Asian women living in the East End of London were interviewed in English or in their own language to assess their attitudes to and experiences of pregnancy and antenatal care and to consider some factors which may influence their experiences, especially their fluency in English. In some respects Asian women's experiences were similar to those of non-Asian women reported in other studies, e.g. similar levels of nausea and lack of tie-up between nausea and negative reactions to pregnancy. However there were also some differences, e.g. Asian women expressed greater concern about the sex of the child and about eating 'cool' foods to counterbalance the hot state of pregnancy. Asian women were good patients: they attended antenatal clinics, read the leaflets provided and about half attended antenatal classes, although some were keener than others to seek information about pregnancy and childbirth and only a quarter bought books or watched videos. Less than half of the women were living in extended families and receiving support from in-laws in the traditional way. Those living in nuclear families received support from friends, neighbours and especially husbands. There were considerable individual differences in women's reactions and experiences. Women who spoke little or no English were less knowledgeable and had lived for a shorter time in the UK than women who were fluent in English. Leaflets in languages women can read and link workers at clinics helped some women.

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Women of Asian origins and descent constitute a large ethnic minority in the UK. However, although there is some evidence that Asian family size is larger than average for the UK, little is known about Asian women's attitudes to reproductive decisions. This paper reports some quantitative and qualitative data from a sample of Asian women living in East London.One hundred Asian women with at least one child were interviewed about a number of aspects of their reproductive decision making, including preferred family size, gender composition of families, use of contraception, and methods of contraception. Their replies were compared with a group of 46 non-Asian women living in the same area. Like their non-Asian counterparts, most Asian women wanted two or three children, with Muslim women wanting somewhat larger families than Hindu, Sikh or non-Asian women. All women wanted a mix of boys and girls, although Asian women had stronger preferences than non-Asian women for more boys than girls. A majority of women had used contraceptives; Asian women were more likely to have used condoms and less likely than non-Asian women to have used the pill, but there were variations within the sample of Asian women. Women who were born in the UK or had lived in the UK for over ten years and women whose English was fluent were more likely to use contraception than women who had moved to the UK more recently and those whose English was less fluent.To explore the processes involved in Asian women's reproductive decision making further, a subsample of the Asianwomen were interviewed in depth about their reasons for their choices and their ideas around the timing and spacing of births. Women reported a variety of factors influencing their decision making. These included concerns about the effects of contraception on future fertility, family pressures to have children, mothers' preferred ways of managing the work involved in caring for small children and how these related to children's needs.

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