The experience of fatherhood for American men has been dramatically altered in recent decades. Men are now more likely than ever before to live separately from their children and to father children outside of marriage. Many men experience fatherhood as a sequence of relationships with children, some biologically theirs and some the children of spouses or partners. These new facts of fatherhood derive from pervasive changes in fertility and marriage patterns that have reshaped the ways in which American families are formed. The Male Fertility and Family Formation Working Group was created to address the processes that lead men to becoming fathers and influence the conditions under which they do so. Its mission included reviewing the state of knowledge about fertility and union formation and dissolution among men, and suggesting needed data and research to advance our understanding of these issues and to inform policy. The Working Group included 30 scientists from universities, private research institutes, and federal agencies representing diverse interests and expertise.
This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of the Working Group. In the first section, we argue that information and research about male fertility and unions are critical to understanding fatherhood and to social policy concerned with fatherhood. In subsequent sections, we provide a brief review of what is currently known about specific aspects of male fertility and family formation, discuss what gaps exist in research and data, and suggest how these gaps might be filled. These sections focus on male fertility; union formation and dissolution; the interrelationships between fertility and unions; reproductive health; and theory and methodology. We conclude with recommendations for the establishment of indicators, the strengthening of data collection, and the support of research relating to these topics. This report draws heavily from working papers prepared by members of the Working Group for a workshop held January 16-17, 1997. The complete papers are appended in Appendices B through I.
Setting the Stage for Fatherhood: Male Fertility, Family Formation, and Fathering
Most people think of fatherhood in terms of men who are fathers, and ignore the vital demographic and social processes that bring men into fathering roles and influence the circumstances under which they act out those roles. We argue that a proper and complete understanding of fatherhood is impossible without recognizing and accounting for these larger processes; we argue that male fertility and union formation and dissolution are essential to understanding fatherhood. Our case rests on three points: historically, fatherhood has changed largely because of changes in these social and demographic processes; theoretically, these processes are integrally intertwined with the nature of fathering itself, and in terms of policy, opportunities for improving the lives of fathers will be missed if these processes are ignored.
Historical changes
Historical changes in marriage, fertility, and normative attitudes toward family behaviors have played a central role in reshaping fatherhood. The "disenfranchised dad" is not a result of changes that have affected men in stable marriages but a result of changes that have moved fatherhood increasingly out of the realm of stable marriage. Among the most important of these changes has been the decline in marriage and the increase in divorce. Marriage boomed following World War II but then began a steep decline during the 1960s and 1970s. Between 1964 and 1990, the median age at first marriage increased from 22.4 to 25.9 for men; from 20.4 to 24.0 for women, returning to patterns seen in the last century (Clarke, 1995). As marriage declined, nonmarital cohabitation increased. Although increases in cohabitation nearly offset the decline in marriage (Bumpass and Sweet, 1989), the effect was to substitute less stable unions for more stable ones. Marital instability was also rising dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s, sharpening a long-term trend that had been underway for most of this century (Cherlin, 1992; Thornton, 1994). Whereas only a small fraction of marriages contracted in the latter part of the nineteenth century ended in divorce, today demographers project that well over one-half will be terminated by marital discord (Martin and Bumpass, 1989; Bumpass, 1990). The likelihood of marriage following divorce has declined as well.
These changes in union formation and dissolution are closely intertwined with changes in the circumstances and timing of fertility. Postponement of marriage was accompanied by a surge in premarital sex, and a steady increase in the proportion of teenagers who were sexually active. As the interval between the initiation of sexual activity and marriage lengthened, childbearing outside of marriage increased dramatically. The proportion of children born to unmarried women rose steeply, from about 6% in 1960 to one-third in 1994 (Ventura et al., 1995; 1996). This trend was fueled in part by rising rates of nonmarital pregnancy, and in part by declining proportions of premaritally pregnant couples who opted for marriage (Ventura et al., 1995).
These trends had a dramatic impact on the circumstances of fathers and children. The percent of family groups with children that included two parents declined from 87 percent in 1970 to 72 percent in 1990; among black families this decline was even steeper, from 64 to 39 percent. The number of female-headed families with children increased, first as a result of increases in marital dissolution, and subsequently as a result of increased out-of-wedlock childbearing (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). The number of children involved in divorce each year approximately doubled between the early 1960s and the mid 1970s (Clarke, 1995). The proportion of children in single-parent families who were living with a never-married parent increased from 7% in 1970 to nearly one-third in 1990 (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). Declines in marriage, increased marital instability, and increased out-of-wedlock childbearing have acted as demographic wedges, tending toward the separation of men from their children.
The demographic changes have been accompanied by changes in values and attitudes concerning marriage, nonmarital sex and childbearing, and appropriate roles for men and women. Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been a dramatic weakening of the normative imperative to marry and to stay married, although most Americans continue to value marriage and family life (Thornton, 1989), expect to marry, and view divorce in negative terms. At the same time, the normative proscriptions against premarital sex, nonmarital cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have declined dramatically, with large numbers believing that living together before marriage is a good idea. Contraception is widely endorsed, and most Americans approve of abortion under at least some circumstances (Blendon, et al., 1993). These changes are intertwined with structural and ideological shifts in gender norms. The increasing participation of women in work outside the home has coincided with a new revolution in norms regarding family roles. Recent evidence suggests that both men and women are now increasingly rejecting the traditional roles and obligations of a conventional family. These normative changes have tended to undermine social support for the family and have greatly reduced the control of families and societal institutions over the personal decisions of individual women, men, and couples. (Thornton, 1989; 1995).
Theoretical Linkages
In addition to being historically important, the processes of union formation and dissolution and the processes of male fertility themselves have important theoretical implications for fathering. The nature of fathering roles, expectations, and behaviors are linked to (1) the circumstances in which biological fatherhood occurs and (2) the nature of men's relationships with the biological mother of their children.
(1) The circumstances of biological fatherhood. The timing of fatherhood in relation to the development of economic self-sufficiency, maturity and personal responsibility are important predictors of the personal resources that men bring to fatherhood. Traditional notions of what it means to be a father require a man to provide resources - normally earnings from a steady job - to support his children. If a young man becomes a father before he is able to do this, he cannot carry out this role. Ethnographic research (Furstenberg, 1995) suggests that even in the presence of strong emotional commitment to support the child, the inability to provide economic support seriously undermines a man's sense of competence as a father and ultimately his involvement with his child.
In addition, the process of becoming a father is likely to affect a father's investment in the child. Most births to unmarried couples (and a substantial portion of births to married couples as well) are the result of pregnancies reported as unintended by the mother. What little evidence exists on this question suggests that the quality of parenting and child well-being are related to the extent to which births were wanted and planned (Brown and Eisenberg, 1995). When children are the unintended consequence of sexual activity, as is often the case for children born to unmarried couples, they begin life at a disadvantage.
For men, the path to an unplanned birth has unique aspects that may exacerbate the implications for fathering. Modern methods of birth control and legal abortion have given women more control over their reproductive lives, but have not done the same for men. Aside from condoms and vasectomy, men have no direct control over contraception, and they have no legally recognized part in the decision to carry a pregnancy to term. The only foolproof way for a fertile man to prevent unplanned fatherhood is to abstain, an option that is poorly supported by peer norms and social controls. Men's relative lack of control over their reproduction may contribute to a reduced perception of responsibility for the children they father, as well as low levels of investment in children.
(2) Relationships with mothers. Research suggests that the nature of fathering is dramatically affected by the relationship between biological father and mother. Even in a stable, coresident family, it is sometimes a challenge for mothers and fathers to collaborate in providing care, affection, and material resources to their children. When mothers and father hold primary ties to other partners or family members, these ties often create obligations and expectations that conflict with parenting responsibilities. Thus, for example, if a young father lives with his mother and earns little money, he may contribute what he has to his mother's support rather than his baby's. If a divorced mother remarries, the stepfather may take on fathering responsibilities that marginalize the biological father's role.
Coresidence with children is closely linked with men's relationships to women and is a central factor in determining the nature of fathering roles. The amount of contact between noncustodial fathers and their children is alarmingly low, and typically decreases over time (Mott, 1993; Furstenberg, et al., 1983). Provision of child support is closely related to the amount of contact with the children. Not only do biological ties to children become less important when the children live elsewhere; any children who do reside with the father (e.g., those from a remarriage) receive more attention. Seltzer and Brandreth (1994) show that the attitudes of nonresident fathers toward paternity varies by resident child characteristics rather than biological linkages.
Even among resident or nonresident fathers, fathering is influenced by the status and history of the union with the mother. Nonresident divorced fathers have a different pattern of involvement with their children than never married fathers. Among coresident parents, it means something very different to be a stepparent compared to a biological parent (Marsiglio, 1995). We know that, in general, cohabiting couples are less committed to each other than are married couples, but know little about commitment in cohabiting couples with children, either to each other or to their children.
Relationship transitions are also important. The involvement of fathers in their children's lives shifts as families break apart, re-form, and add or subtract members. There is a large and growing body of literature which examines the consequences of relationship transitions for the development of children. If, as recent evidence (Wu, 1996) suggests, stability in family relationships is a critical factor affecting child outcomes, then it may be impossible to study the impact of fathering on child well-being without accounting for relationship transitions and their effect on the number of men who act as fathers to the child and ways in which they father.
Policy questions
The processes of male fertility and family formation are critical to policies and programs aimed at strengthening fathers in two ways. First, because they set the stage for how fathers function in their families, understanding them can help to improve and target interventions for strengthening father involvement. For example, one might apply a very different "fix" for a family formed through coercive sex than for one emerging out of a loving and committed relationship. Second, they provide additional points of intervention for fatherhood programs. Too often, current policies address problems only after families fail, an approach that is too late and often does not include the male in definitions of the family unit. Explicit attention to preventing unintended births and supporting stable unions can support fathers by improving the circumstances in which fathering occurs. Key questions for policy include:
(1) What facilitates or deters paternity establishment when a child is born out-of-wedlock? Recently significant strides have been made to establish formal paternity for fathers in unwed families. The paternity establishment rate is now near 50%, but welfare reform laws are exerting pressure to push the rate to much higher levels. Results of an Arkansas survey of poor pregnant women found that 80% of the women wanted to establish paternity but less than 40% did so (Welsh, 1995). We know little about the meaning of this new step in family formation and about its determinants and consequences. It is very likely that the nature of relationship between biological mother and father and the sequence of events that led to the birth play a significant role. Does paternity establishment act to foster the continuation of relationships and the stable involvement of fathers or does it act as an economic threat to men driving them away from their families?
(2) Are there ways to strengthen men's ability to control their own reproduction without undermining women's ability to control their reproductive lives? Is there a demand for effective reversible contraception for men? Could improved male-oriented or couple-oriented reproductive health services reduce the rate of unplanned births or strengthen men's involvement in deciding how to resolve an unintended pregnancy? What is the impact of well-designed programs encouraging abstinence among both young men and women? How could such programs be designed to strengthen social support for abstinence among peer groups? Can abstinence messages be combined with contraceptive messages? Conversely, to what extent does unplanned birth result from nonvoluntary sex (either directly or indirectly) and what can be done about this?
(3) Are there ways to improve the stability of relationships among couples with children? Ron Mincy (1995) has introduced the concept of the "fragile family" - an unmarried, disadvantaged couple with a child that is trying to develop and sustain meaningful and beneficial roles as parents. He makes a strong case that around the time of pregnancy and birth, the right kind of support could strengthen these families and greatly improve the well-being of children. Mincy argues that current policies that emphasize child support payment above all else undermine fathers' ability to sustain relationships with the mothers of their children and undermine their ability to succeed as fathers. Others point to positive associations between child support payment and father involvement found by research studies and suggest that child support policies may have beneficial effects. We need a better understanding of how policies affect the stability of relationships between mothers and fathers, and how those effects may differ in different economic and social contexts.
(4) What kinds of policies create incentives and disincentives for couples with children to marry and to stay together? In today's world, married people often receive different treatment by the government than single people do. Married individuals face different tax rates than they would if they were not married. In some states, poor married parents are not eligible for programs that are available to poor single parents. Social Security provides survivor benefits only to widows and widowers who were legally married. Age requirements limit the ability of pregnant teens to marry. Understanding how public laws and policies affect individuals' and couples' personal decisions to marry and stay married may provide an important lever for improving the lives of fathers and children. These questions are particularly important - and researchable - in light of new welfare reforms creating variation from state to state in the incentives and disincentives that policies provide for marriage.
(5) After divorce, how do subsequent union formation and fertility affect fathers' economic support and involvement with children from previous unions, and how do child support, custody and visitation policies affect subsequent union formation and fertility? New family configurations involving children from multiple unions are incompletely institutionalized (Cherlin, 1992). A better understanding of the consequences of divorce and subsequent family formation for children and parents, and of the effects of policies on family transitions is needed to inform the evolution of policies and norms that best serve the interests of families.
Research and data addressing these policy questions must be especially sensitive to the substantial variation in male fertility and family patterns among subgroups of our population and the processes that have contributed to this variation. It is very likely that the answers to policy questions will differ depending on the economic, social and cultural circumstances that characterize individual lives and communities. Understanding these sources of difference can make a major contribution to the formulation of effective policy.
A Model of Biological and Social Fatherhood
The distinction between biological and social fathering is critical for understanding how fertility and unions affect fatherhood. As Figure 1 illustrates, fertility is one of several pathways through which men can become social fathers. Fertility creates biological fatherhood, a status that is fixed regardless of how paternal responsibilities are defined or carried out, and revocable only through death of the child (Appendix C). Because women, not men, give birth, establishment of biological paternity in the eyes of the larger world can be problematic. In previous times, strict limitation of reproduction to marriage provided a mechanism for attributing paternity. Today, the process of paternity establishment for the growing number of births that occur outside of marriage is a critical link between biological fatherhood and legally recognized biological fatherhood.
Social fatherhood, by contrast, is not a fixed status. Social fatherhood, which is often referred to as fathering, includes all the child rearing roles, activities, duties, and responsibilities that fathers are expected to perform and fulfill. Involvement in these roles and activities will inevitably ebb and flow over a man's life. As Figure 1 shows, biological fatherhood is only one of several paths to social fathering. Unions formed and maintained with women who are mothers - whether of the man's children or of someone else's children - are another critical path, one that changes in marriage and fertility patterns have made increasingly important. Other paths might include adoption (which confers the legal status of a biological parent), and adopting fathering-like roles for children of relatives or friends. These "other" paths to social fatherhood can be important, but are outside the scope of our working paper. In the following sections, we review what is known about the processes of male fertility and union formation and dissolution, and what we need to know to have a better understanding of fatherhood.
Male Fertility
The process of becoming a biological father begins with an act of sexual intercourse and the nonuse or ineffective use of contraception(1). To discern how men become fathers, it is therefore critical to understand better the sexual and contraceptive behavior of males, the motivation underlying these behaviors and the factors influencing them.
Whether or not an act of intercourse is protected by contraception is the result of a complicated set of conditions involving two people. First, either partner can use a method of contraception. Men can use condoms or withdrawal; women can use a wide range of methods. Indeed both partners can use protection although this is rare in spite of public health admonitions about the desirability of dual method use to prevent both STD transmission and unintended pregnancies. More frequently, one partner uses contraception while the other does not, implying that the decision to use contraception involves some implicit or explicit bargaining between the partners. Research results indicate that among young men and women, the use of male methods of contraception is more frequent than among older men and women, and that over the course of a relationship there may be a transition from the use of condoms to the use of effective female methods of contraception (Ku, Sonenstein and Pleck, 1994).
A second important condition affecting whether contraception will be used is whether or not the partners desire pregnancy. Miller (1986) has suggested the use of the term "proception" to describe attempts to achieve conception. The conscious choice not to use contraception because pregnancy is desired should be differentiated from the non-use of contraception for other reasons. Just as contraception can involve either partner, proceptive behavior can be jointly adopted by both partners or individually by either the male or female. Underlying this distinction between non-contraception and proception are the motives of both partners. Very little is known about the proceptive behavior of either men or women in the U.S. although some research has been conducted on couples who have difficulty conceiving pregnancies (Marsiglio, 1998).
The bulk of fertility research has focused on contraceptive behavior because its absence often leads to unintended pregnancy, which has been defined as an important social problem in the U.S. (Brown and Eisenberg, 1995 ). Thus in most of this research proceptive behavior is treated as an exception. Work has been conducted on the motivations of men and women to have children, but it has been limited to married couples (e.g., Beach, Campbell, and Townes, 1979; Beckman, 1984; Fried, Hofferth and Udry, 1980; Miller, 1995; Miller and Pasta, 1996). This research shows that in aggregate: married men and women have similar desires for children; most couples agree in desires but a substantial minority disagree; and disagreement leads to delays in childbearing. Regarding the proceptive behavior of unmarried males, there is very little research evidence. Some anecdotes and ethnographic research suggest that nonmarital childbearing in low income communities may be partially the result of the male partner's desire to sire children to prove their sexual potency, to gain status with their peers or to ensure a next generation when mortality and institutionalization rates of young males are high (Anderson, 1989). Since there are currently no data on the intendedness of births from the unmarried father's perspective, the generalizability of these assertions is not known.
Another process that is important in the fertility context are decisions to become sterilized. Opting for sterilization provides a permanent contraceptive guarantee that biological paternity will no longer occur. Many older couples in the U.S. turn to sterilization once they have achieved or exceeded their desired family size. During the last two decades sterilization has become the most widely used contraceptive method used by married couples in the U.S. (Miller, Pasta and Shain, 1991). While females are more likely to undergo the procedure than males, vasectomies are fairly common among men, especially older white males. Data from 1988 indicate that 31 percent of women ages 15-44 were surgically sterilized and 17 percent of their male partners had been sterilized (Mosher and Pratt, 1990). The 1991 National Survey of Men found that more than one fifth of married males ages 35-39 were sterilized. Trend data indicate that while the incidence of male sterilization has grown from the early 1970s, its increase has not been as rapid as increases in female sterilization. It is important to understand why men are less likely to undergo sterilization than women because vasectomies are less costly and physically complicated than female sterilization (Forste, Tanfer and Tedrow, 1995).
A second gate on the route to fatherhood that some men pass through involves the decision about carrying the pregnancy to term or terminating it if the pregnancy was unintended. In many instances the male partner may participate in these considerations and the decision reflects the shared wishes of both partners. When the male and female partners disagree, legal precedent has established that the decision rests with the female in consultation with her physician. In some cases the male partner is never told about a pregnancy while it is occurring, and his opinions about pregnancy options are never solicited. How a man's relationship to his child is colored by the nature of his participation in decisions leading to unintended pregnancy and birth is an empirical question: there are very few studies of unintended fertility among women and none involving men (Brown and Eisenberg, 1995). However, anecdotal evidence suggests that not wanting the child is an important factor in many men's failure to pay child support.
Information about how women negotiate the sequence of reproductive behaviors described above is available but evidence about the male partner's fertility behavior is scant. In the following section, we review what we need to know about male reproductive behaviors and the factors influencing these behaviors. Recommendations about research priorities follow.
Trends in nonmarital sex, unprotected sex, and unintended pregnancies and births.
While the National Center for Health Statistics has periodically collected data on women's reproductive behaviors and fertility outcomes through the National Survey of Family Growth, there is no comparable effort for men. Over the last 15 years a number of ad hoc, researcher-generated national surveys have been launched that provide information about male reproductive behavior--The National Health and Social Life Survey (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael and Michaels (1994), The National Survey of Men (Tanfer, 1993), The National Survey of Adolescent Males (Sonenstein, Pleck and Ku, 1989), The AIDS Surveys (Catania et al., 1992), and The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. In addition, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, the National Survey of Children and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey included some questions about sexual activity, contraception and fertility. Many of these surveys were limited to adolescents and/or young adults, and few included fertility as a primary focus.
These studies have provided valuable information about trends in male sexual and contraceptive behavior, showing that:
age at first intercourse has decreased over the last several decades for males but the decline has not been as steep as the decline among young women. Thus the age gap between male's earlier initiation into sex compared to female's has been narrowed.
Rates of nonmarital sexual activity have increased for males as the age of marriage has increased and the age of first intercourse has decreased. Again differentials between males and females have narrowed. Among both males and females the number of lifetime sexual partners has increased.
The use of contraception has risen, and the increase is especially marked in males' use of condoms. The emergence of HIV and other STDs as major public health concerns have fueled efforts to encourage condom use. These efforts have shown some success since the reported used of condoms has risen significantly among males since the early 1980s, especially among teenage males and unmarried males.
There are no reliable data on trends in pregnancies or births to males nor about the intendedness of these pregnancies or births. Vital statistics data collected by the birth registration system could potentially provide evidence of the age and other characteristics of the fathers of children born in the U.S., however these data are biased by the incomplete reporting of information. One in six birth records contain no information about the age of babies' fathers; this proportion rises to over two-fifths for births to teenagers (Landry, 1995). Currently, there is no institutionalized survey that provides information about the fertility and fertility-related behaviors of American men.
Recommendation: In order to identify secular shifts in how men become fathers, basic descriptive information needs to be collected periodically about their rates of sexual activity, their patterns of contraceptive use, the pregnancies that they contribute to, and the outcomes of these pregnancies. Furthermore information is needed on the males' perceptions of their own and their partners' views of the intendedness of these pregnancies and births. To accomplish this objective, the National Center for Health Statistics in cooperation with other agencies should develop an approach to institutionalizing the collection of data about male fertility, either by adding to existing surveys or by launching independent efforts. As part of this approach:
methodological work should be conducted to develop reliable and valid approaches to measuring male fertility behavior and outcomes;
for topics where valid proxy information can be collected, existing surveys of women should collect more information about their male partners;
the appropriate age range for fertility surveys of males should be considered. Surveys of women have been tied to the peak ages of reproduction, but for males the window of reproductivity is much wider;
the birth registration system needs to improve the completeness of data collected about fathers; and
an expansion of the National Survey of Family Growth to include men should be pilot tested.
Motivations and attitudes.
Very little work has examined the motivation or predispositions of males towards the reproductive behaviors we are examining: sex, proception, contraception, and post-pregnancy behavior. Little is known descriptively about the kinds of predispositions that U.S. males have towards reproductive behaviors, the development of motivation in individuals, or the link between motivation and behavior. The largest body of research has been done on men's motivation to contracept, especially to use condoms, primarily as a result of public health concern about the AIDS epidemic (e.g., Grady, Klepinger, Billy and Tanfer, 1993; Pleck, Sonenstein and Ku, 1993). Other studies have examined perceived responsibility for contraception among men, and found that most men profess that contraception is a joint responsibility (Marsiglio and Menaghan, 1987; Sheehan, Ostwald and Rothenberger, 1986; Pleck, Sonenstein and Ku, 1993). More attention must be paid to men's own motivation to contracept and to avoid contraception, and their perceptions of their partner's motivation. Further work is needed to understand the intersection of motivation to avoid pregnancy with the motivation to avoid STD transmission. Most existing research has concentrated on teenage males or slightly older cohorts. There is a need to understand better the contraceptive motivation of adult unmarried males.
Other understudied areas include males' motivation to engage in sexual intercourse versus abstinence, to impregnate partners, to have children, to terminate an unintended pregnancy or to obtain a vasectomy. Unmarried men, both those in stable and transient relationships, are the least studied population in terms of their views of pregnancy and childbearing. Yet it is these men that are associated with the pregnancies, births and children that are viewed as social problems in the U.S. Their attitudes and predispositions regarding these reproductive behaviors are likely to influence the probability that they will become fathers either unintentionally or intentionally.
Recommendation: Males' motivation and perceptions influence males' readiness to engage in nonmarital sexual activity, to contracept, to impregnate partners and to father children. Relying solely on studies of females' motivation will only provide a partial understanding of fertility trends. To develop a more complete understanding of male motivation and its links to behavior:
Research on the motivation of males to engage in sexual activity, to contracept, to impregnate partners, to father children, to obtain vasectomies and to terminate unintended pregnancies should be conducted.
Methodological studies to develop better measures of motivation in these areas are needed.
In-depth studies of special populations which focus on theory building and a more comprehensive understanding of the motivational underpinnings of reproductive behavior should be conducted.
Measures of motivation with known levels of reliability and validity should be included in representative sample surveys of males like the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, and other studies that could measure the fertility behavior of men.
What factors influence male reproductive behaviors?
Sources of influence on reproductive behaviors are complex, and a wide range of theoretical frameworks have been employed to characterize the precursors of reproductive behavior, primarily among females. With some adaptation these conceptual models can undoubtedly be applied to male behavior also. These frameworks selectively emphasize various influences on behavior including biological factors, individual characteristics and predispositions, partner dynamics, normative influences from family, peer group, community and religious agencies, gender role ideology, and other cultural messages from mass media, the polity and the economic market.
(1) Biological Factors. While there is recognition that human beings, like other primates, are physiologically programmed to engage in sexual behavior, there is surprisingly little work that examines the contribution of physiological and biological factors to sexual behavior in either males or females. It can be argued that a comprehensive understanding of reproductive behavior must acknowledge and incorporate the influence of innate dispositions on behavior as well as the potential for reverse causality. Very little research on reproductive behaviors factors in the influence of physiological factors, although the technology is becoming available to identify genetic markers, to measure hormone levels and obtain other bio-measures from subjects of behavioral research.
Recommendation: Basic research is needed on the links between physiological traits and reproductive behaviors for men, and also for women.
(2) Family Influences. The emergence of male and female orientations to reproduction appear early in development and seem to result from the complex interaction of physiology, individual history, family experience, and normative and cultural influences. Gender differences in orientation to nurturing children, for example, emerge at ages 4 through 6 (Miller, 1995). The characteristics of family of origin--family structure, religiosity, education levels, social class, and employment status of parents, for example--are known to be associated with age of initiation into sexual activity, contraceptive use, and experience with early pregnancies and births among teenage females and males.
Recommendation: Longitudinal studies of both boys and girls are needed that begin either at birth or soon thereafter to follow children into early adulthood to gain a better understanding of the factors leading to the development of adult expectations and behaviors regarding sex, pregnancy, childbearing and childraising.
(3) Gender role ideology. Among teenage males reproductive behaviors show a clear correlation with the views that they hold about how men should behave. Males who espouse more traditional views of masculinity are more likely to initiate sex early, to use condoms less frequently, and to have more sexual partners (Pleck, Sonenstein and Ku, 1993) More research is needed on the development of gender role ideology and its influence on reproductive and parenting behavior. Greater attention should be paid to changes in gender roles within and outside sexual relationships.
Recommendation: In sample surveys containing measures of reproductive behavior, more information should be collected about gender role attitudes. In particular, greater information about men and women's attitudes towards male gender roles need to be added to the conventional measures used to gauge attitudes towards women's gender roles.
(4) Peer and Community Influences. The social contexts that individuals live in provide continuous socialization into and reinforcement of the group's expectations regarding behavior. For example, the attitudes and norms of a young man's peers will likely influence his reproductive behavior. A particularly promising line of fertility research has examined the contextual effects of various normative environments on reproductive behaviors of both males and females (Billy, 1994). These studies have been facilitated by two technological advances: (1) the development of linked data sets that are multi-level and provide measures of neighborhood, school, peer group, and polity characteristics and (2) a burgeoning literature on hierarchical statistical approaches.
Recommendation: Efforts to create multilevel data sets should be supported. The feasibility of adding contextual measures to sample surveys that are currently freestanding should be explored.
(5) Research strategies. Existing data sets offer further opportunities to test explanations of male fertility behavior as well as to examine the links between these behaviors, relationship dynamics and parenting outcomes. Additional analyses of these data from the U.S. and other countries should be supported. This strategy takes advantage of the considerable investment that has already been made in data collection. Consideration could be given to developing a network of researchers to foster collaboration and facilitate multiple tests of research questions across data sets.
Recommendation: Existing data sets should be thoroughly mined for the insights they provide about male reproductive behavior.
It is desirable to complement large scale survey strategies with scientifically rigorous in-depth studies of smaller samples. Such studies could contribute to theory development and theory testing. They could use a range of promising methodologies including but not limited to ethnography, indepth interviewing, focus groups, or simulation games. They could also be linked to the large scale sample surveys to provide multi-method testing of explanatory theories.
Recommendation: Data collection strategies should not be limited to sample surveys. A range of studies using a variety of methods should be supported and offer the best opportunity to capture and test explanations of male fertility behavior.
Male and female reproductive behavior is the result of a long developmental process which is influenced by a complex array of biological, social and cultural forces. To understand current behavior, one must comprehend what has happened before. Therefore, we believe that a longitudinal study that follows children into adult roles would provide an important opportunity to comprehend how adult reproductive behaviors are influenced by a variety of developmental forces. It would also permit an examination of how events-- such as school completion or incarceration--influence reproductive behavior.
Recommendation: A longitudinal study of children--boys and girls--should be begun that traces their development over the course of their childhood and their transitions into adult roles. Consideration should be given to starting with a birth cohort. Although our current focus is on transitions into reproductive roles, there would be greater payoff in taking a more comprehensive view of psycho-social development.
Union Formation and Dissolution
As discussed previously, the formation and dissolution of relationships with women have a profound effect on men's roles as social fathers. Cohabitation, marriage, separation, divorce, and remarriage influence whether a man lives in the same household as his biological children, his emotional and social interactions with them, and his economic support. These processes also lead men to become social fathers to the biological children of other men. The dramatic changes that have occurred in when and how men form sexual unions and in the stability of these unions through the child-rearing years underscore the importance of these processes for understanding fatherhood. This section reviews what we know about the meaning of different types of unions and the determinants of union formation and dissolution, and suggests needed data and research directions.
The Meaning of Marriage and Cohabitation
Marriage is characterized by a public, legally-binding, long-term commitment by an individual to another individual and to their union. The marriage contract explicitly includes sexual fidelity and mutual support, even during bad times. Virtually all married men and women say, when asked, that they expect to be monogamous and that they expect their spouse to be faithful to them (Tabulations from the National Health and Social Life Survey, 1992). Marriage vows include the promise to stay together, no matter what happens, until the union is broken by the death of one of the parties. Of course, this is not what happens to many marriages; according to the best guesses of demographers who study marriage well over half of all recent marriages will end in divorce rather than death (Martin and Bumpass 1989). But this is not the ending that people expect when they marry, and the vast majority of all married men and women think that their marriage will last.
Marriage is by its very nature a public commitment between two adults. The public commitment brings with it public recognition of the privileged and special relationship between husband and wife. Marriage as an institution is supported by social norms, by organized religion, and by laws and public policies. Almost all religions sanctify marriage and promote the establishment and maintenance of family relationships and the expression of love, intimacy, and childbearing within them. They also discourage sexual intimacy and childbearing outside marriage (Aldous 1983).
People who expect to be part of a couple for their entire lives--unless something awful happens--organize their lives differently than people who expect to be single. The marriage contract, because it is long term, encourages husbands and wives to make decisions jointly and to function as part of a team, and to develop specialized skills which benefit the couple. Marriage assumes sharing of economic and social resources and what we can think of as co-insurance. Married couples benefit--as do cohabiting couples--from economies of scale. Couples living together spend much less per capita on many of the costs of living, especially housing and food. Marriage connects people to other individuals, to other social groups (such as their in-laws), and to other social institutions which are themselves a source of benefits. Some consensus exists that marriage improves women's material well-being and men's emotional well-being, in comparison with being single (Waite, 1995).
Cohabitation has become a more popular union status but its defining characteristics are not yet fully understood. It has some but not all of the characteristics of marriage. Cohabitation does not generally imply a lifetime commitment to stay together, and cohabiting unions are much less stable than marriages. Research using data from the National Survey of Families and Households has shown that 90 percent of cohabiting couples either marry or separate within five years (Bumpass, Sweet and Cherlin, 1991). Evidence from Canada suggests that about half of cohabiting couples separate and half marry (Wu and Balakrishnan, 1995).
Cohabitants are much less likely than married couples to pool financial resources, more likely to assume that each partner is responsible for supporting himself or herself financially, more likely to spend free time separately, and less likely to agree on the future of the relationship (Blumstein and Schwartz 1983). This uncertainty makes both investment in the relationship and specialization with this partner much riskier than in marriage, and so reduces them. Cohabitants seem to bring different, more individualistic values to the union than do those who marry (Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, and Waite, 1995). Whereas marriage connects individuals to other important social institutions, such as organized religion, cohabitation seems to distance them from these institutions (Stolzenberg et al. 1995; Thornton, Axinn, and Hill 1992).
Very little is known about other types of stable relationships between men and women who may even have children together but who live apart. In other cultures, such as in the Caribbean, these might be designated "visiting" relationships. Most surveys do not count these relationships and it is fair to say that social expectations about the mutual rights and obligations for individuals in these relationships are not commonly understood.
Changes in family law and in societal norms have changed the meaning of marriage in recent decades. Until quite recently "husband" as a legal status historically carried a different set of rights and obligations than the legal status of "wife." This view of marriage was part of a larger package of supports and restrictions. Legal marriages could generally only be dissolved, if at all, only by egregious breach of the marriage contract. In some states, consent of both parties, or a lengthy period of legal separation, was required to obtain a divorce. We have moved from this view toward a view of marriage as a contract that reflects an agreement between the individuals involved, an agreement that they are free to structure in any way they wish. This view accepts as valid prenuptial agreements that absolve spouses from any continuing financial obligation for each other in the event of divorce, and permits no-fault divorce at the wish of either spouse regardless of the other spouse's desires or adherence to the marriage contract.
The legal view of marriage as an arrangement that lasts only as long as it suits both partners undercuts the supports that allow individuals to invest themselves in their marriage. In a world in which at least half of all marriages end in divorce, a world in which both spouses are expected to be financially self-sufficient within a fairly short period after divorce, it becomes risky to put much time, money or energy into one's marriage and rational to invest in oneself or in portable skills and goods. So the structure of incentives has changed in a way that weakens marriage as an institution (Weitzman, 1985). Married couples are more likely to dissolve their marriage, all else equal, if they live in a state with relatively liberal divorce laws than if they live in a state with relatively restrictive divorce laws (Lillard, Brien and Waite, 1995).
Recommendations: Because of the shifts in the types of unions men and women form, we need better information about these relationships-- about new formulations of marriage, cohabitation and other types of relationships. Therefore we need to: Conduct both substantive and methodological research concerning the meanings of different kinds of unions today, including marriage, cohabitation, and non-coresidential unions. What do people expect from different kinds of unions and what expectations and preferences motivate their choices? How and why does this vary among subgroups of our population?
Conduct research on the historical trends in union formation and dissolution, with particular emphasis on explicating the explanations and meanings of those changes.
What influences the formation and dissolution of different types of unions?
Given the historical centrality of the institution of marriage, it should not be surprising that decisions about union formation and dissolution are intertwined with, influenced by, and consequential for numerous other dimensions of life, including the economy, employment, schooling, economic and psychological well-being, and religious institutions. Furthermore, marriage is frequently an intergenerational process in that parents are generally influential in decisions about dating, courtship, and union formation.
Many dimensions of the parental family influence the union formation and dissolution experience of their children. Across a range of family issues, including premarital sex, cohabitation, marital timing, and divorce, the values and attitudes of parents influence the attitudes and behaviors of their children (Thornton, 1992; Axinn and Thornton, 1996; Moore et al., 1986). The union formation and dissolution experiences of parents are related to the attitudes and experiences of their children (Axinn and Thornton, 1996; Amato and Booth, 1991; Miller et al., 1987; Lye and Waldron 1993; Moore and Stief, 1991). For example, parental divorce is associated with more positive attitudes toward premarital sex and greater frequency of sexual intercourse among unmarried males and females. These intergenerational effects appear to hold for both males and females. Parental economic standing is positively related to age at marriage for both men and women. High levels of divorce and dissolution for this generation of families may imply fundamental change in the divorce and dissolution probabilities of the next generation. Although we know that the parental generation influences the union formation and dissolution experiences of young people, the causal mechanisms producing these effects are not well understood. It is not clear how genetic factors interact with social influences, and what social mechanisms are responsible for intergenerational effects. Little is known, as well, about how siblings and other family members influence union formation and dissolution.
Union formation and dissolution are also intimately interconnected with other dimensions of an individual's life. Premarital sexual experience--including its occurrence, pace of initiation, frequency, number of partners (as well as attitudes)--is strongly related to age at first dating and age at first going steady (and perhaps as well to the timing of cohabitation and marriage) (Miller et al.,1986; Thornton, 1990). It is not clear whether these strong correlations in the initiation of various steps in the courtship and union formation process are the result of genetic or social forces, and, if social, the ways in which the social forces operate.
Education and employment are very important elements in the union formation process. Young people who are performing well in high school and who have ambitious educational aspirations are less involved sexually than are young people with lower school performance and lesser aspirations in high school (Zelnik et al., 1981; Moore and Waite, 1977). School accumulation (years of schooling ) increases the rate of entrance into marriage while decreasing the rate of cohabitation for men (Goldscheider and Waite, 1986; Teachman et al., 1987; Blossfeld and Huinink, 1991; Hoem, 1986; Thornton et al., 1995). The importance of employment, careers, and earning capacity in defining the ability to marry seems to be particularly important for men, although it may becoming more important for women as well (Oppenheimer, 1994; Oppenheimer and Lew, 1995; Oppenheimer et al., 1996; Lichter et.al., 1991).
Other types of life experience, such as military service, incarceration, and involvement in illegal activity, may also influence patterns of union formation and dissolution. These experiences disproportionately affect the lives of men, and we know little about their effects.
Personal characteristics and attitudes are also important. High levels of personal religious involvement and commitment are associated with lower levels of acceptance of divorce, cohabitation, premarital sex, unmarried childbearing, not marrying, and remaining childless (Thornton and Camburn, 1989; Sweet and Bumpass, 1990; Lye and Waldron, 1993; Klassen et al., 1989). Religiosity--both attendance and importance--also reduces the cohabitation rate and increases the marriage rate (Thornton et al., 1992), and reduces marital instability. However, we know little about the factors producing these effects.
Union formation and union dissolution behavior are associated in important ways (Lillard et al., 1995; Axinn and Thornton, 1992). Cohabitation is strongly and positively associated with divorce. It is likely that this empirical correlation is the product both of cohabitation being selective of people who have higher risks of divorce and cohabitation itself increasing the risks of divorce. Unfortunately, we still know very little about the precise nature of either the forces selecting people into cohabitation or marriage or the ways in which cohabitation experience might change people's marital stability. Given that the correlation between cohabitation and divorce is substantial, the sorting out of the causal interconnections promises to provide substantial information about the nature and meaning of cohabitation, marriage, and divorce.
Another area where knowledge is very limited is couple negotiation and decision-making. Union formation always involves two people, who must agree to enter a partnership and what kind to form. Yet the vast majority of the research on the formation of marriages and cohabiting unions focuses on the behavior of only one of the partners, usually the woman. Single sex models--or any research focused on one half of the pair--can tell us little about the ways the couples negotiate the future of the relationship and the terms under which it will continue. Similarly, research on divorce based on the behavior of individuals tells us little about the ways that couples decide to end their marriage. Any understanding of the role of couple decision-making in marriage or cohabitation requires a fundamentally different approach than has been used to date. This might involve intensive interviewing of both partners in dating couples, as only one of a number of possible approaches. We know very little about appropriate research techniques to shed light on these inherently dyadic processes.
Recommendations:
Conduct research on the causes and consequences of union formation and dissolution. Of particular importance are the causal processes and mechanisms that lead people into unions, influence them to form different types of unions, and result in the dissolution of their unions. Among the causal factors where additional research is needed are: the legal system and public policy; parents; siblings; religion; values and attitudes; physiological and genetic factors; education; and the work place.
Study the ways in which individuals and couples make decisions about the formation and dissolution of unions. How do individuals negotiate with potential and current partners? What are the processes leading up to union formation and dissolution?
Research agenda and data needs
As union formation and dissolution have evolved in recent years, the data requirements for describing and explaining behavior and trends have become more complex and rigorous. When coresidence, sex, childbearing, and childrearing were all primarily centered around the institution of marriage, it was straightforward to limit the unions of interest to marriage and to focus attention exclusively on entrance into and exit out of marriage. However, the amount of action in these domains that is occurring outside of marriage makes it increasingly difficult to justify scholarly studies of union formation and dissolution in the United States that do not extend themselves beyond marriage and divorce. The number and types of relationships that can and do exist between two individuals is much broader and more fluid than simply marriage and even cohabitation. Focus groups conducted among adolescents indicate a range of different types of relationships, from the more traditional "boyfriend/girlfriend" with sexual monogamy, to unions described as "associates," where sexual intercourse is the common denominator that binds the two individuals (Anderson, 1989; Sugland, Wilder and Chandra, 1996). Thus, studies which solely address unions formed by marriage or co-residence fail to address a broader context of interpersonal relationships. Such relationships have important implications for fatherhood and the well-being of children born into those unions.
Recommendation: Ensure that data collections focusing on union formation and dissolution be designed to include information about a wide range of union types. All union formation and dissolution studies should obtain full marital and cohabitation histories. For some studies it will be necessary to obtain extensive information about additional types of unions as well.
While we argue that the concept of marriage is no longer sufficient to capture the concept of union, we also believe that it continues to be a primary concept in studies of union formation and dissolution. This means that empirical studies need to study the processes leading into marriage and those leading out of marriage. It also means that as a minimum we need to obtain full marital histories in empirical studies, including dates of all marriages, separations, and remarriages.
We also believe that it is important to collect information on cohabiting unions. This is important because these unions involve several of the central dimensions historically associated with marriage, including coresidence, intimacy, and economic interchange. They also frequently involve childbearing and childrearing. In addition, they frequently are part of the process leading up to marriage itself. The growing importance of cohabitation makes it important for studies of union formation and dissolution to ascertain full histories of individual entrance into and exit out of such unions. Furthermore, the growing acceptance of nonmarital cohabitation makes it possible to collect this information successfully--something that has now been accomplished in multiple large-scale studies.
Recommendation: Wherever possible, basic studies of union formation and dissolution should ascertain complete marriage and cohabitation histories, including dates of all entrances into cohabitation and marriage, all separations from cohabitation and marriage, and all divorces.
We believe that qualitative studies can be valuable resources in increasing our understanding of union formation and dissolution. There is relatively little qualitative work on the formation of stable unions and the factors that serve to maintain such unions over time. The existing work suggests that notions about gender roles, sexual identity and ideology, cultural scripts regarding male/female relations, peer groups/family support networks and contextual factors (e.g., economic opportunities), significantly influence both the initiation of unions, the type of unions that are formed, and the stability of unions over time. Qualitative work shows that men and women (and even extended kin) often assess the worth of the male as potential spouse or long-term partner in terms of the man's ability to be a breadwinner. Less stable or transitory unions tend to form when the female (and extended family networks) sees the male as "not having much to offer" and the male feels unable to uphold his responsibility as provider (Stack, 1974; Anderson, 1990; Sullivan, 1993). Qualitative research can help to document how males (and females) define a "union" as well as the various types/range of unions that males (females) tend to form, how types of unions differ, which types are most acceptable to men (versus women), what social and cultural meaning is attributed to different unions, the specific purpose for forming certain types of unions (e.g., physical versus emotional satisfaction) and what kind of satisfaction (emotional or otherwise) men (and women) derive from certain unions. One could also explore under which types of unions childbearing is acceptable/unacceptable, appropriate/inappropriate, and whether there are unique differences across race/ethnicity or socioeconomic subgroups and the life course for all of the above.
Recommendation: Conduct additional data collection and analysis using qualitative approaches. Expand the utilization of multi-method approaches in studying union formation and dissolution.
Historically, our major efforts for monitoring trends in union formation and dissolution have focused on marriage and divorce. Our primary data sources for this purpose have been the vital registration system, the decennial census, the annual Current Population Surveys, and the occasional marital history supplements to the Current Population Survey. However, while these data sources have provided solid information about marriage, separation, and divorce, they collect limited cohabitation information and the cohabitation data they do collect do not include histories of entrance into and exit out of cohabitation. Because of this, they are not fully sufficient as monitors of levels and trends of union formation and dissolution.
Much of our knowledge concerning the determinants of union formation and dissolution comes from studies that include panel or life history components. Among the studies that have been particularly valuable for this purpose are the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, High School and Beyond, National Study of Families and Households, the National Survey of Family Growth, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children. These studies are maximally useful when they collect full marital and cohabitational histories from participants. Much can be learned from further analyses of these datasets; and much more from expanding them to include information that could improve our understanding of union formation and dissolution.
Recommendation: Expand and maintain data collection systems for monitoring future trends in union formation and dissolution. Current data collection efforts should be expanded and supplemented to include information that permits monitoring attitudes, values, and behavior and more information useful for studying the causes and consequences of union formation and dissolution.
While currently existing and planned data sets are valuable for studying union formation and dissolution, we believe that each of them are limited in ways that restrict their usefulness for answering many of the important substantive questions we have about the causes and consequences of union formation and dissolution patterns. Since most of these data sets were designed for other purposes, they are missing some of the key elements for definitive studies of union formation and dissolution. Serious consideration should be given to designing and fielding a new study designed explicitly for the purpose of understanding union formation and dissolution. Such a study would be longitudinal, and begin early in the life course; it would include both males and females and address the gendered nature of relationships; it would include a broad range of determinants and processes of union formation and dissolution, including genetic influences and decision-making processes; it would ideally be designed to capture intergenerational, sibling, and peer influences; and it would include a qualitative component.
Recommendation: Plan and field a new study that is designed explicitly to examine union formation and dissolution. Such a study should be designed explicitly to study causes and consequences, negotiation and decisionmaking, and the processes leading up to the formation and dissolution of unions.
The Interrelationships of Male Fertility and Unions
Male fertility is closely intertwined with the sexual relationships men have with women. Although biological fatherhood may require no more than sexual intercourse with a fecund woman, chances of a man having sex, impregnating a woman, and becoming a biological father are all influenced by the nature and dynamics of his relationships with women. These factors also affect the chances of his being legally recorded on the birth certificate, recognized informally as the child's father, or given access to the child. Similarly, the occurrence of pregnancy and birth can have an important influence on the course of male-female relationships. Research on these interrelationships is challenging. Not only do fertility and unions affect each other, but both reflect, in part, the personal characteristics of the individuals involved -- e.g., religiosity, traditional value orientations, and socioeconomic status. We still have a very incomplete understanding of how personal characteristics, relationship dynamics, and fertility interact throughout the life course, and the gaps in our understanding are particularly wide for men.
Effect of relationships on fertility.
There is substantial evidence that nature of male-female relationships affects fertility and fertility-related behaviors, but most of the evidence has been accumulated through studies of women. Sexual relationships have both demographic and interactive dimensions. The key demographic parameters are legal status, coresidence (cohabiting versus visiting unions) and union duration. These, in turn, may be associated with interactive characteristics such as commitment, communication, emotional intimacy, power, and social embeddedness. Each of these dimensions can affect sexual behavior, contraception, abortion, pregnancy intentions, and birth:
Sexual frequency is generally higher in coresident unions (it is highest, on average, among unmarried cohabiting couples), and among noncoresident unions, it is higher among those that are more committed (Sonenstein, Pleck and Ku, 1992; Thornton, 1990; Billy et al., 1993). Coercion leading to sexual intercourse is reported by many young women (e.g., Moore, 1989) and experienced by young men as well.
Relationship commitment seems to have a positive effect on attitudes towards having a birth with that partner (e.g., Bachrach, 1987; Zabin, no date).
Net of intentions, effective contraception is more likely in longer-term, more committed relationships (Brown and Eisenberg 1995, pp 174-176; Marsiglio, 1993). A large body of literature on use of condoms underscores the importance of communication and partner support as positive influences on use, but demonstrates a decline in condom use as emotional intimacy increases (Santelli et. al, 1996; Edwards, 1994; Ku, Sonenstein and Pleck, 1994).
Evidence points to a higher likelihood of pregnancy and birth in more committed relationships. In first unions, rates of childbearing are higher for married than cohabiting couples (Loomis and Landale, 1994). Cohabiting women are more likely than other single women to become premaritally pregnant (Manning, 1992). Pregnancy rates for married women are higher than those for single women, but the differences in pregnancy rates are far smaller than those in birth rates, because pregnancies to unmarried women are five times as likely as those to married women to end in abortion (Ventura, et al., 1995). Even among unmarried women, those who become pregnant in less emotionally intimate relationships are more likely to choose abortion (Moore et al, 1995).
We know very little about the relationship factors that influence paternity establishment once a nonmarital birth occurs.
The importance of understanding fertility in a relationship context is underscored by studies of decision-making about contraception and childbearing in married couples. While early studies suggested that wives' influence on couple decisions was greater than that of husbands, more recent analyses suggest a more equal influence (see Appendix F). Some studies suggest that when disagreement occurs between husbands and wives, it tends to discourage change in the couples' current contraceptive behaviors.
Attitudes about relationships and gender roles are also associated with fertility-related behaviors. The dominant model for adolescent male sexuality has been that of casual or recreational sex, which implies that sex is an end in itself regardless of the relationship context (Marsiglio, 1988). Some researchers report that by adolescence, both boys and girls endorse scripts for sexuality that go so far as the legal definition of rape. For example, fully 25 percent of middle school, high school and college students say it acceptable for a man to force sex on a woman if he spent money on her (National Research Council, 1996). However, there is evidence that as relationships develop young men may adopt "scripts" that are closer to those applied to marriage. Pleck and colleagues' (1993a) analyses of masculine ideology among U.S. adolescent males show diversity in the extent to which young men adhere to stereotypical views, but find strong associations between those views and sexual and contraceptive behaviors.
Effects of fertility on relationships.
Just as relationships affect fertility, pregnancy and birth can prompt changes in relationships as well. Although the extent to which pregnancy leads to "shotgun marriage" has declined dramatically since the early 1960s, over one quarter of women experiencing a first premarital pregnancy during the late 1980s married before the birth of the child (Bachu, 1991). Research shows that the probability of marriage increases sharply in the short term in response to the occurrence of a pregnancy or birth (Bennett, Bloom and Miller 1995; Goldscheider and Waite 1986; Landale and Forste 1991). We know very little about the continuation of visiting unions after the birth of a child. In a study of adolescent women presenting for pregnancy tests (Toledo-Dreves et al, 1995), 65% of those who had carried their pregnancies to term were still in a relationship with the same partner two years later, compared with 34% of those who aborted the pregnancy. Pregnancy can also lead to conflicts and stress within the relationship, with increased risk of abusive behavior (Schechter and Ganley, 1995).
Research has shown that the presence of children deters union dissolution among married couples (e.g., Heaton, 1990; Waite and Lillard, 1991), and at least one study (Wu and Balakrishnan, 1995) has found this to be true for cohabiting couples. Recent research has suggested that the marriage-stabilizing effects of children may actually have been underestimated in previous research because it did not take into account the simultaneous influence of marital stability on willingness to have (more) children (Lillard and Waite, 1993).
Effects of prior unions and births on later family formation.
Increasing rates of cohabitation and divorce, and greater acceptance of nonmarital childbearing and childrearing mean that many if not most individuals will experience more than one union, and a substantial proportion of parents will have children with more than one partner. We are beginning to accumulate evidence that suggests that prior union and fertility experience influences the formation and stability of later unions and fertility within them. For example, Bennett and his colleagues (1995) demonstrate quite unequivocally that nonmarital childbearing reduces the likelihood that a woman will marry during her childbearing years, while Lillard and his colleagues (Lillard, Panis and Upchurch, 1994) demonstrate that children deter remarriage after divorce among white women. We know virtually nothing about these effects among men.
Further, unions formed by individuals who already have children appear to be less stable (Lillard and Waite, 1993), although existing research has not adequately distinguished unions involving both parents of a previous birth from those in which only one partner had a biological tie to the child. In the latter case, ongoing relationships with the nonresident father or mother may create conflict in the new union.
The evidence on whether births from prior unions influence fertility in later ones is mixed, but appears to suggest that husbands' fertility in prior marriages has a dampening effect on fertility in new unions (see Appendix F). We are only beginning to identify the basic demographic parameters of fertility in second marriages; have virtually no information on fertility in sequential cohabiting or visiting unions; and know extremely little about how relationships with and responsibilities toward prior-born children influence fertility in subsequent unions. What is needed here is not only the perspective of men, but also information about the marital and parenting experience of previous as well as current partners.
Gaps in research and data.
Major gaps exist in current research and data on the interrelationships of male fertility and union formation and dissolution. We know most about fertility in first marriages, less with respect to cohabiting relationships and higher-order marriages, and very little with respect to noncoresidential unions. Most of what we know, as noted earlier, we know from the female's point of view. Although it is clear that the relationship between fertility and union formation and dissolution varies substantially among different population groups (African American births, for example, are far more likely to occur outside of marriage than are births to white mothers), we still do not fully understand the forces that have shaped family-building patterns differently in different groups.
Recommendations: In addition to the recommendations provided previously for improving research and data on male fertility and on union formation and dissolution, we suggest that:
New data are needed to provide a more comprehensive view of the intersection of fertility with relationships of all types. We need to improve information about the men who are responsible for pregnancies and births in all types of relationships, possibly through improved survey methods and/or improved uses of birth and administrative records.
We need to collect information from both parties to the relationship, in order to understand gendered views of relationships, sex and contraception, and childbearing and in order to capture both parties' motivations and influence on decisions that affect the likelihood of pregnancy and birth. We need to pay particular attention to gendered power in relationships, including coercion or violence and links to gender-traditional views of men and women. In all types of unions, we need to know whether men's views of the tie between the union and children are different than those of women; how men's views of the costs and benefits of fatherhood depend on their relationship context; and whether variation in such views is associated with male fertility or union formation and dissolution. Since stepfamily experience is increasing, we need to know how men and women view the other partner's children in relation to their own childbearing desires and goals.
Relationship data should be longitudinal, so that we can disentangle self-selection into relationships from relationship effects on childbearing. We need better "fathering histories" including both the history of biological parenthood and social fatherhood. When a union forms, we need to know about both partners' union and birth histories in order to understand the force of individual life-course continuities in comparison to the influence of partners' lives and actions. We need to study the impact of pregnancy and birth on the continuation and nature of relationships, a topic particularly understudied in nonmarital unions.
Research and data are needed to better understand how and why patterns of fertility and family formation vary among groups that differ in socioeconomic status, nativity, race, and ethnicity. To answer these questions we will need both statistical data that represents minority populations as well as in-depth analytic studies using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to measure the effect of economic, social, cultural and institutional influences on family patterns.
The potential of new and emerging studies for answering these research questions should be thoroughly exploited through analyses of existing data. Several studies have collected pregnancy, birth and union histories in a fashion that allows relating one to the others, and some have collected partner-specific information on sexual and contraceptive behavior. Information on partners collected by the National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle 5, the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and the 1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males is richer than that collected in previous rounds of the same surveys. A new study, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), collected substantial information about romantic relationships among adolescents, the peer, family, and community contexts in which these relationships were embedded, and information about sexual and contraceptive behavior within relationships. The National Survey of Families and Households collected complete union histories (resident unions only) for men and women, as well as information about dating and sexual experience of focal children.
Existing data should be reinforced through the expansion of ongoing data collection efforts. Currently, no longitudinal data exist to study how relationships affect fertility among noncohabiting, unmarried men and women. Several studies could be modified to address this gap. For example, the NLSY 97 could be expanded to provide stronger information on noncoresident relationships; the Add Health study could be continued to examine continuity and change in relationships and fertility behavior over the transition to adulthood.
Efforts to strengthen quantitative data should be accompanied by further qualitative studies in a broad range of communities and populations. These studies should enhance our understanding of gendered scripts for relationships and fertility-related behaviors, and of how such scripts are formed and in turn influence union formation and dissolution, fertility, and parenting. They may also lay the foundation for better theory and measurement of relationships and their dimensions.
Health Education/Reproductive Health
Much of the interest in increasing male involvement in reproductive health is driven by the premise that such involvement leads to prevention of unintended pregnancy and healthier reproductive health outcomes for men and their partners. Indeed, some studies of sex education, counseling and health outreach services for men have found delays in the onset of sexual activity and improved contraceptive use (Kirby et al, 1994; Frost and Forrest, 1995; Danielson, 1990; Terefe and Larson, 1993; Ku, Sonenstein, and Pleck, 1992). Here we review what is known about males' receipt of reproductive information from schools and other sources and their utilization of reproductive health services.
Sex Education/Information.
Information about reproductive knowledge levels and the receipt of sex education by school age males are collected periodically by the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). There are also other survey data that have measured sex education via the respondent's knowledge of pregnancy and STD prevention. The National Surveys of Adolescent Male (NSAM), the National Survey of Men (NSM), Add Health, and the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS) are all prominent examples. In 1988, for example, over 90 percent of teenage males reported receiving some formal instruction on a reproductive topic. Seventy-nine percent were instructed about contraception, 73 percent received instruction about AIDS, and 58 percent were taught how to say no to sex (Ku, Sonenstein and Pleck, 1992). However there is a paucity of detailed information about the kinds of instruction that occur. This information is best provided by the instructors. Data from teachers or administrators on the extent of teaching of sexual education in the schools, and the content, by grade level was last collected in a national survey of teachers in 1987 (Forrest and Silverman, 1989). Given the rise in awareness about HIV and the changes in the sex education curriculums during this period, another study is due. Such a study could be expanded beyond health. For example, it would be useful to know the degree to which reproductive topics are integrated with broader themes about preparation for parenthood.
Beyond formal instruction there is also a wide array of other information sources related to reproductive health about which we know very little. Sexual health information from peers, parents, the schools, the media and other informational sources should be included in measures of how men learn to maintain their reproductive health across the life course. Some of these measures are available in the National Survey of Adolescent Males, but they are currently not collected by any institutionalized surveys. Furthermore, very little is known about the sources of information that adult males use to gain information about reproductive issues.
An abiding question in the prevention field is what kinds of programs reduce the risk of early sexual involvement, unintended pregnancy and STD transmission? Reviews of the evaluation literature have identified relatively few programs that have rigorously demonstrated improved outcomes for their participants (Kirby et al, 1994; Frost and Forrest, 1995; Moore et al, 1995 ). There is a need to identify promising program approaches and to conduct well designed evaluations of whether they produce changes in behavior. Recently there has been a flurry of interest in developing prevention programs targeted to males (Levine and Pitt, 1995; Sonenstein, Stewart, and Lindberg, 1996). There are a number of innovative programs around the country, but none have been rigorously evaluated.
Recommendations:
Surveys of teenagers and adults should collect data about the sources of information that are used to gain knowledge about reproductive issues and to support the examination of the relative effectiveness of different information sources in increasing knowledge and influencing behavior.
Trend information is needed about the types of instruction about reproductive issues that schools are providing. The survey of teachers last conducted in 1987 should be updated.
Promising prevention programs need to be identified and to undergo rigorous evaluation. We know very little about what components of sex education and intervention programs actually lead to delays in sexual activity or improved use of contraception.
Reproductive Health Services.
Despite the long existence of male reproductive health services, a consensus on what constitutes these services has only recently started to emerge (Green, Cohen and Belhadj-El Ghouayel, 1995). In the United States, Title X guidelines that detail reproductive health services for women have been in existence for some time, but only in the last year has work begun to develop such guidelines for men under the auspices of AVSC. These services are likely to cover a wide array of services including contraception, vasectomy, STD prevention and treatment, infertility screening and treatment, impotence treatment, and testicular and prostate cancer screening.
Men use reproductive health services at a considerably lower rate than women. An important reason for this may be that medical methods for pregnancy prevention are almost exclusively designed for women. No fully reversible medical method exists for use by men in the U.S. However, research on the development of reversible hormonal methods which lower sperm counts and nonhormonal methods which plug the vas deferens has been proceeding in the U.S. and other parts of the world, and preliminary research suggests that men find these methods acceptable (Ringheim, 1995). Both biomedical and behavioral research is needed to continue the development of these methods and to maximize their acceptability and use.
No comprehensive source of information about the use of reproductive health services by men currently exists. Some information is provided, however, by administrative records and surveys.
(1) Administrative Records. There is a very limited amount of administrative data available about health behavior and men. Title X grantees are required by the Office of Population Affairs to submit annual service data tabulating the number of family planning visits. Three tables stratified by sex are available for 1995 visits, including tabulations of age by race, age by Hispanic/Latino origin and service delivered (STD tests excluding HIV and HIV tests). The data indicate that out of 4.5 million Title X visits in 1995, only 94 thousand or 2 percent are by men (Manzella and Frost, 1996).
(2) Surveys. Although a few national surveys provide some estimates of men's receipt of reproductive health services, their range of service coverage is quite limited and none are regularly scheduled to occur. Therefore trends in men's receipt of reproductive health services cannot be monitored. The 1995 NSAM follow up survey includes some measures of health services during the past year including physical exams, STD testing, counseling to prevent pregnancies and counseling to prevent STDs and AIDS. Because men's use of health services is low, limiting the time frame to 12 months will mask the number of men who have ever received medical services related to reproductive health. The NHSLS concentrates its questions in two topic areas: sexual dysfunction and STD incidence and treatment. The NSM collects information about STD screening and treatment. None of these surveys provide the range and depth of information about reproductive health services that are routinely collected in the National Survey of Family Growth for women. The NSFG questionnaire could serve as a useful model for beginning to design survey questions related to male reproductive health services. These questions would need to be modified to address services particular to males, and to monitor a wide array of health services ranging from school athletic physicals and general physicals to more direct reproductive health visits made by men or visits where men accompany their partner to a family planning, abortion, prenatal, delivery, or post-natal care visit. In addition to developing such service use modules for surveys of men, the NSFG could be expanded to include questions for women about whether their male partners accompanied them to reproductive health visits.
Recommendations:
Surveys of men are needed to collect information about their receipt of a broad array of medical and health services and to assess their awareness, attitudes towards, use of, and experiences with male reproductive health services, alone or in the company of partners.
Studies are needed of the determinants of males' use of reproductive health services, including provider characteristics and social or structural barriers that may deter use.
Studies are needed of the problems presented to the public health system of presenting STD and pregnancy prevention options to men and couples at different points in the life cycle.
Indicators of Male Fertility and Family Formation
In the U.S. there are no institutionalized mechanisms for collecting data on male fertility or union formation. Yet, having indicator data reported about males to monitor trends would be useful for both policy and research purposes. As we have noted, the major shifts in family formation and fertility that have occurred in the U.S. are as much a result of males' behavior as they are of females' behavior. To interpret these trends by relying on periodic reports about the behavior and attitudes of females predisposes us to partial explanations. Yet this is exactly the nature of our current monitoring system.
It is useful to begin with a definition of what we mean by indicator data. An indicator is a measure of a behavior or attitude that traces the status or well-being of population groups over time, across groups, and/or across geographic areas. Indicators are descriptive and are not intended to be explanatory. Indicators of male fertility should meet several criteria (see Moore, 1995, for a discussion). They should:
assess male fertility and union formation across a broad array of outcomes, behaviors and processes;
provide wide coverage of the population or the event being monitored and data collection procedures should be rigorous and consistent over time;
cover both teenage and adult males;
have consistent meaning across socioeconomic and cultural subpopulations;
be made available in a timely way, so that trend information is up-to-date and useful;
anticipate future trends and social developments, and provide baseline data for subsequent trends;
be geographically detailed, at the national, state and/or local levels;
be comparable in meaning over time; and
facilitate the tracking of progress in meeting societal goals regarding male fertility and family formation.
Figure 2 provides an illustrative set of high priority indicators; a more extensive set is included in Appendix I. The indicators reflect a broad range of domains including: relationship status (marriage and cohabitation), sexual behavior and contraceptive use, pregnancy and pregnancy resolution, births by marriage and cohabitation status of the parents, paternity establishment, divorce and other union dissolutions, reproductive health services, and fatherhood. The indicators include measures of both behaviors and attitudes related to male fertility and family formation. The connection between attitudes and behaviors is not clear-cut; nevertheless, there have been tremendous changes in attitudes about marriage, fertility and fatherhood (Thornton, 1995), which have tracked closely with behavior, making it advisable to gather information on males' attitudes and opinions. We note that while information about reproductive and union behavior may be targeted to males of particular ages, information about attitudes can be solicited from men of all ages. For example, attitudes about fatherhood could be directed to children and adolescents as well as adult men.
Recommendation: Establish a set of indicators to monitor key aspects of the fertility and union processes that influence fatherhood. The indicators should include both attitudes and behaviors and be drawn from a variety of relevant domains.
Data for indicators on sexual behavior and fertility often come from household surveys. Currently, most of the indicator data we have on fertility and family formation is provided by women informants; very little is obtained directly from men. However, there are exceptions. The General Social Survey (GSS) interviews adults, both men and women, on their attitudes towards abortion, cohabitation, and the ideal number of children. The GSS also contains questions on number of sex partners during various time periods, the gender of those partners and whether they were steady or non-steady partners. Both the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) include items such as the timing and number of births, whether births were unwanted or unintended, and data on marriage and cohabitation histories. The National Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM) includes both general and partner-specific sexual and contraceptive histories, pregnancy histories and some information about fatherhood, as well as measures of attitudes towards contraceptive responsibility, sex, cohabitation, abortion, children and gender role identity for a sample of young males. Importantly, none of the above-mentioned surveys can be relied upon as continuing sources of indicator data. The GSS modules change over time; the NLSY is a longitudinal study not designed to monitor trends; and the NSFH and NSAM are special-purpose studies that may or may not be conducted again in the future. Three surveys that are institutionalized as regular data collection activities of the federal government include the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the National Survey of Family Growth, and the Current Population Survey. The YRBS includes a small number of sexual behavior indicators for in-school adolescents. The NSFG is a survey of women, although it can be used as a proxy source of information on male demographic characteristics and wantedness of pregnancies by males. The CPS collects information on the current marital status of men, but has only attempted to collect information on marital and fertility histories once, an attempt that was judged unsuccessful.
Administrative data represent another crucial source of indicator data. The vital statistics system collects data on births, marriages and divorces. However, even these data provide little information about men: currently, only aggregate counts are being produced from vital records on marriage and divorce; and reporting of father characteristics is incomplete on birth registration data, especially for births occurring to young unmarried women.
Other potential sources of administrative data include paternity establishment and child support enforcement records. These data could be more easily compared to birth data in the aggregate if the birth year of the child was entered into the paternity establishment/child support enforcement data. Current efforts to monitor trends in paternity establishment use the number of paternities established in a given year over the number of non-marital births in the previous year. Since paternity can be established for a child up to age 18, the current yardstick is a very rough measure of trends in this area.
Recommendation: Existing data collection efforts should be strengthened to provide valid and timely monitoring of key indicators of male fertility and family formation. This may include: continuing YRBS and NSFG, expanding NSFG to include sample of men asked to complete a interview, improving recording of information about fathers on birth certificates, collecting better information about fathers and children in paternity establishment records, collecting complete data from men on cohabiting and marital relationships and fertility on CPS, SIPP, or other household surveys. Promote the continuation of indicator data on GSS.
Theory and Methodology
Theoretical approaches.
In our review of research on male fertility and family formation, our working group identified a broad range of theoretical perspectives that have motivated and framed studies (see Appendix B). The choice-theoretic framework of neoclassical economics has been extensively used to study fertility and marriage behavior, and recently has provided the basis for a creative new model that purports to explain current patterns of nonmarital paternity among disadvantaged men. Like many economic studies, social-demographic studies of marriage have tended to rely on structural-functionalist models of role specialization within families, and the factors, such as women's economic independence and men's earning capacities, which have reduced the value of role specialization and therefore the incentives for marriage. These models underlie models of the "marriage market", which is traditionally seen as functioning in a way that maximizes role specialization.
Many social-psychological models of fertility behavior rely on decision frameworks in which the costs and benefits of potential behaviors are weighed, and intentions for behavior are formed. Social-psychological models of fertility motivation have similarly conceptualized motivation as a function of the perceived costs and benefits of having and rearing a child. Miller has suggested the biological factors and early experience may also have an important influence on the development of motivation (see Appendix D). Social capital theory has been used recently to elaborate on the value of the social ties that children generate for their parents. This perspective suggests why, despite the economic costs of children, men and women continue to want them. Other social psychological theories that are useful in understanding fathering, fertility, and unions include identity theory, theories of generativity, and social learning theory (see Appendix C).
Other research has drawn on conflict or bargaining theories in which sexuality and children are seen as resources that both men and women manipulate to pursue goals, subject to structural and cultural constraints. An example, provided by Eli Anderson's study of sexuality in an inner city community, portrays young men and women as using sexuality and parenthood to advance disparate goals for, on the one hand, status in the peer group, and on the other hand, the security of a committed relationship or the benefits of motherhood. Other important theories for understanding male-female interactions include scripting theory and theories of gender and gender display (see Appendix C).
Clearly, there is currently no unified and accepted theory that explains union and fertility behavior among men and women; rather there are many useful perspectives drawn from a variety of disciplines and research traditions.
Recommendations:
The data we collect should permit the testing of a broad range of hypotheses drawn from relevant theoretical perspectives.
Theoretical frameworks should incorporate the perspectives of both men and women, and take account of the dyadic nature of fertility and family formation.
Theoretical advances need to address issues of gender explicitly. They need to address declines in gender-role specialization; gender differences in the value of children and marriage and in motivation to invest in child quality; the different, and potentially conflicting, motivations and constraints faced by men and women, including differences in economic and marriage market opportunities; changes in gender roles within and outside of unions, including subgroup variations in gender role attitudes and norms; and the relative influence of men and women in fertility decision-making, and factors associated with variation in each gender's relative influence. Theoretical models of union formation and fertility need to more explicitly address the separate, but intertwined, roles of men and women, and to explain less traditional family formation behaviors, such as non-marital childbearing and cohabitation.
Methodological issues.
The development of theory must be accompanied by methodological research to facilitate valid tests of hypotheses. The working group identified a wide range of methodological challenges, reflected in our recommendations below. We believe, however, that adequate methodologies are already within reach to pursue much of the research agenda we have outlined, and that research and data collection on most issues should proceed simultaneously with research to improve our tools for understanding male fertility and family formation.
Recommendations:
Survey methods must be developed that facilitate the inclusion of "missing populations" in studies - incarcerated and homeless men, men loosely attached to households, men in the military, and, in studies that sample couples, partners who are loosely attached to relationships.
Research must be done to identify and correct sources of bias in men's reports about their fertility and family formation experience.
Development of measures is needed in several domains, including the study of nonmarital relationships, motivations for sexual, contraceptive, fertility, and union-related behaviors, and the meanings of and attitudes towards gender, unions, and parenthood across different population groups.
Further development of statistical methods that permit analyses of dyadic decision-making and behavior while accounting for selection effects is needed.
Steps for the Future: Indicators, Data Collection and Research on Male Fertility and Family Formation
In their deliberations, working group members developed a large number of recommendations for improving data and research on male fertility and family formation. Many of these have been discussed above, and further recommendations are found in the appended working papers (Appendices B through H). In this section, we summarize our key recommendations for federal agencies concerned with research and data collection related to fatherhood. These include three areas of effort: the development of indicators to monitor change in male fertility and family formation; the strengthening of surveys and institutionalization of data collection; and the mobilization of research to improve our understanding of these processes and their impact on fathering.
Indicators.
A core set of indicators should be developed to monitor key aspects of the fertility and union processes that influence fatherhood. These would include measures of relationship status (marital and cohabitational), sexual behavior and contraceptive use, rates of marriage, divorce, male fertility within and outside of marriage, cohabitation, number of recent sexual partners, nature of current relationship, paternity establishment for nonmarital births, reproductive health services, and attitudes towards out of wedlock childbearing, marriage, cohabitation, and fatherhood. Specific measures to be included in the "core set" should be determined as a follow-on activity of the Fatherhood Initiative; choice of measures should be based on the criteria for indicators given in an earlier section of the paper and on considerations of data availability and quality. Consideration should be given to including this set of indicators in the statistics on child well-being compiled annually by ASPE, to including one or more key items in the "short list" of national "Indicators of Children's Well-Being", and, possibly, to developing goals for the Nation against which monitoring can occur.
Data Collection.
Data collection efforts should be strengthened, and, in some cases, institutionalized, to provide a reliable basis for producing indicators and to provide data for analytic studies. NCHS, in collaboration with the Census Bureau and other agencies, should take the lead in expanding or modifying current data collection systems to provide indicator data on a timely (approximately once every three years) and reliable basis. For example, NCHS should consider either adding appropriate items to the NHIS, adding a male component to the NSFG, and/or developing data based on the vital registration system, such as improved marriage and divorce data and relationship status information on birth certificates. The Office of Child Support Enforcement should improve the data it keeps about fathers and children in its program. The Census Bureau should develop ways to expand its collection of marital and fertility history data to include valid and representative data from men, and to include cohabitation. This could be done in connection with the CPS or SIPP, depending on projected sample sizes, coverage of men, and quality of data. The potential role of the American Community Survey should also be explored. CPS questions could be adapted to allow direct identification of cohabiting couples. GSS should be encouraged to continue monitoring attitudes. Unless specifically contraindicated, data collections should include both men and women, and methodological research should be undertaken to address issues of data quality and completeness.
There is also a need for new longitudinal data to provide the basis for analytic studies of the processes involved in male fertility, union formation and dissolution, and the interrelationships among fertility, unions, and parenting. These data should include both men and women (and possibly also couples), and should permit the testing of a broad range of hypotheses, including those concerning the effects of social and policy influences. Ideally, all types of unions should be studied, including "visiting" sexual relationships as well as cohabitation and marriage.
The most cost-effective options for developing these data include expansion of existing data collections that follow samples now approaching or in the early years of union formation and childbearing. Expansions could include single items, questionnaire modules, or design features such as add-on qualitative components. Several studies should be considered for expansion. NLSY 97 is just beginning, will and already will collect much of what is needed. NELS could also provide information although limited information on sexual behavior was collected for the teen years of this sample. The Add Health study has a rich baseline on the formation of romantic relationships and the characteristics of youth and their families; its sample could be followed through early adulthood. NLSY-Children, SIPP or PSID should also be considered. If it is not feasible to expand existing studies appropriately, or if expansions leave important analytic questions unanswered, a new study should be developed, probably under the auspices of NICHD.
Research.
Various agencies, including ASPE, OPA, NICHD, and ACF should promote and stimulate research on male fertility and union formation and dissolution. The research agenda encompasses both basic research and policy-oriented research; encourages studies of both men and women; encourages research that examines how these processes differ across and within racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, and encourages studies that use a broad range of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method studies as scientifically appropriate. Existing and soon-to-be-released survey data should be mined exhaustively. Developmental studies should be conducted to develop theory and measurement, and their lessons applied in the design of both large-scale and focused studies.
Major substantive areas include:
Research on gender roles and attitudes, and the influence of gender on the processes of family formation and fertility. It is important to learn how gender-related attitudes, values and behaviors are formed and modified over the life course, and how they vary among different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. Studies of the links between gender-traditional views of men and women and views of coercion and violence in relationships, and fertility and union processes are also needed. It is also important to study how the meaning of and attitudes towards the processes involved in fertility, union formation and dissolution, and parenting differ between men and women, and vary depending on union and parental status. Research is needed to study how such attitudes interact with other factors in affecting fertility and relationship outcomes.
Research on union formation and dissolution, including studies of the causal processes associated with the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of unions, and the meaning of different union types, and studies that explain and interpret historical changes in union formation and dissolution. Couple-based or dyadic studies that examine the relative roles of men and women in family decision-making are also needed.
Research on the factors influencing male fertility and fertility-related behaviors, motivations, and attitudes, including those relating to sexual behavior, contraceptive use, pregnancy and pregnancy outcome, paternity establishment, and fathering; and including influences at the individual, family, peer, institutional and community levels.
Research that examines the intersections of fertility-related behavior, childbearing, and childrearing with union formation and dissolution. Questions here include the influence of different types of unions on the risk of unintended pregnancy, the influence of pregnancy and birth on the marriage and cohabitation choices of an unmarried couple, the impact of parenting and the presence of children on union stability or decisions to remarry after divorce, and the influence of blended family situations on subsequent family transitions and fertility.
Research on the intersections among fertility, union formation and fathering, including the effect of planned or unplanned fatherhood, paternity establishment, and transitions in union status on fathering, and the influence of changing meanings of fatherhood on fertility and family formation behaviors.
Research on the nature, availability, use and effectiveness of reproductive health education and services that help to prevent unintended pregnancy and contribute to the health and well-being of men. Continued research is needed on the development and acceptability of reversible male methods of contraception.
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Figure 2
Illustrative High Priority Indicators of Male Fertility and Family Formation Behavior and Attitudes
|
|
|
|
Sexual Behavior
age at first intercourse number of partners in past year number of lifetime partners victim/perpetrator of forced sex |
Sexual Attitudes
when sex is acceptable or allowable allowable levels of persuasion/coercion |
|
Contraception
contraception used at first sex for teens - by male - by female contraception used at last sex - by male - by female receipt of reproductive health care |
Contraceptive
Attitudes
male methods male's responsibility for preventing pregancy vasectomy |
|
Pregnancy & Pregnancy Resolution
number of pregancies
timing of pregnancies resolution of each pregnancy birth rate for men legal paternity acknowledgement for nonmarital births |
Pregnancy & Pregnancy
Resolution
attitudes about impregnation attitudes about abortion pregnancy intendedness circumstances under which pregnancy is desirable |
|
Marriage, Cohabitation & Non-cohabiting
Sexual Relationships
number of marriages current marital status age at first marriage current marriage followed conception current marriage followed birth currently cohabiting |
Marriage, Cohabitation & Non-cohabiting
Sexual Relationships
best age to marry acceptable circumstances to marry ideal circumstances to marry acceptable circumstances to cohabit |
| Fatherhood |
Fatherhood
Attitudes
best age to become a father importance of becoming a parent value of children attitudes about nonmarital childbearing father's responsibility mother's responsibility child support |
1. Exceptions include the use of assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and embryo transfer. Although still a relatively uncommon route to biological fatherhood, the use of these methods is thought to be expanding rapidly (Marsiglio, 1998).