in a cohort. The analysis also indicates that the observed intracohort declines in lifetime birth expectations since 1967 were due largely to the addition at subsequent survey dates of previously unmarried women; nevertheless, some "true" cohort declines also seem to have occurred.
This study is concerned with the reliability of birth expectations in the Netherlands. The data are from four nationwide surveys: the National Survey on Fertility of 1969, the Netherlands Survey on Fertility and Parenthood Motivation of 1975, and the Netherlands Fertility Surveys of 1977 and 1982. These data permit the reliability of birth expectations data to be evaluated at the aggregate level only. Variations in the reliability of the data among the four surveys, and in the reliability of short- and long-term expectations, are analyzed. The results suggest that "asking for birth expectations in surveys in the Netherlands makes sense in so far that birth expectations can be used in...hypotheses for population forecasts." The precise ways of doing this are currently being studied at the Central Bureau of Statistics. (summary in ENG)
Data from the fertility supplements to the Current Population Survey from 1971 to 1981 indicate that in the aggregate, the lifetime birth expectations of married women 18 to 39 years old in 1971 will closely approximate their completed cohort fertility. During this period, the youngest group of women, 18 to 24 years old, delayed their childbearing; their short-term expectations (1971-76) were not realized, but they made up enough births in the latter half of the decade to enable them to attain their lifetime birth expectations. In retrospect, the "failure" of birth expectations data to predict the "period" fertility downswing in the 1970s resulted not from poor predictions of married women, but rather from unanticipated marital and subsequent childbearing patterns of women who were single at the beginning of the decade. The authors conclude that birth expectations are useful predictors of completed cohort fertility, if adjustments are made to incorporate changes in the proportions married within the birth cohort.
The influence of women's birth parity and accumulated market skills on their current labor force participation and birth expectations is examined within a sequential choice framework. Analysis of household data from the 1973 Philippines National Demographic Survey suggests these patterns: (a) women who have accumulated larger families work less in the current period and anticipate fewer additional births; (b) women with more past work experience tend to work more hours in the current period; and (c) work experience appears to have only a weak negative effect on birth expectations among older women.
Changes in expected number of births in the Netherlands are examined using data from the 1982 Netherlands Fertility Survey and a follow-up survey conducted in 1985. "On the 'yes', 'no', 'don't know' level, the answers of four out of every five respondents were identical in 1982 and 1985. On the level of an exact number of additional children this was three out of five. The expectation not to have any (more) children turned out to be stable for 87% of the respondents; the expectation to have one or more (additional) children for 84%. On an aggregate level there were minimal changes in the average expected number of additional children." (SUMMARY IN ENG)
This is the second part of a two-part article in which studies on the reliability of birth expectations in developed countries are reviewed. In this part, articles on reliability at the aggregate level are considered. "The overall conclusion can be that on average women in fertility-research overestimate their life-time births. For just married women this overestimation in the aggregate can be as high as 35 percent." (summary in ENG)
This study is concerned with the extent to which the inclusion of males improves the accuracy of birth expectations data in fertility surveys. "Several studies were compared in order to find an answer to this question. Most surveys, in which both males and females are interviewed, show that very often spouses disagree on the future number of children, depending on the number of children they have already and particularly on the duration of marriage. On an aggregate level, however, the results for males and females show remarkably less disagreement because of averaging-out-mechanisms. Three Dutch studies of 1969, 1975 and 1980 confirm these findings." The general conclusion is that surveys that include responses from women only can be considered highly reliable. (summary in ENG)
Diagrams of bpd (biparietaldiameter), thorax-d and the length of the humerus have been made by single measurements in 285 pregnant women with exact gestational age and sonoanatomical parameters in the first trimenon. The expected individual birth weight at delivery was to be estimated by the degree of individual deviation from these three normal diagrams. There are statistically clear relations between all the three parameters and the factual birth weights if the delivery is around the normal date of delivery. However, the prediction is only a qualitative, not an exactly quantitative one. The bpd seems to be the best one because of its lowest degree of statistical deviations. An early diagnosis of small-for-gestational-age children, at least with these three parameters, remains uncertain, if not impossible. The average duration of pregnancy in our patients was not 280 days p.m., but less: (280) - 1.23 days p.m. in the group of statistically "purified" patients (i.e. premature newborn under 2,500 gr. and Caesarean-section newborn excluded) and (280) - 2.32 days in the group of statistically "not purified" patients.
From 1.10.83 to 1.10.85 diagrams of bpd (biparietal-diameter); thorax-d and the length of the humerus were made by single measurements in 285 pregnant women with exact gestational age and sonoanatomical parameters in the first trimenon. The expected individual birth weight at delivery was to be estimated by the degree of individual deviation from these three normal diagrams. There are statistically clear relations between all the three parameters and the factual birth weights if the delivery is around the normal date of delivery. However, the prediction is only a qualitative, not an exactly quantitative one. The bpd seems to be the best one because of its lowest degree of statistical deviations. An early diagnosis of "small-for-gestational-age"-children, at least with these three parameters, remains uncertain, if not impossible. The average duration of pregnancy in our patients was not 280 days p.m., but less: (280)-1.23 days p.m. in the group of statistically "purified" patients (i.e. premature newborn under 2500 gr. and Caesarean-section newborn excluded) and (280)-2.32 days in the group of statistically "not purified" patients.
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Fetal growth charts currently used aggregate birth weights of infants with various natural histories from 1931 until 1967. In order to modernize these charts, avoiding deviation from the natural history of fetal development, we report data from infants born after spontaneous onset of labour in 'normal' pregnancy from a gestational age of 267 to 295 days between 1972 and 1982 (n = 14,113). The relationship between birth weight and gestational age in days was studied by multiple regression analysis, containing dummy variables for parity and gender. The estimated proportion of the variance in the model, attributed to these characteristics, was 15%. This could be improved to 22% by supplementing the model with maternal characteristics such as age, height, mid-pregnancy weight and ethnic origin. According to this extended model, in the Dutch section of the population 511 (4.6%) babies had a birth weight below the 5th percentile, whereas 412 (3.7%) babies would be labeled as such according to the conventional birth weight tables. Moreover, 93 babies would be wrongly considered too small, corresponding with a sensitivity of 62.4%, and 192 babies would be wrongly considered normal, corresponding with a specificity of 99.3%. Integration of the four currently used tables into one, and adjustment for easily available maternal characteristics, could substantially improve classification methods.
In the decade since the first observationally based empirical studies of coparenting process in nuclear families made their mark, most investigations of early coparenting dynamics have examined whether and how such dynamics drive child development trajectories, rather than identifying factors that may contribute to the differential development of such dynamics in the first place. In this prospective study, we examined both individual-representational and dyadic-interpersonal predictors of early coparental process. Fifty married couples expecting their first child portrayed their expectations and concerns about family life after the baby's arrival, and took part in a set of problem-solving tasks used to help evaluate marital quality. Both mothers' and fathers' prebaby expectations about the future family, and prenatal marital quality, predicted observed coparenting cohesion at 3 months postpartum. Maternal- and marriage-coparenting trajectories differed as a function of infant characteristics, with pathways most pronounced when infants were rated high in negative reactivity. Results reveal how the prenatal environment can come to shape early coparenting process, and indicate that family models must take into account the role that child characteristics can play in altering prebirth-postpartum pathways.
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