Childbearing Biographies as a Method to Examine Diversity and Clustering of Childbearing Experiences: A Research Brief

Mieke Beth Thomeer (), Rin Reczek and Lawrence Stacey
Additional contact information
Mieke Beth Thomeer: The University of Alabama at Birmingham
Rin Reczek: The Ohio State University
Lawrence Stacey: The Ohio State University

Population Research and Policy Review, 2022, vol. 41, issue 4, No 1, 1405-1415

Abstract: Abstract Due to increasing heterogeneity in if, when, and under what conditions women have children, the timing, spacing, and other demographic aspects of childbearing have drastically changed in the US over the past century. Existing science tends to examine demographic aspects of childbearing separately, creating an incomplete understanding of how childbearing patterns are distributed at the population level. In this research brief, we develop the concept of childbearing biographies to emphasize that multiple childbearing characteristics cluster together. We analyze nationally representative US data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79; N = 4052). Using eight childbearing variables (e.g., age at first birth, number of children, whether unmarried at any birth), we use Mixed-Mode Latent Class Analysis (MM-LCA) and identify five classes, or childbearing biographies: (1) early compressed childbearing, (2) staggered childbearing, (3) extended high-parity childbearing, (4) later childbearing, and (5) married planned childbearing. A childbearing biography approach highlights the increasingly heterogeneous contexts of parenthood today, showing how women with similar characteristics around one aspect of childbearing (e.g., early age at first birth) can also be highly divergent from each other when taking into consideration other childbearing characteristics. In showing this complexity, we highlight that a childbearing biography approach has the potential to shed new light on widening inequality among contemporary midlife women, with implications for aging and population health and well-being.

Keywords: Family background; Latent class analysis; Motherhood; Childbearing; Second demographic transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11113-022-09699-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:poprpr:v:41:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s11113-022-09699-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/11113/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11113-022-09699-2

Access Statistics for this article

Population Research and Policy Review is currently edited by D.A. Swanson

More articles in Population Research and Policy Review from Springer, Southern Demographic Association (SDA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().