Unwanted childbirth may affect mother’s other children

August 17, 1999
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ANN ARBOR—A birth that isn’t wanted not only has a negative effect on a mother’s emotional well-being and on her early relationship with that child. The harmful effects last after the child has become an adult, and extend as well to the other children in the family, according to a University of Michigan study.
“All of a mother’s children About one-third of live births in 1995 were unintended at the time of conception, according to estimates cited in the study. But a woman’s feelings often change during the course of a pregnancy, the researchers note, with a much smaller proportion likely to characterize a birth, rather than a pregnancy, as unwanted.
For the study, Barber and U-M colleagues William G. Axinn and Arland Thornton analyzed the relationships among unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships using two separate data sets.
One was the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households, providing information on about 2,100 mothers of children age 18 and under. About 17 percent of the women answered yes to the following: “Sometimes people have a child (another child) after they intend not to have any (more) children. Has this ever happened to you?” The researchers found that these women suffered from higher levels of depression and lower levels of happiness than women who answered no. They spent less leisure time outside the house with their children, going to parks, museums, or movies. In addition, mothers who had an unwanted birth reported that they spanked or slapped their young children more than the other mothers did.
The other data analyzed for the study were part of the Intergenerational Panel Study of Mothers and Children, a 31-year longitudinal survey of a probability sample of 1,113 mother-child pairs begun in 1961, when abortion was illegal. In this sample, 42 percent of mothers reported at least one unwanted birth. The researchers examined the relationship between mothers and their young-adult children at ages 18, 23, and 31. They found that mothers with unwanted births had less affectionate relationships with their children. These mothers also gave their children less social and financial support, such as helping out when they were sick, helping with housework, home repairs and upkeep, child-care and money for school, rent or other expenses.
In addition, Barber and colleagues found, women who had an unwanted birth had lower quality emotional relationships with all their children. They were less likely to say they respected their children’s ideas and opinions about what was important in life, that they enjoyed doing things together or talking to their children, and that they found it easy to understand them.
“Because there is no single set of data containing detailed measures of mothers’ early interactions with their children and long-term relationships with those children, we are unable to show a direct link between unwanted childbearing and mother-child relationships across the life course,” Barber cautions.
“But the evidence from these two data sets strongly suggests that unwanted childbearing negatively affects the way mothers relate to their young children, which in turn affects their relationships with all their children, long after they have grown up.”
While the U.S. experienced declines in unintended childbearing in the 1970s and early 1980s, levels have recently risen, Barber notes, despite the widespread availability of safe, reliable contraception. There have been recent decreases in abortion, particularly among young people, possibly due to anti-abortion messages, decreased access to abortion services, or barriers posed by parental involvement statutes.
Barber’s research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

William G. AxinnNational Institute of Child Health and Human Development