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While cohabitation and non-marital childbearing have been increasing in Russia since 1990, the share of marital first births that are conceived prior to marriage has changed very little since the Soviet era. The prior findings on the stability of trends in premarital conceptions in Russia have been contradictory and inconclusive. This study aims to extend the existing empirical evidence on premarital conceptions in Russia and to contribute to the discussion on the persistence of marriage as the preferred partnership context for parenthood. We focus on births that occurred within the first two years of marriage, and compare the childbearing patterns of Russian women who married in different historical periods. For our investigation of fertility among marital cohorts who married during the Soviet era (1960–1991), we use individual-level data from the 1994 microcensus. For our examination of fertility among more recent marital cohorts (2000, 2011, and 2016), we draw on data from birth records in civil registers. We also use relevant complementary data sources. Our findings show that there has been a marked shift in the relationship between conception and marriage in Russia. Increasingly, conceptions have been occurring before marriage, and in the most recent marital cohorts, the level of premarital first conceptions has even surpassed the level of marital first conceptions. The average interval between conception and entry into marriage has also been lengthening. We describe this unique pattern of childbearing and discuss some potential explanations for the ongoing association between marriage and childbearing in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in non-marital childbearing has coincided with educational expansion, although non-marital childbirths are more common among the low-educated population. This article quantifies the contribution of changes in education-specific rates of non-marital childbearing and educational distribution of parents to increases in non-marital childbearing among Finnish first-time parents over the period 1970–2009. Using Finnish register data on first-time mothers (N = 112,730) and fathers (N = 108,812), the study decomposes changes in the proportion of non-marital first childbearing in pairwise comparisons of successive decades for four educational segments: low educated (International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 0–2), medium educated (ISCED 3–4), lower tertiary educated (ISCED 5–6) and upper tertiary educated (ISCED 7–8). The findings show that the increase in non-marital first-time births was mainly attributable to the large population of medium-educated women and men and the growing segment of lower tertiary-educated women. The highest proportion of non-marital first-time childbearing remained among the low-educated population, but diminishing group size meant their overall contribution was small. The growing upper tertiary-educated population increased its contribution to non-marital childbearing but still exhibited the lowest non-marital childbearing rates. We conclude that the medium-educated population merits increased scholarly attention for its important contribution to population-level changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examined how the timing and structure of parents' relationships are related to father engagement and cooperative coparenting in the United States. Background: Responses to nonmarital pregnancies have shifted; mid‐pregnancy ("shotgun") marriages have declined while mid‐pregnancy cohabitations have significantly increased. These less institutionalized family forms may create ambiguity about fathers' roles as parents and partners. Method: Drawing on data from the Fragile Families and Child Well‐Being Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study (n = 2,752), we estimated conditional associations between a five‐category measure of parents' relationship structure and timing at the focal child's birth—(a) mid‐pregnancy cohabitation, (b) mid‐pregnancy marriage, (c) pre‐pregnancy cohabitation, (d) pre‐pregnancy marriage, and (e) nonresident couples—with measures of father engagement and cooperative coparenting when the child was 1 year old. Supplemental analyses evaluated these outcomes at Ages 3 and 5. Results: At Age 1, fathers in mid‐pregnancy cohabitations reported less cooperative coparenting with the child's mother compared to fathers in pre‐pregnancy cohabitations. In contrast, fathers in mid‐pregnancy marriages were more engaged with their children than fathers in pre‐pregnancy marriages. Conclusion: Fathers were particularly engaged with young children following mid‐pregnancy relationship transitions but were less cooperative coparents with the child's mother. This study joins research suggesting that fathers with low socioeconomic status may be embracing a new "package deal" in which the father–child relationship is central, and the father–mother relationship is secondary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of childbirth in England has gained increasing momentum, but no studies have been carried out for Wales, and therefore the nature of childbirth in early modern Wales remains largely unknown. This article seeks to redress this imbalance in two ways: First, by examining Welsh parish, court and ecclesiastical records for evidence of those who attended parturient women. This evidence demonstrates that Welsh midwives were not a homogeneous group who shared a common status and experience, but were a diverse mix of practitioners drawn from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Secondly, by assessing the care these practitioners provided to some of the most marginalised in Welsh society: unmarried pregnant women. Parish resources were limited, and poor law provision often covered only what was considered absolutely necessary. Analysis of what was deemed essential for the safe delivery of illegitimate infants provides a revealing glimpse of to the 'ceremony of childbirth' in eighteenth-century Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the survival chances of children born out of wedlock in the Russian Baltic province of Livland from 1834 to 1891 and is based on court records as well as individual-level vital events data. The absence of a consistent mortality penalty for illegitimate infants and the considerable proportion of single mothers who went on to marry point to the lack of a strong social stigma. Other indicators, such as rates of stillbirths and early childhood mortality, mother's age and socioeconomic status, and the time span between the birth and marriage, give evidence of marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twentieth century saw dramatic increases in nonmarital births, concentrated heavily among poor and working‐class women. In this paper, we investigate whether the oral contraceptive pill played a causal role in the rise of nonmarital births. Exploiting exogenous variation in laws governing access to the pill, we find that changes in marital access to the pill increased the nonmarital birthrate by between 15% and 18%, accounting for about one‐third of the overall increase in nonmarital births. These effects are concentrated almost entirely among women whose fathers did not graduate high school and among minority women. We also document that the pill increased spacing between first and second births, and lowered the probability that a woman obtained a high‐school diploma, consistent with increases in nonmarital births. We find no evidence that postsecondary education levels were influenced by pill access, and no evidence that nonmarital births move with male employment patterns. Our findings add to a growing literature which documents the power of the pill to shape women's lives in broadly heterogenous ways, with minority and less‐well‐educated women bearing the brunt of the losses, a phenomenon we call the paradox of the pill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay about the author's forebears who are of Montserratian descent is presented. Topics covered include the immigration of people of Montserrat, a British overseas territory located in the Leeward Islands, to Great Britain, the author's reflection on the immigrant experience of his ancestors while looking at the wedding picture of his father, details of his family and his being an illegitimate child, and description of the rootlessness and restlessness felt by immigrants like him.

The transformation of fertility and family behaviour in post‐socialist countries was quick and the changes were striking. An account of the changes is the subject of dispute and the mechanisms have still not been explained in a fully satisfying manner. Relatively little attention has been paid to the changes in spatial aspects concerning the broadening of changes in family behaviour. The aim of this paper is to answer the question as to whether changes spread stochastically in post‐socialist countries or if there are obvious spatial patterns. The study tries to answer the questions whether there are any cores of changes which may be understood as innovations, if there is any spatial clustering and if the extent is hierarchically arranged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study Question: What are the long-term effects of fertility education on knowledge and reproductive outcome?Summary Answer: Participants in the intervention group retained some knowledge after 2 years and the partnered women had a new child more quickly than the comparison group.What Is Known Already: Fertility education improves knowledge, at least in the short-term. Attitudes toward childbearing and its timing can change after exposure to educational materials.Study Design, Size, Duration: Participants were recruited via an online social research panel. In the original randomized controlled trial (RCT), knowledge of reproductive-aged participants was assessed before (T1) and immediately after (T2) receiving one of three information brochures: fertility (intervention group), healthy pre-pregnancy (focused on intake of folic acid during pregnancy, control group 1), or family policies in Japan (childcare provision, control group 2). The present follow-up study was conducted 2 years later in January 2017 (T3) with the same participants.Participants/materials, Setting, Methods: Of the T1 participants (n = 1455), 383 men and 360 women (51%) responded to the T3 survey. Fertility knowledge measured with the Japanese version of the Cardiff Fertility Knowledge Scale (CFKS-J) and fertility status (e.g. new births, new medical consultations, and the timing of new birth) was assessed.Main Results and the Role Of Chance: Baseline (T1) characteristics of the T3 participants were well balanced between groups, but T3 participants were older, married, and more educated compared to those lost to follow-up. A repeated-measures analysis of variance showed significant knowledge gains among the intervention group from T1 to T3 (11.2% and 7.0% among men and women, respectively) but no significant change over time for the control groups. There were no differences between groups in the incidence of new births or new medical consultations. However, subgroup analysis showed that timing of new births was accelerated for partnered individuals in the intervention group. Specifically, the proportion of partnered participants at T1 who had a new birth in the first year subsequent to presentation of information was higher in the intervention group versus control group 1 (folic acid): 8.8% versus 1.4% (P = 0.09) among men and 10.6% versus 2.3% (P = 0.03) among women, respectively. The odds ratios (adjusted for age) were 7.8 (95% CI: 0.86-70.7) and 5.2 (95% CI: 1.09-25.0) among men and women, respectively. The timing of births and the proportion of new births during the 2-year follow-up period in the intervention group were similar to that of control group 2 (family policy). The incidence of new medical consultation was higher in the male intervention group (12.0%) than in male control group 2 (family policy, 1.5%, P = 0.04) but similar among women in all groups.Limitations Reasons For Caution: First, the high attrition rate may limit the generalizability of these findings for longer-term acquisition of fertility knowledge, especially when applied to younger people who were more likely to be lost to follow-up. Second, this is a 2-year follow-up study and the results may change in the longer-term. Finally, we relied on self-reported questionnaire data and there is a possibility that some women were unknowingly pregnant at T1 but this risk should be distributed equally in the three groups through randomization.Wider Implications Of the Findings: Effects of one-time education were limited but retained beyond baseline levels. Importantly, education was found to potentially accelerate decision-making about achieving births in partnered subgroups compared to receiving healthy pre-pregnancy information. However, this finding should be confirmed in future stratified RCTs designed to evaluate effects in these subgroups. Follow-up 'booster' education sessions might help people retain knowledge and facilitate reproductive decisions for longer. In view of the high attrition rate, especially among young populations, novel educational strategies to retain young people in fertility education cohorts should be explored.Study Funding/competing Interest(s): This study was funded by National Center for Child Health and Development, the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Pfizer Health Research Foundation, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. E.M. reports joint research funds from a public interest incorporated foundation '1 more Baby Ohendan.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a few short months following the outbreak of war in 1914, Britain’s press was rife with reports of what was heralded as a new ‘social problem’. The alleged impending birth of thousands of ‘war babies’ to unmarried young women and girls, said to have been fathered by men recently departed for the Western Front, was widely discussed but ultimately proved to be largely fallacious. This article examines the extraordinary ‘war babies’ episode through the lens of the moral panic, focusing on the impact of exceptional wartime circumstances upon the shifting and conflicting sets of gendered, moral values and attitudes of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of studies have documented and analyzed forced marriage patterns and realities of girls within the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). However, the impact of wartime abduction, captivity and forced marriage on forging and sustaining post-LRA marriage relationships has been under-researched. This article contributes to addressing this gap by examining how stigma against female LRA ex-abductees influences their prospects for choices in marriage as they seek to reintegrate in communities of Uganda. Drawing on findings from Acholi area of northern Uganda, the article discusses how cultural and traditional perspectives stigmatize female ex-abductees, considered as ‘unacceptable’, ‘stained’ and therefore ‘unmarriageable’. The findings suggest that stigma adversely affects access to key community relationships such as marriage, thereby hindering social and economic opportunities for recovery and reintegration among the female ex-abductees in Uganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Births outside marriage (BoM) account for around 15% of all births globally. However, the distribution around the world is very uneven, as are cultural and political attitudes towards them. Studies from East Asia have shown that the percentage of such births is very low, with only modest increases in recent years. The orthodox demographic view holds that the maintenance of conservative views around the relationship between marriage and childbearing can play a role in keeping fertility low. Prenuptial pregnancies (PNP) (where births occur within eight months of marriage) have been identified as a growing phenomenon in Japan, possibly being an ‘alternative’ Asian pathway to family formation. As yet, no comprehensive statistical analysis of the trends of BoM or PNP has been performed for Hong Kong. Using a comprehensive microdata set of birth registration in Hong Kong from 1984–2015 (N = 1,680,831) we provide evidence of recent trends in such ‘alternative pathways’ to family formation and examine predictors through regression analysis. Our results indicate, in common with elsewhere in East Asia, low overall period rates of either BoM or PNP (although the latter has risen notably in recent years). While more recent birth cohorts exhibit higher prevalence of such births, their incomplete nature and higher expected propensity suggests that the figures are exaggerated. In our regression analysis, we find that lower educational attainment is a strong predictor of both BoM and PNP, suggesting that a bifurcation of experience may be occurring. This adds further evidence to the theory that the maintenance of traditional family formation systems in the context of revolutionised educational and work opportunities for women mean that the opportunity costs of the ‘marriage package’ become too high. Current disparities in rights and privileges between married and unmarried parents–and especially their children–means that targeted family planning services and support for vulnerable families are policy priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal evidence in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) suggests that it is unlikely for marriages with children to break up, especially when the children are male. To provide new empirical evidence, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of premarital birth and sex composition of children on marital instability (divorce or separation) among ever-married women in SSA. Data from a weighted sample of 205,997 women from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 26 sub-Saharan African countries between 2011 and 2014 were analysed. Stratified by sub-region, analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression models with robust standard errors. Parity-specific logistic regression models were fitted to investigate the association between sex composition and marital instability at parities 1, 2, 3 and 4+. The percentage of women with experience of marital instability in the four sub-regions was: Western (4.6%), Central (12.0%), Eastern (10.5%) and Southern Africa (11.4%). Premarital birth was significantly associated with marital instability in Western (OR = 1.52, p < 0.05), Central (OR = 1.22, p < 0.05), Eastern (OR = 1.39, p < 0.05) and Southern Africa (OR = 1.25, p < 0.05). In Western Africa, at parities 1-2, women with female children were significantly more likely to be divorced or separated. At parities 3 and above, there was no significant difference in the odds of marital instability between women with majority male and those with majority female children. This study extends current knowledge about family dynamics by providing a wider view on the relationship between premarital birth, children's sex composition and marital instability in the four sub-regions of sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most young people in the United States express the desire to marry. Norms at all socioeconomic levels posit marriage as the optimal context for childbearing. At the same time, nonmarital fertility accounts for approximately 40 % of U.S. births, experienced disproportionately by women with educational attainment less than a bachelor's degree. Research has shown that women's intentions for the number and timing of children and couples' intent to marry are strong predictors of realized fertility and marriage. The present study investigates whether U.S. young women's preferences about nonmarital fertility, as stated before childbearing begins, predict their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth. I track marriage and fertility histories through ages 24-30 of women asked at ages 11-16 whether they would consider unmarried childbearing. One-quarter of women who responded "no" in fact had a nonmarital birth by age 24-30. The ability of women and their partners to access material resources in adulthood were, as expected, the strongest predictors of the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Nonetheless, I find that women who said they would not consider nonmarital childbearing had substantially higher hazards of fertility postponement and especially of marital fertility, even after controlling for race/ethnicity, mother's educational attainment, family of origin intactness, self-efficacy and planning ability, perceived future prospects, and markers of own educational attainment and work experience into early adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implications of fatherless families--be they single-mother households, same-sex marriages, or matriarchal cultures--has too often been a neglected (perhaps avoided) topic within the context of the local church. Consequently, there is a cacophony of secular voices competing for our attention. Some of these voices argue that the role of "male"fatherhood is superfluous; however, this essay will argue that fatherlessness is, indeed, a pervasive problem. Fatherlessness, an epidemic arising primarily from two root causes in the Western world: divorce-on-demand and unwed pregnancies, has severe implications regarding God's word, church, and world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising age of first marriage across sub-Saharan Africa over the past 25 years has led many scholars to predict a concurrent increase in premarital childbearing. We examine whether this anticipated increase has materialized using data from 27 countries. Our results reveal considerable heterogeneity. Although levels of premarital fertility have risen by up to 13 percent in recent years in some African countries, other countries have experienced a 7 percent decline. Adolescent premarital childbearing, in particular, has shown marked decline in several countries. Furthermore, although the rising age of marriage exerts clear upward pressure on premarital fertility, decomposition analyses indicate that in half of the countries examined, other factors such as delayed sexual debut and use of contraception counteract this effect. These results temper concerns about the rising numbers of unwed mothers and demonstrate that countries can simultaneously delay marriage and achieve relatively stable, or even declining, levels of premarital childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a well-known paper, Akerlof, Yellen, and Katz proposed a counter-intuitive explanation for the rise of non-marital births in the United States that emphasized how birth control and abortion weakened the responsibility of men to their unmarried partner's pregnancy. The paper is regularly cited by social conservatives to support measures to restrict sex education and access to contraception and abortion. I argue that this use of the paper's findings stems from specific modeling assumptions about 'types' of women. I present a reformulation of the model using more reasonable 'types' that generates precisely the same results, but with radically different policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on non-marital fertility rate (NMFR) in U.S. Topics discussed include childbearing, marriage and moral decay. Other topics which includes the country's population, use of contraception and Great Recession are also discussed. In addition, health aspects of children of unmarried mothers are also mentioned.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including teenage parenthood, adolescent nonmarital childbearing, and teenage pregnancy and mental health.

Many aggregate-level studies suggest a relationship between economic inequality and sociodemographic outcomes such as family formation, health, and mortality; individual-level evidence, however, is lacking. Nor is there satisfactory evidence on the mechanisms by which inequality may have an effect. We study the determinants of transitions to a nonmarital first birth as a single parent or as a cohabiting parent compared to transitions to marriage prior to a first birth among unmarried, childless young adults in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort, from 1997 to 2011. We include measures of county-group-level household income inequality and the availability of jobs typically held by high school graduates that pay above-poverty wages (i.e., middle-skilled jobs). We find that greater income inequality is associated with a reduced likelihood of transitioning to marriage prior to a first birth for both women and men. The association between levels of inequality and transitions to marriage can be partially accounted for by the availability of middle-skilled jobs. Some models also suggest that greater income inequality is associated with a reduced likelihood of transitioning to a first birth while cohabiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family caps are the one welfare reform explicitly designed to reduce birth rates among poor, unmarried women. These policies generate a great deal of controversy due to the groups of women they target, the mechanisms through which they operate, and the effects they purport to produce. This article presents results from a national study with 18 years of post-family cap data. We find that family caps reduce nonmarital births by about 2 per 1,000 and the nonmarital birth ratio by nearly 2 per 100 and that these effects are confined primarily to states where Medicaid is used to pay for abortion and where black women form a large proportion of the population. In contrast to a number of earlier studies, our analysis also shows that most of the decline in births is due to fewer pregnancies (about 3 per 1,000) and not to increases in abortions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All sociologists recognize that social constraints affect individuals’ outcomes. These effects are sometimes relatively direct. Other times constraints affect outcomes indirectly, first influencing individuals’ personal characteristics, which then affect their outcomes. In the latter case, the social becomes personal, and personal characteristics that are carried across situations (e.g., skills, habits, identities, worldviews, preferences, or values) affect individuals’ outcomes. I argue here for the importance of both direct and indirect effects of constraints on outcomes. I disagree with the tendency among sociologists to avoid views highlighting the role of personal characteristics because of the perception—incorrect in my view—that these explanations “blame the victim” and ignore constraints. To illustrate the importance of both types of mechanisms, I explore two empirical cases involving how gender and class structure sexualities. First, I show that young men engage in same-sex relations less than women and have more heterosexist attitudes, and I ask why. Second, I provide evidence that people from disadvantaged class backgrounds are especially likely to have unintended pregnancies and nonmarital births, and I explore why. In each case, I provide evidence that both kinds of mechanisms are operating—mechanisms entailing direct effects of constraints on outcomes, and mechanisms in which constraints shape personal characteristics, which, in turn, affect outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using recent, nationally representative data, we examine the prevalence and social determinants of premarital cohabitation, an important sign of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) in China. Descriptive results show that although only about 7 percent of Chinese adults born before 1980 cohabited before first marriage, cohabitation has grown sharply among recent birth cohorts. Based on the theoretical perspectives of 'ideational change' and 'economic development,' we conduct multivariate analyses of social determinants of cohabitation that may reveal potential mechanisms of its diffusion. We find that greater exposure to Western culture, higher educational attainment for men, and more advantaged family background were all positively related to premarital cohabitation. Our results also show the influence of a unique social institution in China, with Communist Party members less likely than their counterparts to cohabit before first marriage. Broadly speaking, the positive association between economic development and local rates of premarital cohabitation suggests the transformative influence of modernization on family systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The rise in nonmarital childbearing has raised concerns about coparenting among unmarried parents with increasingly complicated relationship trajectories. We address this issue by examining associations between mothers' partnership transitions and coparenting and the moderating role of maternal race/ethnicity and child gender. Methods Data from the Fragile Families Study and ordinary least squares regression techniques are used to examine whether mothers' partnership transitions are related to coparenting. Lagged and fixed effects models are employed to test the robustness of the findings to selection. Results Coresidential and nonresidential dating transitions are negatively associated with coparenting, but the association is stronger for coresidential transitions than for dating transitions. Coresidential transitions are stronger predictors of coparenting for white parents than for black parents and for parents of sons than for parents of daughters. Conclusions Policies aimed at strengthening families should emphasize relationship stability, regardless of the type of union, to promote high-quality coparenting among at-risk populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States has become increasingly characterized by stark class divides in family structure. Poor women are less likely to marry than their more affluent counterparts but are far more likely to have a birth outside of marriage. Recent theoretical and qualitative work at the intersection of demography and cultural sociology suggests that these patterns are generated because poor women have high, nearly unattainable, economic standards for marriage but make a much weaker connection between economic standing and fertility decisions. We use the events of the Great Recession, leveraging variation in the severity of the crisis between years and across states, to examine how exposure to worse state-level economic conditions is related to poor women's likelihood of marriage and of having a nonmarital birth between 2008 and 2012. In accord with theory, we find that women of low socioeconomic status (SES) exposed to worse economic conditions are indeed somewhat less likely to marry. However, we also find that unmarried low-SES women exposed to worse economic conditions significantly reduce their fertility; economic standing is not disconnected from nonmarital fertility. Our results suggest that economic concerns were connected to fertility decisions for low-SES unmarried women during the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the increase in non-marital childbearing in the Czech Republic during the first two decades following the demise of state socialism. The proportion of mothers who gave birth as unmarried increased more than fourfold during this period. The aim is to explain the reasons for this increase and its socioeconomic variation. Three explanations are tested: growing individualisation, increasing economic uncertainty, and adjustment to a policy that provided more support for single mothers. Data, taken from the national birth register, regarding the marital status of mothers are used to estimate multilevel models with contexts defined by combinations of regions and years. The results are most in line with the first explanation: the change in values due to a rise in individualism and personal autonomy. Economic uncertainty is also found to have a moderate effect among women with up to a secondary education, especially the lower (vocational) level. The influence of policy is weak and is limited to mothers with the lowest level of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper juxtaposes bioethical debates with legal developments concerning children bom out of wedlock in Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia; it seeks to demonstrate the relevance of national contexts for the study of Islamic bioethics. Debates about the import of genetic testing on Islamic notions of lineage and paternity could have an immediate and concrete impact on children whose parents were not married. Following a brief sketch of Islamic lineage rules, this paper traces their entanglement in national contexts through the regulation of citizenship, constitutional references, and laws of personal status, before it lays out the conflicting implications of an equal rights based statutory and international law on the one side, and shariatic lineage mles on the other. A legislative comparison shows that Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia have used diverging strategies to manage - although not resolve - this inherent friction, which has already resulted in different legal situations for children born out of wedlock. I argue that the little consideration transnationalfiqh councils have given to national and statutory differences complicates the transnational and normative aspects of Islamic bioethics. It speaks of the uneasy situation of Islamic jurisprudence in a political and legal context dominated by nation states and, I would argue, will influence the development of a burgeoning field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates spatiotemporal variation in non-marital fertility across Europe over the last 100 years. In the first 50 years of this period, non-marital fertility was generally declining, reaching very low levels in the mid-twentieth century. But starting in the 1960s, non-marital fertility increased strongly. The main aim of this paper is to investigate to what degree the persistence of the past might be relevant for understanding spatial aspects of the recent rise. A secondary aim is to explore how spatial non-marital fertility variation is likely to develop in the future, both between and within countries. The outcomes support the view that historical patterns are relevant for understanding current non-marital fertility variation in most parts of Europe. However, the persistence of the past varies spatially, and seems to fade over time. The analysis of current trends in spatial variation between countries suggests that an east–west dichotomy is currently emerging: i.e., countries that are not in the European Union and that have Orthodox Christian or Muslim traditions exhibit higher propensities to remain at or to revert to comparatively low levels of non-marital fertility. Within Northwestern Europe, suburban belts around big cities appear to be the last strongholds of marital fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the historical background and impact of the "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" report issued by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the U.S. Department of Labor in 1965. He is cited for using statistical data to underscore the exacerbation of poverty in the black American population by disproportionate out-of-wedlock births. The liberal establishment is said to have ignored his warning on fatherless families producing disadvantaged children.

The article discusses the role of educational institutions in driving down out-of-wedlock birth rates and sustaining social and economic mobility through college completion. American Enterprise Institute analyst Andrew Kelly takes note that third of low-income students who start college do not finish while Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution point out that putting marriage before children ensures success. Catholic high-school students are said to exercise more prudence.

Fertility and reproductive behaviour in the nineteenth-century Lutheran family from the city of Poznań was characterized. Use was made of the St. Peter parish (Peterkirche) registers from 1840s to 1870s, upon which reconstructions of the individual histories of 463 families were based. Fertility was assessed on the basis of the length of between-birth intervals according to their order and age of women. Next, the age-specific fertility rates of women fx and Coale Index of marital fertility Ig were calculated. From a seasonal rhythm of both marital and illegitimate births, and reconstructed on the basis of these, the annual rhythm of marital and prenuptial conceptions were characterized. In the Lutheran Parish of St. Peter from the city of Poznań illegitimate births and prenuptial conceptions accounted for almost 10% and over 5% of all births, respectively. Lack of seasonality for marital births was noted here. Illegitimate births, by contrast, were characterized by a statistically significant annual rhythm: their maximum was noted in April, which was a result of conceptions during summer. The average woman with completed reproduction cycle gave birth to the first and to the last child at the ages of 29 and 40 years, respectively. She therefore used 32% of her whole reproductive period. Late age of birth of the first child was associated with late age of marriage of women (on average 28 years). An average woman with completed reproduction gave birth to 4.8 children. The average length of the protogenesic interval was 18 months. The highest fertility occurred in women aged between 20 to 29 years. The value of the Ig index was 0.67, and proved a lack of birth control rather than conscious birth regulation. Generally, Lutheran women from Poznań were characterized by fairly high reproductive potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing proportion of nonmarital births are to cohabiting couples, though childbearing is more common among moderately educated cohabitors than among cohabiting college graduates. In this study reasons for social class divergence in fertility behavior are explored. Data are from semistructured interviews with 30 working-class and 31 middle-class cohabiting couples. The authors inquired about readiness for parenthood, contraceptive usage, and concurrence about childbearing plans and contraception. Middle-class couples generally utilized the most effective methods, often relied on two methods, concurred regarding fertility goals, and reported contracepting consistently. Among the moderately educated, contraceptive utilization was lower and reliance on less effective methods greater; they expressed greater ambivalence about preventing conception and discussed contraception less than their middle-class counterparts. Less educated respondents also mentioned forgetfulness and cost as reasons for sporadic contraceptive use. The study results highlight the need to deepen understanding of how relational processes and couple dynamics contribute to pregnancy avoidance or conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Cohabitation has become an important context for childbearing. [•] The majority of all nonmarital births are to cohabiting women. [•] Post-conception cohabitations now surpass post-conception marriages. [•] Low percentages of pregnant black single women transition into cohabitation or marriage. [•] Highly-educated single women are especially likely to cohabit or get married if they become pregnant. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article looks at judicial and social responses to neo-natal death in Ireland in the early 20th century, focusing on the role of coroners' courts and on norms related to poverty and out-of-wedlock births. The author cites a disparity between the text of the country's infanticide laws and how they were typically applied.

It is often assumed that cohabitation is much less stable than marriage. If cohabitation becomes more common among parents, children may be increasingly exposed to separation. However, little is known about how the proportion of cohabiting parents relates to their separation behavior. Higher shares of childbearing within cohabitation might reduce the proportion of negatively selected couples among cohabiting parents, which could in turn improve their union stability. This study focuses on parents who were cohabiting when they had their first child. It compares their union stability within a context in which they represent the majority or the minority. The German case is well-suited to this research goal because non-marital childbearing is common in eastern Germany (60 %) but not in western Germany (27 %). The data came from the German Family Panel (pairfam), and include 1,844 married and cohabiting mothers born in 1971-1973 and 1981-1983. The empirical results suggest that the union stability of cohabiting mothers is positively related to their prevalence: survival curves showed that eastern German cohabiting mothers had a greater degree of union stability than their western German counterparts. This difference increased in the event-history model, which accounted for the particular composition of eastern German society, including the relatively low level of religious affiliation among the population. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity did not change this result. In sum, these findings indicate that context plays an important role in the union stability of cohabiting parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an explanation for several decades of rising U.S. nonmarital birth rates and shares, and for cross-sectional differences in black-white fertility. Significantly, the explanation does not rely on changes over time or differences across races in individual fertility behavior. It is consistent with the rising nonmarital fertility measures observed in the United States since the mid-1970s, higher measured fertility for unmarried blacks than whites, and differences across races in the timing of childbearing, despite nearly constant total fertility rates and increasingly similar target family sizes for blacks and whites. The explanation relies on a selection effect associated with changes in the marriage rate and on racial differences in access to human capital investment opportunities. We find strong support for the explanation using U.S. data over the period 1957-2002. Our findings suggest caution in interpreting the results of empirical studies of childbearing that examine marital and nonmarital fertility rates separately, as these studies typically ignore the selection effect of marriage. (JEL J12, J13, I38 ) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines the long-term impact of legalized abortion on childbearing by unwed teenagers in the United States. I find that the 1970 legalization of abortion in the repeal states led to about a 6% reduction in unwed childbearing rates for white women aged 15-20 who were born in these states immediately after abortion became legal. I find a larger long-term impact for African-American women of the same ages: a 7.5%-13% reduction in unwed childbearing. My estimates are smaller and not as precise for the effect of Roe v. Wade. This outcome is not surprising given that I am able to estimate only a potential lower bound of the effect on unwed childbearing rates. On the other hand, when I estimated a Difference-in-Difference regression for the non-repeal states assuming that there was no national trend that affected the childbearing behavior of the treatment age groups and their respective control age groups separately, I found that the true effect of Roe v. Wade on childbearing by unwed teenagers was about an 11% and 3% reductions for white and African-American teenagers, respectively. (JEL J13, I18 ) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global family begins at conception. Every person born into this world enters into a global society in which beliefs and ideas about the meaning of life and its purpose are shared, regardless of one's country of origin or the demographic characteristics of one's birth parents. Ultimately, we are related to one another. Our genetics do not differ significantly; there is no gene for race. If the global family begins at conception, then how might the meaning of a 'global family' cause us to rethink our antiquated ideas about conception, marriage, and parenting, particularly for heterosexual women who choose to remain single? Feminist theory has not devoted substantial scholarship to intentionally unmarried heterosexual women who choose not to conceive children. The same societies that reify the marriage-and-parenting perspective simultaneously neglect the perspectives of heterosexual women who break from the norm. What does a more inclusive form of feminist theory look like? As a new form of feminist theory and appropriately called 'inclusive feminist theory,' this form of feminist theory addresses singlehood for heterosexual women, particularly those who choose not to become pregnant or to parent children. Inclusive feminist theory supports changes to the negative perceptions about unmarried heterosexual women. Next, inclusive feminist theory encourages the choices made by intentionally unmarried heterosexual women with regard to personal and professional development, the definitions of family and friendship, as well as whether to parent children (e.g., through adoption). Inclusive feminist theory is global in scope and provides for women everywhere to live as intentionally unmarried individuals who are not defined by the standard of being married (with or without children). Finally, inclusive feminist theory speaks to the resilience required by heterosexual women to remain intentionally unmarried within societies that reify the norm for heterosexual women as being married. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]