Thomeer Mieke Beth, Reczek Rin, Stacey Lawrence
Department of Sociology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Heritage Hall 460, 1401 University Blvd., Birmingham, AL 35233.
Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University.
Popul Res Policy Rev. 2022 Aug;41(4):1405-1415. doi: 10.1007/s11113-022-09699-2. Epub 2022 Jan 18.
Due to increasing heterogeneity in if, when, and under what conditions women have children, the timing, spacing, and other demographic aspects of childbearing have drastically changed in the US over the past century. Existing science tends to examine demographic aspects of childbearing separately, creating an incomplete understanding of how childbearing patterns are distributed at the population level. In this research brief, we develop the concept of childbearing biographies to emphasize that multiple childbearing characteristics cluster together. We analyze nationally representative US data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79; =4,052). Using eight childbearing variables (e.g., age at first birth, number of children, whether unmarried at any birth), we use Mixed-Mode Latent Class Analysis (MM-LCA) and identify five classes, or childbearing biographies: (1) early compressed childbearing, (2) staggered childbearing, (3) extended high parity childbearing, (4) later childbearing, and (5) married planned childbearing. A childbearing biography approach highlights the increasingly heterogeneous contexts of parenthood today, showing how women with similar characteristics around one aspect of childbearing (e.g., early age at first birth) can also be highly divergent from each other when taking into consideration other childbearing characteristics. In showing this complexity, we highlight that a childbearing biography approach has the potential to shed new light on widening inequality among contemporary midlife women, with implications for aging and population health and well-being.
由于女性生育孩子的时间、是否生育以及生育条件的异质性不断增加，在过去一个世纪里，美国生育的时间安排、间隔以及其他人口统计学方面发生了巨大变化。现有科学研究往往分别考察生育的人口统计学方面，从而对生育模式在人口层面的分布产生了不完整的理解。在本研究简报中，我们提出了生育传记的概念，以强调多个生育特征是聚集在一起的。我们分析了来自1979年全国青年纵向调查（NLSY79；n = 4052）的具有全国代表性的美国数据。使用八个生育变量（例如，初育年龄、子女数量、每次生育时是否未婚），我们采用混合模式潜在类别分析（MM-LCA）并确定了五个类别，即生育传记：（1）早育紧凑型生育，（2）交错型生育，（3）高生育次数的延长型生育，（4）晚育型生育，以及（5）已婚计划型生育。生育传记方法突出了当今为人父母背景日益多样化的情况，展示了在生育的一个方面（例如，初育年龄早）具有相似特征的女性，在考虑其他生育特征时如何也可能彼此大相径庭。在展示这种复杂性时，我们强调生育传记方法有可能为当代中年女性中日益扩大的不平等现象带来新的启示，这对老龄化以及人口健康和福祉具有影响。
