{"title":"Gender, Couples’ Fertility Intentions, and Parents’ Depressive Symptoms","authors":"J. Stykes","doi":"10.1177/2156869318802340","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Unintended childbearing is associated with poorer parental well-being, but most scholarship in this area takes an individual-level approach to unintended childbearing. Drawing on couple data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), I treat unintended childbearing as a couple-level construct to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals’ intentions, partners’ intentions, and gender are linked with psychological distress in the transition to parenthood. I make two chief contributions to prior research. First, the inclusion of fathers’ perspectives provides an important addition to research, which primarily focuses on mothers’ unintended childbearing. Second, I assess gender differences in the association between couples’ intentions and health. For mothers, one’s own intentions appeared most closely tied to distress regardless of the father’s intentions, whereas fathers reported more depressive symptoms if either parent did not intend the birth. Formal post-estimation tests of differences in the magnitude of coefficients for mothers and fathers suggest few gender differences exist in the association between couples’ intentions and psychological distress. For mothers and fathers alike, belonging to a couple where neither parent intended the birth was consistently associated with the highest levels of distress. Implications for policy and research are discussed in relation to findings.","PeriodicalId":46146,"journal":{"name":"Society and Mental Health","volume":"9 1","pages":"334 - 349"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2018-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2156869318802340","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Society and Mental Health","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869318802340","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Unintended childbearing is associated with poorer parental well-being, but most scholarship in this area takes an individual-level approach to unintended childbearing. Drawing on couple data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), I treat unintended childbearing as a couple-level construct to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how individuals’ intentions, partners’ intentions, and gender are linked with psychological distress in the transition to parenthood. I make two chief contributions to prior research. First, the inclusion of fathers’ perspectives provides an important addition to research, which primarily focuses on mothers’ unintended childbearing. Second, I assess gender differences in the association between couples’ intentions and health. For mothers, one’s own intentions appeared most closely tied to distress regardless of the father’s intentions, whereas fathers reported more depressive symptoms if either parent did not intend the birth. Formal post-estimation tests of differences in the magnitude of coefficients for mothers and fathers suggest few gender differences exist in the association between couples’ intentions and psychological distress. For mothers and fathers alike, belonging to a couple where neither parent intended the birth was consistently associated with the highest levels of distress. Implications for policy and research are discussed in relation to findings.
期刊介绍:
Official journal of the ASA Section on the Sociology of Mental Health. Society and Mental Health (SMH) publishes original and innovative peer-reviewed research and theory articles that link social structure and sociocultural processes with mental health and illness in society. It will also provide an outlet for sociologically relevant research and theory articles that are produced in other disciplines and subfields concerned with issues related to mental health and illness. The aim of the journal is to advance knowledge in the sociology of mental health and illness by publishing the leading work that highlights the unique perspectives and contributions that sociological research and theory can make to our understanding of mental health and illness in society.