Is Baby a Blessing? Wantedness, Age at First Birth, and Later‐Life Depression
| Author | Melanie Sereny Brasher,Heather M. Rackin |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12357 |
H M. R Louisiana State University
M S B University of Rhode Island∗
Is Baby a Blessing? Wantedness, Age at First Birth,
and Later-Life Depression
Research has found that both unintended and
nonnormatively timed births have negative con-
sequences, yet little is known about how birth
timing and intention jointly inuence mothers’
mental health. This study explored how the inter-
action between intention and age at rst birth
inuenced depression 5 to 13 years later by ana-
lyzing the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey
of Youth (N=2,573). We found that mistimed
births, when compared with wanted births, were
associated with depression, but only for norma-
tively timed transitions to motherhood. Surpris-
ingly,teen mothers who had unwanted births had
better later-life mental health than teens who
had wanted or mistimed births. Among women
with wanted or mistimed rst births, increasing
age at birth was associated with lower proba-
bilities of depression. Most, but not all, of these
effects were explained by selection factors and
life circumstances. Results show the importance
of examining joint effects of rst birth wanted-
ness and timing.
The United States leads the developed world in
both the rate of teen births (Ventura,Hamilton, &
Department of Sociology, 126 Stubbs Hall, Baton Rouge,
LA, 70803 (hrackin@lsu.edu).
∗Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department
of Human Development and Family Studies, 10 Chafee
Road, Kingston, RI 02881.
Key Words: depression, fertility/family planning/infertility,
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth(NLSY), transition to
parenthood.
Matthews, 2014) and in the proportion of births
that are mistimed and unwanted (Finer & Hen-
shaw,2006), both of which have deleterious con-
sequences for mental health (Gipson, Koenig, &
Hindin, 2008; Patel & Sen, 2012; Spence, 2008).
Yetno prior study has examined how birth want-
edness and birth timing interact to jointly inu-
ence women’s mental health.
Drawing on both the life course paradigm and
the social stress model, our study aims to ll
in the gaps in the literature by examining how
rst birth wantedness, timing, and the interaction
between the two may have mental health conse-
quences for the mother that persist years after the
birth. We also consider how life circumstances
after the birth mediate the impact of an unin-
tended or nonnormatively timed birth. Our study
makes several contributions to the literature by
examining the interaction between intention and
birth timing, analyzing the impact of mistimed
and unwanted births separately, and exploring
their long-term consequences.
Analyzing multiple waves of the 1979
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
(NLSY79), we pose the following questions: (a)
Conditional on having a rst birth at the same
age, are there differences in later-life mental
health between women who have mistimed,
unwanted, or wanted rst births? (b) Do these
associations vary by whether the transition to
motherhood occurs at a normative or nonnorma-
tive age? (c) Conditional on having a mistimed
or unwanted birth, do younger rst-time mothers
have worse mental health years later than older
rst-time mothers? (d) Do life circumstances
Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (October 2016): 1269–1284 1269
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12357
1270 Journal of Marriage and Family
prior to, at the time of, or after the rst birth
explain some of these effects?
U B W
Wantedness is generally operationalized by ask-
ing women to think back to the time of concep-
tion to recall if this child (or pregnancy) was
wanted, unwanted (did not want any [more] chil-
dren), or mistimed (wanted [more] children but
not at this time). Unintended births (or pregnan-
cies) generally refer to the combination of mis-
timed and unwanted.
The concept may be straightforward for some
pregnancies (e.g., a pregnancy resulting from
systematic nonuse of contraception or a preg-
nancy terminated by abortion), but few pregnan-
cies are at either of these extremes. For many
pregnancies, wantedness is more complicated.
Trussell, Vaughan, and Stanford (1999) found
that half of the women not using contracep-
tion reported their pregnancy as unintended, and
nearly a third of the women who reported a
contraceptive failure stated their pregnancy was
wanted. Happiness about the pregnancy was the
key determinate of these reports. Research sug-
gests that many women’s reported intentions
of pregnancies are based on affective, cogni-
tive, cultural, and contextual factors (Bachrach
& Newcomer, 1999; Santelli et al., 2003). Many
women may not have a clear plan at conception
and instead report wantedness after pregnancy
on the basis of their feelings, meanings, and life
contexts.
Although the categories of wantedness may
not neatly describe women’s intentions at con-
ception, wantedness is still a salient considera-
tion. For this study, we use measures of birth
wantedness reported from the mother during
pregnancy or shortly after (depending on when
the survey was elded). Other measures were
available (e.g., contraceptive use or expecting a
child in the future), but measures of birth want-
edness reect mothers’ feelings, thoughts, and
other important dimensions regarding the birth
that likely have impacts on women’s lives.
W, A F B,
M H
The social stress model suggests that an unin-
tended rst birth is a stressful life event that
is likely detrimental to mental health, and the
life course perspective suggests that the asso-
ciations likely vary depending on whether a
woman transitions to motherhood at a norma-
tive or nonnormative age. Indeed, research has
found that unintended births have a negative
effect on mothers’ mental health (Barber, Axinn,
& Thornton, 1999; Khajehpour, Simbar, Jan-
nesari, Ramezani-Tehrani, & Majd, 2013; Lau
& Keung, 2007; Najman, Morrison, Williams,
Andersen, & Keeping, 1991; Su, 2012), and
the timing of the transition to motherhood is
also associated with mental health (Carlson,
2011; Koropeckyj-Cox, Pienta, & Brown, 2007;
Mirowsky & Ross, 2002; Spence, 2008). We
combine these paradigms to consider the joint
effects of rst birth wantedness and timing on
depression. Next we describe each paradigm and
then derive the hypotheses.
The social stress model argues that stressful
life events, mediated or moderated by resources
to cope with stressful events, can inuence
health outcomes (Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieber-
man, & Mullan, 1981). The social stress model
emphasizes that life events are detrimental
depending on whether the event is normative,
scheduled, desired, or controlled (Carlson &
Williams, 2011). Moreover, life events can
lead to chronic strains, that is, stressors of
prolonged duration. In addition, chronic strains
that occur within major social roles, such as
mother or worker, are particularly enduring and
can have large effects on mental health (Thoits,
2006). One specic type of chronic strain is role
captivity—when an enduring social role is taken
on unwillingly (Pearlin, 1989).
From the social stress perspective, unwanted
or mistimed rst births are stressful events that
are likely to have negative impacts on mental
health. By denition, an unwanted rst birth
is not scheduled, desired, or controlled, but
could be normative depending on the timing.
A mistimed birth, however, may be desired or
normative, because although the birth is mis-
timed, entering the role of mother is desired
at some point, but being off schedule may still
be detrimental for well-being. All unintended
rst births may be chronic strains because they
lead to unintended entry into the motherhood
role—a chronic strain within an enduring social
role. An unintended rst birth is also a stres-
sor through role captivity—the role of parent
is taken on unwillingly (Pearlin, 1989). Thus,
unintended births are not only stressful life
events in the short term but also are chronic
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