Premium
Multipartnered Fertility: Can It Be Reduced?
Author(s) -
Klerman Lorraine V.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
perspectives on sexual and reproductive health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.818
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1931-2393
pISSN - 1538-6341
DOI - 10.1363/3905607
Subject(s) - citation , fertility , sociology , psychology , political science , law , population , demography
Is multipartnered fertility a matter that should be addressed by federal and state policy? To be considered a problem that merits a policy solution multipartnered fertility must be reasonably common and must have important consequences. Guzzo and Furstenberg found that the prevalence of multipartnered fertility among female Add Health respondents was quite low: Only 3% of the young women had had births with multiple partners. This finding may reflect that respondents were still at the beginning of their childbearing years (the sample was aged 19-25) and that those at highest risk such as school dropouts were not interviewed. Guzzo and Furstenberg did not analyze data from male respondents but interviews conducted as part of the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) revealed that nearly 8% of men aged 15-44 had had children with at least two women. However in examining the prevalence of multipartnered fertility it is important to distinguish between the proportion of all women and men of reproductive age who have children with multiple partners and the proportion of mothers and fathers who do. The figures are much higher of course in analyses that focus on mothers and fathers: Fourteen percent of mothers in the Add Health study who were unmarried at first birth and 17% of fathers in the NSFG had had children with more than one partner. In a Wisconsin study that linked welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and other means-tested programs) unemployment insurance and child support records 30% of mothers had had children with at least two partners; an additional 20% had had children by only one father but that father had had children with more than one woman. (excerpt)