Chapter 10Planning for Children

Do You Want to Have Children?

• Pronatalism: attitude encouraging childbearing

• Family, friends, and religions encourage childbearing.

• Hispanics have the highest fertility rate of any racial or ethnic category.

• The tax structure supports parenthood.

How Many Children Do You Want?

• Procreative liberty: the freedom to decide whether or not to have children

• An increasing number of women are choosing to be child-free.

• Antinatalism: a negative perspective about children; opposition to having children

How Many?

• Only 3% of adults view one child as the ideal family size.

• The most preferred family size in the U.S. is the two-child family.

• Religion has a strong influence on the number of children.

How Many?

• Among affluence couples, four children may be the new norm.

• Competitive birthing: pattern in which a woman wants to have as many children as her peers

Teenage Motherhood

Teens have babies for a variety of reasons including limited parental supervision, not understanding the importance of contraception, and wanting someone to love.

Teenage Motherhood

Problems associated with teenage motherhood:• Stigmatization and marginalization• Poverty • Poor health habits• Lower academic achievement

Infertility

Infertility: the inability to achieve a pregnancy after at least one year of regular sexual relations without birth control, or the inability to carry a pregnancy to a live birth

Infertility

• Fertilization: conception; the fusion of egg and sperm

• Pregnancy: begins when the fertilized egg is implanted in uterine wall 5 to 7 days after fertilization

• Forty percent of infertility problems are attributable to the woman, 40% to the man, and 20% to both of them.

Infertility

Assisted reproductive technology includes:• Hormone therapy: using drugs to stimulate

ovulation• Artificial insemination: sperm from male

partner or donor is placed directly into the cervix

• Surrogate mother: another woman artificially inseminated

Infertility

• In vitro fertilization: egg is fertilized in small tube and implanted in mother’s uterine wall

• Cryopreservation: procedure by which fertilized eggs are frozen and implanted at a later time

• The typical success rate for infertile couples who want to give birth is 28%.

• The cost of a successful outcome is over $60,000.

Planning for Adoption

• Those who adopt are typically white, educated, and high income.

• Adoptees are increasingly placed in nontraditional homes.

Adoption

• Adoptees in the highest demand are healthy, white infants.

• Couples are increasingly open to cross-racial adoptions.

• Adopting from the U.S. foster care system is generally the least expensive type of adoption.

Adoption

• Transracial adoption: the practice of parents adopting children of another race.

• Transracial adoption is controversial.

Adoption

• Another controversy is whether adopted children should be allowed to obtain information about their biological parents.

• The benefits of an open adoption include the opportunity for the biological parents to stay involved and adoptive parents have genetic information about their child.

Foster Parenting

• Foster parent: a person who either alone or with a spouse takes care of and fosters a child taken into custody

• Foster parents are licensed by the state.• The goal of placing children in foster care is to

improve their living conditions and then either return them to the parents or find another permanent home for them.

Abortion

• Induced abortion: the deliberate termination of a pregnancy through chemical or surgical means

• Spontaneous abortion: miscarriage or unintended termination of a pregnancy

Abortion

• About 1.2 million abortions are performed annually in the U.S.

• Abortion rate: the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.

• The abortion rate increased slightly between 2005-2008.

• Abortion ratio: the number of abortions per 1,000 live births

Abortion

• Parental consent: woman needs permission from parent to get an abortion if she is under a certain age

• Parental notification: woman is required to tell her parents if she is under a certain age

• Laws regarding consent and notification vary by state.

Abortion

• Reasons for abortion include:– Interference with education or work– Not able to afford a child– Had completed child bearing– Not ready to have a child

• Therapeutic abortion: an abortion performed to protect the life or health of a woman

Abortion

Pro-life arguments:– Unborn fetus has a right to live.– Abortion is a violent and immoral solution.– The life of the fetus is sacred.

Pro-Choice arguments:– Freedom of choice is a central value.– Those who bear the burden have the right to make

the choice.– Procreation should be free of governmental control.

Abortion

• Legal abortions, performed under safe medical conditions, are physically safer than continuing a pregnancy.

• There are possible physical complications that become more likely for late term abortions.

Abortion

• The American Psychological Association has not found significant psychological risks to an abortion.

• Researchers found that most men were happy about their partner’s decision to have an abortion.