Discussion questions

Henshaw

1. Do you agree with his categorization of marital status--currently married, formerly married, and never married? Specifically, how should we think about people cohabiting?

2. Henshaw mentions possible sources of error in his abortion estimates. What do you think is the most significant when we think about the estimate and how can we improve it?

3. Among people above 20, unintended births go down as unintended pregnancies decrease; the abortion rate remains the same or increases slightly . What is its implication for the birth rate in the Untied States?

Schoen, Kim, Nathanson, Fields, and Astone

1. What is the idea of children as social capital? How is it different from other existing theories?

2. What indicators do authors used for children as social capital? Do you think they are reasonable?

3. Schoen et al. view that fertility is based on intention; Henshaw's research suggests some questions to their position. How does Henshaw's finding play a role in their models?

Williams, Abma, and Piccinino

1. What's the relative advantage of using prospective analysis to retrospective analysis? What does the difference between results of those imply to intention of childbearing?

2. How much are models improved by adding change in marital status, employment status, or contraceptive status? What does it imply to fertility intentions?

Freedman

1. Most family planning evaluation revealed that it didn't affect the motivation of reduce family size but contributed to the spread of contraceptive use. How was it successful to motivate people to use contraception? Is it possible because they've already motivated to reduce family size? Is it (change of perspectives on family size, fertility) related to the 2nd demographic transition in those countries?

2. How do studies distinguish the effect of development (i.e. economic development) and the effect of family planning on fertility?

3. How do you think about top-down family planning? Are there ethical aspects of coercive family planning (China is, of course, an extreme example)? It might succeed to reduce childbearing, but can we say that it was successful to change fundamental fertility preference of people? What is an implication of this to the relationship between fertility intention and subsequent fertility behavior?

Foster

1. How do you think that biological factors and non-biological determinants (sociocultural, economic etc.) are interwoven to influence on fertility? Either one of them may influence more than the other?

2. What is the evidence that Foster provides to support her hypothesis? Is this evidence reasonable and appropriately organized?

3. What's the difference between the "environmental" factors that Foster discusses and the sociocultural and economic variables used in other research?

4. Do you agree with the way Foster develops her logic? For example, do you agree with her way of comparing mammals or other animals to human's behavior, or a way to derive human-related conclusions from animal experiments etc?

5. What was Foster's answer for exceptions that biological theory cannot answer such as childless couples?

6. Foster argues that degree of maternal behavior or nurturing instinct is varied by individual. Are biological factors varied as she says? Or environmental factors are more varied, while biological factors are fixed?