Familial Satisfaction, Birth Order, and Fertility Values.

A theory is presented to account for the tendency of family size to be the same in successive generations of the same family. It is hypothesized that size preferences for the family of procreation vary directly with the size of the family of orientation, that the association is greater among women who felt "close" to their families of orientation, and among firstborn women. Interview and questionnaire data from 389 college women support these hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]