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Norms About Nonmarital Pregnancy and Willingness to Provide Resources to Unwed Parents
Author(s) -
Mollborn Stefanie
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00584.x
Subject(s) - embarrassment , teen pregnancy , socioeconomic status , psychology , sanctions , social psychology , affect (linguistics) , ethnic group , vignette , multivariate analysis , panel study of income dynamics , developmental psychology , demographic economics , demography , population , sociology , economics , political science , medicine , communication , anthropology , law
Contested social norms underlie public concern about adults’ and teenagers’ nonmarital pregnancy. The original, vignette‐based National Pregnancy Norms Survey ( N = 812) measures these norms and related sanctions. Descriptive analyses report embarrassment at the prospect of a nonmarital pregnancy by age and gender of hypothetical prospective parents and age, race or ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of respondents. Multivariate analyses show that embarrassment about nonmarital pregnancy is frequently weak but much stronger when prospective parents are teenagers. Embarrassment predicts respondents’ hypothetical sanctions of a new parent in their family by withholding several types of needed material resources. Because research has shown that such resources affect education and income, this study helps explain how violating norms might lead to negative outcomes among unmarried parents.