First-birth Timing, Marital History, and Women’s Health at Midlife

Williams, Kristi; Sassler, Sharon; Addo, Fenaba R.; Frech, A.

doi:10.1177/0022146515609903

Cited by 29 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 61 publications

(100 reference statements)

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“…Their timing has implications for mothers’ and children’s achievement, health, and well-being (Royer, 2004; Loughran and Zissimopoulos, 2009; Augustine, Pricket, Kendig, and Crosnoe, 2015; Williams, Sassler, Addo, & Frech, 2015), and their timing affects population growth and decline. This study provides evidence that religious exposure during childhood and adolescence is related to the timing of subsequent births--nonmarital and marital.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The timing of first birth has been relatively neglected, although it carries significant consequences for women’s socioeconomic attainment and long-term health and well-being, along with the health and well-being of their children (Royer, 2004; Loughran and Zissimopoulos, 2009; Augustine, Pricket, Kendig, and Crosnoe, 2015; Williams, Sassler, Addo, & Frech, 2015). As women who have earlier first births are likely to have more births overall (Rindfuss, Morgan, and Swicegood, 1988; Mills, Rindfuss, McDonald and te Velde, 2011), studying the relationships between religion and the timing of first birth may additionally help us anticipate how macro-level religious change might affect population growth or decline.…”

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confidence: 99%

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How Early Life Religious Exposure Relates to the Timing of First Birth

Pearce

Davis

2016

J of Marriage and Family

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This paper examines intermediary processes explaining how religious socialization and involvement early in life are related to the timing of first births for women in the United States. The theory of conjunctural action forms the basis for hypotheses for how religious schema and materials operate to influence birth timing. Using the NLSY79 data and event history methods, the study finds evidence for expected family size, work-family gender ideology, educational attainment and enrollment, cohabitation, and age at marriage as mediators of associations between early life religious exposure (affiliation and attendance) and the timing of nonmaritally and maritally conceived first births. These findings corroborate other research identifying the long reach of religious socialization and involvement in youth, elucidate some of the pathways for these connections, and motivate further work to understand linkages between religion and family behaviors in the United States.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

How Early Life Religious Exposure Relates to the Timing of First Birth

Pearce

Davis

2016

J of Marriage and Family

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“…Williams et al (2015) use a propensity score matching design with the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to examine effects of birth timing (coded 15-19, 20-24, and 25-35) on women's self-rated health at age 40. Their analyses indicate that a first birth that occurs in the 20-24 age range is linked to poorer selfrated health for both black and white women, and an AFB of 15-19 is also linked to poorer health for black but not white women (compared to 25-35).…”

Section: Empirical Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They find however, that a birth in the 20-24 age range is not linked to better health outcomes when compared with a birth from 15-19. The propensity score matching (PSM) design used by Williams et al (2015) has several advantages compared to the common strategy of regression adjustment, most notably ensuring that the 'treated' and 'control' groups used in the final comparisons overlap, and thereby reducing model dependence in their analyses (Ho et al 2007). However, in common with all propensity score approaches, Williams et al's (2015) analyses can only adjust for observed confounders.…”

Section: Empirical Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The propensity score matching (PSM) design used by Williams et al (2015) has several advantages compared to the common strategy of regression adjustment, most notably ensuring that the 'treated' and 'control' groups used in the final comparisons overlap, and thereby reducing model dependence in their analyses (Ho et al 2007). However, in common with all propensity score approaches, Williams et al's (2015) analyses can only adjust for observed confounders. In this case, the set of factors adjusted for are perhaps marginally richer than is often the case, including for instance contraceptive use prior to the first birth, availability of reading material as a child, and pre-existing health limitations.…”

Section: Empirical Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Family formation patterns and physical health in Australia: a life course approach

O’Flaherty¹

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Social science has long studied the relationships between processes of family formation and health, although empirical patterns in this domain of study are often variable, and their interpretation uncertain. Constrained by lack of suitable data, analytic techniques, and conceptual tools, work in this area has until recently been largely static, focussed on documenting and interpreting crosssectional associations between occupancy of family roles and health. However, as data and methodology matured and developed economies continued their transition away from the once dominant 'male breadwinner' model of the family, more sophisticated approaches that acknowledge the dynamic relationships between family formation and health have become both more feasible and more urgent.This thesis applies a life course approach to the study of family formation and health in the (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014), and form the primary material for four empirical chapters. The first empirical chapter utilizes multichannel sequence analysis and growth models to investigate how holistic patterns of family formation (incorporating both partnership and fertility trajectories from ages 18-50) are associated with trajectories of physical health at ages 51 and older. For men, family life course trajectories characterized by early family formation, failure to marry, or early divorce without subsequent remarriage are found to be predictive of poorer health outcomes, while for women only those who experienced high fertility paired with a disrupted marital history were found to be in poorer health than those who experienced a normatively 'standard' family life course.The second, third, and fourth empirical chapters focus on different aspects of the relationship between parental age at first birth and later life heath. The first of these contextualizes changes in first birth timing in historical context, presents a descriptive analysis of the characteristics of younger/older first time mothers and fathers, and uses multinomial logistic regression to assess the contribution of early-life family and socio-economic disadvantage, health, and cognitive and noncognitive skills to first birth timing. Consistent with prior research, background family disadvantage and age at school leaving was found to have strong effects on birth timing, in particular for women.ii There was also some evidence of health selection into early first birth, with the largest effects again found for women.The third empirical chapter considers the effect of first birth timing on long-term health outcomes (ages 41 and older). In addition to the primary issue of whether there is an effect of birth timing on health, the analysis pays particular attention to several research questions: first, which pre- as mechanisms, as changes at the time of the parenthood transition and in the years thereafter did not differ depending on age at first birth. Younger parents do experience potentially harmful changes in alcohol use and soc...

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