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Gendered feeling rules regulating women's emotional expression prescribe that women do the majority of emotion work in intimate relationships. Although emotion work in marriages has been well documented, few studies have examined how partners manage emotion work in unmarried sexual relationships and how that division of emotion work might contribute to gender inequality. We analyze 57 in-depth interviews with university-attending women to show how worry about pregnancy in unmarried heterosexual relationships constitutes a form of emotion work that is disproportionately done by women. Our findings suggest that women's worry about unintended pregnancy is chronic, exacting a burden on women's time as well as their mental well-being. Women navigate the burden of their worry about unintended pregnancy with two main strategies: 1) Seeking and 2) Concealing. We refer to seeking as women who pursue assurances that they are not pregnant (such as pregnancy tests and emergency contraceptives) to assuage the emotional burden of their worry about pregnancy. Further, by concealing we refer to women attempting to manage their emotions by hiding their worry about unintended pregnancy from their partners and other loved ones in order to alleviate their partners' emotional burden and their own. These strategies largely perpetuate gendered feeling rules on women's emotional expression and shift more of the emotional burden for unintended pregnancy onto women, making emotional management of avoiding unintended pregnancy a labor-intensive process for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contraceptive sterilization is one of the most commonly used form of birth control in the United States. Prior work suggests that the evaluation of risk may be critical to the decision to undergo this procedure. Yet, less is known about how men and women discuss these risks and whether they are important to the decision. Further, as sterilization is twice as common among women as it is among men, it may be that the perception of risk is gendered. Using 50 in-depth interviews with men and women who had undergone contraceptive sterilization in the last five years, I explore what risks contribute to the decision to get sterilized and the ways in which the perception of these risks are gendered. I find that men and women find (1) maternal and child health, as well as (2) birth control failures and side effects as the main risks informing their decision to seek permanent contraception. However, while both men and women perceive similar risks when discussing contraceptive sterilization, these risks centralize women's bodies. Even when men undergo vasectomy, they do so in order to minimize risk to their wife's health or her body as a result of pregnancy or hormonal contraceptive use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies sequence and cluster analysis to identify groups of men and women with similar trajectories of fertility and family formation and dissolution in the US. Six typical trajectories are found for both men and women. These trajectories go from low-intensity family trajectories: childlessness and singlehood (Never married), to traditional, relatively delayed and stable family trajectories (Delayed and Normative), to highly-intense family paths of unstable marriages (Unstable), single-parenthood (Single parent) and early transitions and high fertility (Early). I use multinomial-logistic models to correlate these trajectories with race/ethnicity and age at migration, while controlling by birth cohort, religion and educational attainment. Predicted probabilities are used to highlight the socioeconomic stratification of family trajectories. This stratification is stronger for women than men and it is affected by the migration experience. Net of socioeconomic characteristics, migrants are less likely to follow high-order trajectories, especially those associated to instability and single-motherhood. I used data from the five most recent waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (1995 to 2015) a national representative survey that collects marital, educational and fertility histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: The Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) is a nationally implemented teen pregnancy prevention program with goals of reducing unintended teen pregnancies. In 2010, the state of Missouri was awarded funding to implement PREP and did so through three different curricular choices: BART, MPC, and TOP. Methods: All programs required youth to take pre- and post-program surveys. For this study, we evaluate youth pre- and post-survey knowledge and attitudes within each curricula. We utilize a lagged regression approach to account for respective youth pre-knowledge and attitude components. Results: Youth differ in their gained knowledge and attitudes resulting from program implementation through each curricular program. Knowledge gains are salient while attitudes remain relatively high and stable. Differences in youth outcomes by curricula suggest that youth attributes may be driving program gains. Conclusions: Outcome findings are important in determining health and educational needs of high-risk youth in the PREP program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on applying structural topic modeling (STM) to extract insights from social media-based health interventions. Topics include compared with the control condition, non-intrauterine devices (IUD) users in the treatment condition significantly discussed more about both desirable properties of IUD and its potential side effects, interest and passion in learning about birth control methods.

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This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to investigate differences by immigrant generation in early childbearing. I explore to what extent generational variations reflect discrepancies in timing of sexual onset as opposed to fertility behavior post-onset, using an innovative sequential hazards model. I also examine contextual mechanisms at the family and neighborhood levels. I find that both first and second generation immigrant young women initiate childbearing later than their counterparts with US born parents. Later initiation of sexual activity explains most of the delay in childbearing observed among the first generation; for the second generation, fertility control among the sexually experienced is also important. Family traits are implicated for the observed immigrant advantage in timing of sexual onset. However, neither family nor neighborhood attributes explain a great deal of the lower risk of fertility post-onset observed for the second generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women with a history of incarceration in jail have higher rates of inconsistent contraceptive use and unintended pregnancy than women in the general population. Incarceration itself can contribute to women's risk of unintended pregnancy, as it is a common institutional practice to discontinue women's hormonal contraceptive methods while they are in custody and birth control is not offered or reinitiated prior to release. There is a dearth of research regarding incarcerated women's contraceptive method preferences. Filling this gap will provide valuable insight into implementing family planning programs for women in jail, which are necessary for increasing contraceptive use and reducing the rate of unintended pregnancies among women reentering the community. Using original survey data, this paper examines the demographic characteristics; sexual, contraceptive, and reproductive histories and intentions; and contraceptive method preferences among women incarcerated at the Salt Lake County Jail. Understanding what contraceptive methods women want is imperative for improving birth control utilization and reducing the rate of unintended pregnancies, which has the potential to improve the lives of women after incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a wide variety of birth control methods are now widely available, more than half of pregnancies in the United States are reported as unintended. According to previous research, women's discontinuation of contraception, particularly because of their dissatisfaction with the side effects of hormonal birth control, can contribute to this high rate of unintended pregnancies. This research asks whether nonlifethreatening side effects of hormonal birth control, like weight gain, mood changes, and bleeding, hold similar salience for family planning health care providers. Through indepth interviews with 24 providers, I find that a significant minority believe that women should not have a problem selecting a satisfactory method of birth control and/or are skeptical of their patients' reports of side effects. I discuss the potential impacts of this discordance between laywomen's and provider's assessments of contraception for clinical care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores gender-based power and contraceptive use based on in-depth interviews with 40 racially and ethnically diverse young men and women ages 15 to 24, a time in life when risk of unintended pregnancy is particularly high in the US. Overall, men and women promoted egalitarian gender ideals. However, when asked about pregnancy prevention, the participants' larger ideals did not translate to equality in practice. Gender-based power was imbalanced in a variety of domains; men often indicated that their female partners "knew best" and should have control and responsibility when it came to contraception. Women supported these views. Men remained enthusiastic of women's contraceptive decisions, but most were simultaneously unengaged; yet for the few men who did support their partner's contraceptive decision-making process, they were fit within the same hegemonic framework as the men who did not engage in contraceptive choices; the social construction of contraceptive decision-making excludes men from this reproductive domain. We ultimately show the complexities of masculinities and femininities, and how young people construct gendered bodies, through our exploration of power distribution in the context of contraception decisions and responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between China's contraception policy and married women's (20-49 years) choice between long-acting and short-acting contraceptive methods. Analyzing data from the 1988 and the 2006 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey, we demonstrate a causal link between the stringency level of contraception policy and married women's contraceptive choice via a permutation test: The more stringent the contraception policy was, the more likely married women used a long-acting contraceptive method. Using in-depth interviews, we further explain the efficacy of the contraception policy: when and how it worked to achieve China's overall population goal and when and how it failed to convince every married woman to obey. This paper shows that China's contraception policy promoted long-acting contraceptive methods whereas many married women themselves preferred short-acting contraceptive methods. We discuss the interplay between the two sides as an issue of collective action where the policy is set up to obtain maximal program participation with minimal free riding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the application of reception theory and political correctivity as well as literary analysis of abortion in literature from the People's Republic of China (PRC). In this study, practices of reception theory may likely the critical means by which several literary artifacts will be evaluated. Topics such as birth control and reproductive rights are discussed.

This study explores the legal abortion among 196 countries to examine the dynamics of legalization and its effects on abortion rates. In this article, we argue that the adaptation of legal abortion is affected not only by domestic environments but also by international norms, namely population control regime and women's reproductive right regime. We hypothesize these two competing cultural norms equally increase the probability of adopting legal abortion policy in the countries, but differently affect the national abortion rates through contrastive policy practices and ideology. To test this hypothesis, we will conduct two analyses using the data of the year of adopting legal abortion among 196 countries and the abortion ratio of 56 countries which legalize all abortion without restriction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the impact of race/ethnic difference on the birth control self-efficacy in Asian American adolescents by using a nationally representative sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).Through multivariate regression analysis, this research found that: (1) In general, Asian American adolescents' self-efficacy for birth control is significantly lower than that of white adolescents; (2) the difference in contraceptive efficacy is greatly decreased when the comparison is made between Asian American adolescents with their white peers from the same socioeconomic background; (3) when Asian American adolescents have the same degree of perception for pregnancy embarrassment as their white peers do, the difference in the contraceptive efficacy between these two groups increases; (4) moreover, parental attachment can only slightly account for the reduced difference in the contraceptive efficacy between Asian American adolescents and their white peers. Parental attachment does not have the same effect on contraceptive efficacy among Asian Americans as on that of white adolescents. Asian American adolescents do not gain strong support for contraceptive efficacy from their parents. Based on the findings of this research, it is suggested that better and culturally sensitive communication channels for discussions of sexuality between Asian American parents and their adolescent children is needed for a more comprehensive parenting and school education. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project seeks to understand one of the first steps along the way in how we got to our modern "culture war" focused on gender and sexuality by examining how the divergence began on the issue of birth control. We do this by examining the stances of all the major American religious denominations of the Twentieth century, from the more progressive Quakers and Mainline Protestants, to the more conservative American and Southern Baptists, Orthodox Christian and Evangelical Protestants, as well as outlier groups such as the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, and racially or ethnically marginal groups such as the immigrant-rich Roman Catholic Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews. We focus on the first moment of the story of birth control liberalization that occurred around 1930, the year that the vast majority of religious groups, almost all Mainline Protestants, liberalized their stances on contraception. We find that those who liberalized on birth control early were not simply more progressive (as our Twenty-First century minds would understand the term) on women's or sexual issues than those who remained silent or openly opposed them. In fact, they were the very opposite of what our understanding of progressive means today: they were eugenicists who were deeply concerned about the future of their race, and believed that birth control needed to be made accessible to the "undesirable" classes in order to protect the superiority of it and by extension their country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at the origins and claims of social marketing that since the 1990s has become the preferred communication technology in international development, public health, and community empowerment programs. Born and bred in the U.S. marketing world, it subsequently underwent elaboration in postcolonial programs of development and health education promoted by the USAID working in family planning and child nutrition programs in South Asia, Indonesia, Africa, and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Much of the value of social marketing campaigns was also confirmed by community intervention studies and antismoking campaigns in the industrialized world in the 1980s and 1990s. From the time of its inception in the late 1960s, its proponents have claimed that social marketing to be a very effective way to voice the needs of marginal populations to themselves and to make available possible solutions in the form of behavioral change. In its promotion of citizens and residents as self-acting agents and enterprising consumers who in realizing their personal goals enhance community welfare, it intersects with market-based neo-liberal policy agendas that have stressed tax cuts, the reduction and privatization of state services, the introduction of corporate management and marketing techniques into the public and non-profit sectors and the recruitment of citizens as responsible community members. Its success has been such that social marketing has now positioned itself for many communities, NGOs, and social movements as an obligatory point of access not only to the public media sphere but also to future health and development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004 March for Women's Lives on Washington, DC symbolized a new era of American activism against reproductive oppression and a shift to a reproductive justice framework that is more comprehensive than the traditional reproductive rights framework. The reproductive justice framework reveals how women's overall health, access to medical care, and economic situation are all connected to the traditional assumption of reproductive rights that only addresses legal protections like the right to a legal abortion. So, how might a traditional, mainstream reproductive rights organization like Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) address the abortion issue without alienating its reproductive justice consistency? Influenced by message framing and its relationship to symmetrical approaches to public relations, this research project analyzes PPFA public relations materials - specifically press releases published on PPFA's website from March 2006 to March 2007. The data set includes releases about the South Dakota decision, other states' abortion decisions, and the U.S. Federal Abortion Ban. The analysis of data draws upon the history of abortion rights activism and the criticisms of it as presented by both activists and scholars. Several germinal reproductive justice texts were analyzed to identify ideals of reproductive rights activism as practiced by mainstream reproductive rights organizations as well as ideals of reproductive justice activism. Then, these categories were applied to the PPFA press releases to determine how representative current PPFA language is of reproductive justice ideals. The essay concludes with a discussion of the findings and their relevance to contemporary activism against reproductive oppression. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's employment and childrearing are competing activities, which exert much pressure on their time and energy. Many studies have found that women in paid employment, especially in a demanding career, limit their fertility and have few children or none. This negative correlation was explained mainly in terms of opportunity costs and the incompatibility of women's employment and childrearing. This study focuses on the interplay between women's employment and fertility decisions in Israel, a socially diverse country, characterized by high levels of both fertility and female employment. We argue that in an environment which supports and encourages high fertility women's employment activity is less consequential for family planning. The study analyzes simultaneously the decision to have a third child and the decision to work. The findings show that fertility affects negatively women's work activity, but women's employment has no effect on their decision to have an additional child. Also, cultural variables affect the fertility decision but not economic considerations, while the opposite holds for the work decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and religion have long competed over world¬views, empirical beliefs, and moral authority. In the U.S., after years of quiescence, competition flared in the late 20th cen¬t¬ury, with conflict over abortion, euthanasia, and the teaching of evol¬ution. We ask to what extent this competition is re¬flected in U.S. public opinion, as tapped by items in the 1988 General Social Sur¬vey. We com¬plicate conventional analyses in two ways. We challenge the conceptual op¬position of science vs. relig¬ion, by introducing a third dimen¬sion of belief and cognit¬ive auth¬or¬ity, "enchantment" (the be¬lief that unseen agents other than the Deity exert agency in the everyday world); and we explore the possibility that enchanted belief systems may com¬pete with scientific and religious belief systems or, un¬der some cir¬cum¬stances, be¬come integrated with one or the other. Second, we explore population heterogeneity in at¬titudes towards science, religion and the supernatural, ex¬amining two different types of structure employing two different methods. We use Lat¬ent Class Analy¬sis to identify five classes of respondents: those committed, respectively, to relig¬ious, scientific and en¬chant¬ed worldviews; those who endorse none of these, and those committed to both science and religion. With a new method, Relational Class An¬aly¬sis, we identify two classes of re¬spondents whose answers covary in similar ways: Op¬inions of one are differentiated along the conventional divide: science vs. religion (and enchantment); those of the other oppose in¬stitutionalized cultural authority (both scient¬ific and religion) to an enchanted under¬standing of the world. The diversity of opinion among highly religious Americans, and the presence of a previously overlooked political and religious constituency of sci¬ence supporters, may have important implications for sci¬ence policy and science ad¬vo¬cacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa, the huge region of vast geographical and cultural diversity is the home of 700 million of the world's population and one of the fastest growing regions with a growth rate of 3.0 percent per annum. Its contraceptive prevalence rates are collectively the worlds' lowest and, unlike the rates in other developing regions, show no signs of increasing at the fastest rate. Only recently, the contraceptive prevalence rate has increased considerably in Kenya from 7 percent to 33 percent in 1993. According to Demographic and Health Surveys data, the contraceptive prevalence rate varies from 4 percent in Niger to 47 percent in Egypt. In this paper we will examine the comparative determinants of the choice of a contraceptive method among African women, using data primarily from the Demographic and Health Surveys. How people choose contraceptives affect many decisions. It affects which methods are appropriate for various subgroups in a population. It affects the degree of emphasis to be place on increasing service access and on changes for contraceptives and other services. It also affects promotional campaigns and the design of media materials. We will examine the determinants of the choice of a comparative method in Ghana, Kenya, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTContext. Though individuals, organizations and political bodies disagree on the legality of abortion, in contemporary American society there is a shared construction of abortion as an undesirable end to a pregnancy. Many women who share this construction of abortion have abortions anyway. In this paper, we examine the attitudes of these women toward abortion and toward the dominant construction of abortion in their social world.Methods. We recruited 20 participants from three clinics located in two states in the US South and Midwest. In semi-structured interviews, women's characterized the attitudes of their family, friends and community toward abortion. They also reflected on their own opinions of abortion both before and after their abortion appointment.Results. Women in our sample acknowledged that the dominant construction of abortion in their community was negative and many women held negative attitudes toward abortion and believed it to be wrong prior to their own abortion experience. After their abortion experiences, women in our study articulated a spectrum of attitudes between accepting the dominant construct and rejecting the dominant construct. The five main attitudes were "judging others," "feeling ashamed," "remaining neutral," "balancing both sides," and "resisting and replacing."Conclusions. Many women who shared the dominant construct prior to their abortion experience moved along the spectrum toward rejecting this construct after their abortion experience. Expressing the range of their abortion attitudes may support women's emotional well-being after their abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uzbekistan has undergone substantial changes in the recent past, including a transformation in fertility. Following independence in 1991, support for family planning programs rapidly developed, and contraceptive rates expanded. In the same period, opportunities for religious expression, participation, and learning increased following the collapse of the officially atheistic Soviet regime. Using data collected from focus groups and individual interviews as well as data from the Uzbekistan Demographic and Health Survey, I seek to develop understanding of the role of religion in family planning decisions in a context of declining fertility and increasing contraceptive use. Although informants note that religion dictates that a family should have "as many children as God gives," at the same time many also report that their religion does not prohibit the use of temporary modern contraceptive methods. I examine how respondents describe religion as a protector of health and explain the religious acceptability of family planning on the grounds of preserving the health of mothers and children under current difficult economic conditions. I discuss the relevance of these findings for existing theoretical perspectives on the influence of religion on fertility. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project uses content analysis to examine eight oral contraceptive websites. In particular, we examined the motivational cues the brands used to market their product. The benefits of the product were the most likely motivational cue used. However, brands also used enhanced freedom/choice/personal control, commonality of the condition and of complaints regarding menstruation, enhanced intelligence, and enhanced physical appearance or attractiveness. Moreover, most brands claimed their product (or oral contraceptives more generally) were 99% effective when used correctly and consistently. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korea has experienced rapid fertility decline for the last four decades, from a TFR of 6.0 in 1960 to a below-replacement level of 1.08 in 2003. The ambitious national family planning program initiated in 1962 contributed to this rapid fertility decline. This paper explores how the national family planning program in South Korea could succeed in achieving its goals by producing compliant subjects having fewer children. Previous studies have emphasized the efficient and effective policy implementation through the extensive organizations and resource allocation by the state. Instead, I will focus on the process in which the coincidence of the interests between the state and women led to the rapid decline of fertility. The Korean state mobilized development discourses and implemented the family planning program as a means of producing disciplined bodies who could achieve the development project. While the state was interested in controlling women's reproductive power and promoting the developmental project regardless of women's health, women and men were not objects of contraception but rather agents interpreting the family planning program creatively and using it to secure their own goals strategically. Women's strategy to improve living standards and gain power within the family through birth control played a critical role of effective performance of South Korea's family planning program. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the trends in the determinants of the choice of a contraceptive method among Ghanaian women, using data primarily from the 1988, 1993, 1998, and 2003 Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys. In 1969, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to adopt a population policy. A major objective of the policy was to reduce population growth to a rate of 2.0 percent per annum by the year 2000. Women in Ghana have a fairly high knowledge about contraceptive methods. More than 98 percent of currently married women know some kind of method of contraception. However, the practice rate is very low. The contraceptive practice rate has increased from 12.9 percent in 1988 to 25.2 percent in 2003. This is an increase of only 12 percent in 15 years. Traditional methods were more popular among current users than the modern methods up to 1993. Since 1993 modern methods became more popular. Almost 19 percent are using any modern method in 2003. This is an increase of 13.5 from 1988. Among the modern methods, the pill is the most commonly used, followed by some kind of injectable method. In 1993, those who were practicing contraception half of them were using modern methods. In 2003 three-fourths are using modern methods.Comparing urban and rural areas, a greater proportion of married women in the urban areas are currently using a method of contraception than their rural counterparts. Greater Accra shows the highest proportion of usage for any method (27 percent) and for any modern method (11 percent). The overall level of use is lowest in the Western region (8 percent). There is a positive relationship between the level of educational attainment and current use of contraception among currently married women. This relationship is maintained for both modern and traditional methods. It is interesting to note that higher proportions of women with primary and middle education use the pill more than those with higher education. The higher education group is more likely than other groups to be using the IUD, condom and foaming tablets, as well as periodic abstinence. Women in the two lower education groups are more likely to use female sterilization than other women. This difference is probably a reflection of the differential age distribution between the two groups (i.e., the less educated women tend to be older than the more educated women). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Reclaiming A Better World: Sex-Gender Systems & Reproductive Restraint in Non-Capitalist Cultural Contexts Birth control, population control, abortion, reproductive rights - contemporary debates on these topics occur in a specific political, economic and social context that privileges elite capitalist interests, and at the same time limits understanding and obscures options for millions of people. A natural and inevitable link between heterosexual behavior and reproduction is assumed within this context. It is impossible, so the logical assumption goes, to be heterosexually active without risk of pregnancy - unless you buy products and services designed to sever that link. This is a profitable assumption from the points of view of the pharmaceutical industry and capitalist health care system that dominate the world market. It is a dangerous assumption from the point of view of women, the primary targets for marketing products promoted as ameliorative to the reproductive and sexual problems created by that logical fallacy in the first place. The essentialist assumption of a natural link between heterosexual activity and reproduction is absent in some sex-gender systems in non-capitalist contexts. In this paper I argue that the assumed essential link between heterosexual behavior and reproduction is socially constructed, and that some sex-gender systems in non-capitalist contexts were organized to deliberately separate sex from reproduction. Norms of sexual behavior and gender identity served in those cultural contexts to allow sexual freedom without reproductive consequences, and they did so without the aid of 'birth control' as we understand it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CONTEXT: The World Health Organization has led the development of a Decision-Making Tool for Family Planning Clients and Providers (DMT) to improve the quality of family planning services. This study investigate the DMT’s impact on client-provider communication, quality of decision-making behaviors and medical/technical information giving in Nicaragua. METHODS: 426 family planning clients attended by 60 service providers in Nicaragua were videotaped three months before and four month after attending a training workshop on the DMT.. The videotapes were coded afterward . In-depth interviews and focus group discussions explored clients’ and providers’ opinions on how the DMT was used helped for their communication. RESULTS: Providers improved communication with their clients when counseling with the DMT, better engaged clients in decision making process, gave more through and tailored medical/technical information and talked more about dual protection from unwanted pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. Client also engaged more in the decision making process. CONCLUSIONS: The DMT succeeded as both a job aid for providers and a decision aid for clients. Questions remain regarding the follow-up needed to support continuing use of the DMT and its impact on family planning outcomes. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Roaring Twenties and early years of the Depression, proponents of birth control, especially the American Birth Control League (ABCL), found difficulty locating broadcast stations willing to carry their messages. This narrative chronicles and analyzes the confluence of three concurrent movements: broadcast program censorship policies in the late 1920s and early 1930s, splits in feminist ranks over what women’s birth control rights should be publicly advocated, and general fears that women’s power over their own lives would have a detrimental affect on patriarchy, family values and the traditional family structure. This paper specifically reviews how the major company involved in broadcasting – the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which owned and operated two networks – framed the issue of contraception to keep the contentious issue off their networks’ airwaves. Most other broadcasters followed NBC’s lead, and the strategies they developed collectively became the underpinning for controlling non-dominant, controversial issues presented over radio. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the effect of women's and their husbands' attitudes toward contraceptive methods on their fertility limiting behavior. Drawing from Fishbein and Ajzen's theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior, I hypothesize that individuals' perceptions of contraceptive availability, effectiveness, and potential negative side-effects will influence their subsequent method use, and that husbands' attitudes toward contraceptive methods will have significant influence on their wives' method use. Using unique data from Nepal, preliminary analyses reveal significant effects of wives' attitudes on subsequent contraceptive use, but no significant effects of husbands' attitudes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand women's health, both from the patient and provider perspective, one must first look at the position of women in society. The role of women and their subsequent treatment within society has changed based upon accepted societal norms. Historically, women have been placed in subordinate positions within society. The justifications for such placements vary according to the societal rules and beliefs within the realms of science, politics, and morality. Attitudes toward the idea of sexuality also feature prominently in decisions of how women should be viewed within a society. In fact, such attitudes often determine the health care which women receive. Aspects of women's health continue to change, but the basic medical practices accepted today are the result of societal views and change for hundreds of years. The purpose of this paper is to examine historical views regarding women's health, with a particular focus on contraception, and demonstrate how such views influence contemporary reproductive health policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently some scholars have asserted that abortion legalization during the 1970s resulted in lower crime 15-20 years later. While economists have both substantiated and challenged these findings, sociologists and demographers have been mute on the topic. In this paper, we show that the supposed link between abortion and crime is actually the result of omitted variables bias and difficulties in distinguishing between age-period-cohort effects. We correct these problems and quasi-experimental methods to retest the causal argument for the case of homicide. Using a unique data set compiled from multiple sources, we find that abortion legalization did not have any measurable effect on crime 15-20 years later once divorce rates, contraceptive use, and the crack-cocaine epidemic are taken into account. Our findings indicate that any drop in crime is the result of a mixture of unmeasured period and cohort effects and not abortion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws from the social movement theory of framing to identify the multiple frames and analyze the dynamic framing process Margaret Sanger used in the rhetoric of the American birth control movement. Prior research has addressed neither the nature of framing as a process nor the agency of leaders in developing and manipulating this process. I use the case of Margaret Sanger because it has not been adequately utilized by either sociologists or historians. My analysis of Sanger's public writings finds that she used the following frames to justify the legalization of birth control: feminist, maternalist, eugenic, democratic, and responsible parenthood. Historians have criticized Sanger for shifting her views in order to ally herself with more powerful members of society, particularly doctors and members of the eugenics movement. I find evidence that Sanger's combination of both dynamic and static frames in her framing repertoire may have been less a product of her shifting alliances and more a deliberate social movement tactic. Although not all of the frames I analyzed evolved over time, the fluidity of the framing process demands further attention by social movement scholars, especially with regard to the role of leaders in mobilizing diverse and broad audiences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRA, or welfare reform) not only established work and work training requirements for welfare recipients but also provided bonuses to states that successfully reduced abortion rates and nonmarital birth rates, in combination. The gendered components of the work requirement regulations have been extensively studied, but far less attention has been paid to the state bonus provisions or their implications. This paper explores abortion and nonmarital birth rates in the era beyond welfare reform. Prior to the enactment of PRA, abortion rates were declining but marital births were increasing among women in the U.S. generally. Ordinary least squares regressions show little, if any, impact of welfare reform on abortion rates, which are largely a function of local availability of welfare providers. Some state-level policies are associated with reductions in nonmarital birth rates, but effects are limited and not nearly as extensive in scope as those envisioned in the discourse surround welfare reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women who have abortions are caught in the crossfire of a heated ideological battle. The prochoice contention is that most women feel relieved after terminating an unwelcome pregnancy. The antiabortion camp asserts that killing an unborn child psychologically scars the mother. The findings presented in this study shed light on how this dialogue and more generally the broader social context shapes a woman's emotional response to abortion. The research design is a qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews with forty women who have terminated a pregnancy. The emotion work perspective developed by Hochschild (1975; 1979; 1983) is utilized as the central theoretical framework. The cognitive, bodily, and expressive emotion management techniques previously identified by Hochschild are clearly visible in the abortion experience. Women may also attempt to abide by the feeling rules that script the abortion experience by regulating their contact with environmental stimuli (i.e. social movement discourse, antiabortion protestors, the ultrasound image, babies). I have labeled this strategy approach/avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the social and political attitudes, worldviews, and activism of self-identified pro-life feminists. As part of the analysis, the article discusses the ways in which individual Feminists for Life of America members reconcile their feminist identities with their anti-abortion stances. Despite the prominence of the feminist community in the U.S. and its uncompromising position on the issue of abortion, dissenters have emerged from within the feminist community to declare their opposition to legal abortion, identifying themselves as "pro-life feminists."

Most available explanations of adolescent pregnancy share an assumption that black youth are less able to gain reproductive control over their lives, and poor black teens have babies because they are unable to receive adequate birth control and/or education regarding fertility. Examining cultural explanations moves us toward an understanding of adolescent pregnancy that sees black adolescents as deliberate and competent managers of their own lives and bodies. This essay will caste a critical eye on current issues surrounding race and pregnancy for African American youth. Looking at experiences of youth by pinpointing the cultural implications of pregnancy and birth will help shed light on the disproportionate number of black youth that bear children at an early age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on "parenthood decisions" often focuses voluntarily childlessness. This focus reflects the cultural assumption that motherhood is natural and that what needs explaining is the choice not to be a mother; how women decide to become mothers is left unexamined. Yet the answer to this latter question is important for topics such as infertility help seeking, unintended pregnancies, child relinquishment, and adoptive motherhood. Our interest in "thinking about motherhood" emerged from insights gained through an ongoing program of infertility research initially using a random sample of 580 Midwestern women. Surprisingly, many medically infertile women were not trying to get pregnant during a year of unprotected intercourse. Additionally, it was impossible to categorize women without children as simply childless or over half were unsure of their motherhood intentions. In order to understand these findings we explored existing research on a variety of reproductive topics and found that most researchers presume that women do not decide but rather drift into motherhood or not. These explanations do not explain women's uncertainty nor how women think about motherhood. We place this exploration in a wider social and cultural context by briefly examining the raced, classed and gendered meanings of motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a preamble to future research, in this paper I investigate the current state of the abortion debate in America with a particular focus on the effects of the frames used by each side to get their points across. After a discussion of framing in general and an overview of the history of the abortion debate, I relate its polarization and prolongation to the focus on the way individuals are forced to choose sides, the prevalence of legal rhetoric, and finally, the power of the utilization of particular frames by the pro-choice and pro-life sides. I conclude that, yes, all of these factors related to framing do have a profound effect on this debate, but more importantly, the use and creation of frames in the abortion debate is highly related to issues of power within and of the pro-choice and pro-life sides, which indicates the need for future studies done on this topic. This paper therefore holds implications for not only framing within the abortion debate but for the use of various frames in public policy overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family size is an important determinant of family wellbeing, and it is also a good predictor of poverty. This study examines effects of waiving the 100-hour rule, by family size, and distinguishes between the "work incentive effects" and the "eligibility effects" of the waiver. The 100-hour rule limits eligibility to aid to two-parent families where the principal earner is unemployed or underemployed (works fewer than 100-hours a month). The study uses data from the Link-Up randomized experiment, conducted in California's Central Valley, 1992 - 1994. The findings show that the "eligibility effect" of the waiver does not differ by family size, but the "work-incentive effect" does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a general agreement among scholars that mass media have failed the American citizenry in one way or another. However, scholarly work almost exclusively draws on analyses of mainstream media outlets to make this claim. Here, I trace the reasons for this myopic focus and is offer a re-conceptualization of mass media- one that moves beyond the mainstream and considers the relationships between different kinds of outlets, the audience, and journalistic principles and practices. I argue that mass media constitute an organizational field that is hierarhically organized and shaped like a prism, which filters and refracts issues and events in ways that resonate with target audiences. I then draw on interviews with journalists, editors, and producers in nine media outlets and a content analysis of 1,424 media stories on abortion to illustrate the utility of this conceptualization. Specifically, the analysis shows that journalists working in different kinds of media outlets (partisan and mainstream) differently conceptualize their contributions to public interest, and this in turn affects journalistic principles, practices, and how they discuss controversial issues like abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a research conducted in order to explore the interrelationship between ideal family size (IFS) and women's values and beliefs in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey. In Turkey, a mature respondent and an educated husband is the only significant characteristic for small IFS. In Pakistan, education is the most important factor. It is to be noted that being married to a husband with higher education translates into higher odds for relatively small IFS and lower odds for large IFS. Education of both respondent and partner in Bangladesh, plays in the direction of less likely association with large family size.

The purpose of this paper is to examine maternal serum triple-marker screening (TMS) for fetuses with Down syndrome, other chromosomal abnormalities, and spina bifida, in one Canadian province, BritishColumbia. Evaluation is both qualitative, addressing the personal and social significance of TMS, and quantitative, assessing effectiveness and cost. The analysis has been conducted with particular attention to the interests of groups who may in some respects be seen as vulnerable, women during pregnancy and members of the Down syndrome community; and also to the concerns of TMS providers. The issues examined are those relevant to large-scale population screening of women considered at low pre-test risk of carrying an affected fetus. Not addressed are issues of particular relevance to women identified as being at high pre-test risk owing to individual or family history of affected births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the gendered and sexual imagery in sexual health advertisements. In advertising, gender is mainly defined along sexual lines. The study has demonstrated that stereotypical images of men and women in advertising have a significant effect on beliefs about men and women's roles in the society. It is mandatory for social scientists to understand what messages about gender sexuality these consumers are conveying through these sexual health advertisements. Overall, twelve different advertisements for sexual health products were analyzed. All of the advertisements included prescription forms of either birth control or drugs used for treatment of erectile dysfunction. Five of the advertisements were for erectile dysfunction medication, five were for birth control pills, and the remaining two advertisements were for the birth control patch.

While there is evidence of a relationship between cultural factors and fertility among Mexican origin individuals living in the U.S., much less is known about the association between cultural characteristics and contraceptive use. In this paper, I explore the relationship between cultural factors and contraceptive use among first generation Mexican immigrants at the couple level using a unique data set, Donato and Kanaiaupuni's Health and Migration Survey. I examine the couple as an interacting dyad, whose characteristics function in relation to one another to predict contraceptive use. Previous research has noted the importance of studying couple matters in this way; however, there has been no examination to date of cultural characteristics at the couple level. In preliminary analyses, I discover that the couple-level measures I create to predict fertility do not perform better than individual-level variables. Instead, it appears that different individual-level husband and wife characteristics better explain couple's contraceptive use. Of all my measures, however, wife's generation and English use are the most important predictors of contraceptive use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which evaluated the efforts of the Singaporean government to reverse the success of its past information campaigns aimed at population control. One of the efforts under the initiative was the month-long festival called Romancing Singapore which seeks to highlight the importance of relationships and reinforce marriage as a social institution. The government find it hard to undo the effects of its population control campaign that it now needs to provide an environment in which Singaporeans will feel secure and comfortable to have larger families.

We use detailed measures of social change over time, the proliferation of specific family planning and other health services, and couple’s fertility behaviors to document the independent effects of specific dimensions of health services on fertility limitation. Our investigation focuses on a setting in rural Nepal that experienced a transition from virtually no use of birth control in 1945 to the widespread use of birth control to limit fertility by 1995. Findings show that both provision of contraceptive methods and maternal and child health services have independent effects on the rate of ending childbearing. These results provide important new information about the consequences of specific dimensions of family planning and health services, and the relationship of those consequences to other simultaneous dimensions of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I seek to understand how birth control can be viewed differently by different social actors by exploring birth control and reproductive rights utilizing theories on needs interpretation, multiple spheres, and multiple levels of power and resistance in relation to feminist work on reproductive rights. Furthermore, sociological neo-institutionalism is used to understand how reproduction becomes a public issue in relation to national interests. Discussions of the body as a site of resistance and power are also used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on Kingsley Davis? demographic theory of change and response. Specifically, we consider the importance of institutional factors that bring about particular sets of responses to political and economic change in certain countries that affect fertility and population growth. We examine the relevance of the birth control movement, the women?s movement, the medical profession, the church, and state policy. The case studies are: Japan, Russia, Puerto Rico, China, India, and Cameroon. Some of these countries are undergoing the second demographic transition, some the first. Despite variations in institutional context, sterilization and/or abortion as a means of fertility control is a major part of the multi-faceted response in most of these countries. We explore why this is so. We also examine the constraints toward low fertility in Cameroon, a poor country with a high prelevance of HIV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]