Klerman L V
Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 35294-0022, USA.
Matern Child Health J. 2000 Sep;4(3):155-62. doi: 10.1023/a:1009534612388.
Although interest in the intendedness or the planning status of a pregnancy goes back many centuries, it is only since 1941 that questions about these issues have been asked systematically in large-scale surveys. More recently, questions about intendedness have become standard features of the National Survey of Family Growth and of the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS). Interest in and concern about the large numbers of unintended pregnancies reported in those surveys resulted in an Institute of Medicine report on the subject and the inclusion of a national health objective for increasing the proportion of pregnancies that are intended in Healthy People 2000 and Healthy People 2010.
The terms, "intended," "unintended," "mistimed," "wanted," "unwanted," and "planned" are often used without significant attention being paid to their meaning or how they are derived from survey questions. There is a particular need to distinguish between terms that define attitudes and those that define behaviors. In addition, research has revealed that women are often happy despite experiencing an unintended pregnancy and that contraceptive failures do not always result in a report of an unintended pregnancy.
Researchers have begun to ask questions about the meaning of the intendedness concept and its relationship to what women express as their feelings about pregnancies and births. This article, and this entire issue, is an attempt to make the reader aware of the current issues in this area and to suggest additional research that is needed to enable policy makers and program planners to design programs that will better assist couples in meeting their fertility goals.
尽管对怀孕的意愿或计划状态的关注可以追溯到几个世纪以前，但直到1941年，关于这些问题的调查才开始在大规模调查中系统地进行。最近，关于怀孕意愿的问题已成为全国家庭成长调查和怀孕风险评估监测系统（PRAMS）的标准内容。对这些调查中报告的大量意外怀孕的关注和担忧，促使医学研究所发布了一份关于该主题的报告，并将增加有意愿怀孕比例的国家健康目标纳入了《2000年健康人群》和《2010年健康人群》。
“有意愿的”“意外的”“时机不当的”“想要的”“不想要的”和“计划中的”等术语经常被使用，但人们对它们的含义以及它们如何从调查问题中得出并未给予足够关注。特别需要区分定义态度的术语和定义行为的术语。此外，研究表明，女性即使经历意外怀孕也常常感到幸福，而且避孕失败并不总是导致意外怀孕的报告。
研究人员已经开始探讨怀孕意愿概念的含义及其与女性表达的对怀孕和生育的感受之间的关系。本文以及整个专题旨在让读者了解该领域当前的问题，并建议进行更多研究，以使政策制定者和项目规划者能够设计出更好地帮助夫妇实现生育目标的项目。
