Sara Yeatman
Biographic Data
| ID | 95232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara Yeatman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | Yeatman |
| SIGNATURE | YEATMAN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Denver |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5991-6473 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 374 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Marital Dissolution, Repartnering, and the Realization of Fertility Desires in Sub‐Saharan Africa
Women who experience union disruption in sub‐Saharan Africa tend to have lower fertility than those in stable unions. It remains unclear, however, whether this pattern reflects lower fertility desires, constrained opportunities to achieve desired fertility, or both. Using Demographic Health Survey data from 34 countries, this study examines whether fertility differences between women in intact unions and those who experience marital dissolution a…
A personal perspective on the history of the World Fertility Survey and The Demographic and Health Surveys Program
BACKGROUNDWe take for granted that there are data on critical topics such as health and mortality, fertility, and social processes across the globe.For over 50 years, the World Fertility Survey program (1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984) and its successor, The Demographic and Health Surveys Program (1984-present), filled in essential gaps in human knowledge. OBJECTIVEI interviewed Tom Pullum to better un…
Unrealized fertility in demography
BACKGROUNDOver the past few decades, demographic research on unrealized fertility -the experience of having fewer children than desired -has expanded rapidly, particularly in low-fertility settings.More recently, scholars have shown that unrealized fertility is also widespread in higher-fertility contexts, affecting individuals across diverse sociodemographic conditions.Yet the literature remains fragmented, spanning definitions and measurement a…
Men’s perceptions of HIV self-testing in Eswatini
Men in Eswatini test for HIV at lower rates compared to women despite the widespread availability of HIV testing services in the country. HIV self-test kits have been proposed as an HIV testing model to reach more men by bypassing the health facility, which is known to be a barrier for men using HIV testing services. In this study, we sought to understand men's perspectives on HIV self-testing in Eswatini. We conducted semi-structured interviews …
U.S. Fertility in Life Course Context
Fertility is a life course process that is strongly shaped by geographic and sociodemographic subgroup contexts. In the United States, scholars face a choice: they can situate fertility in a life course perspective using panel data, which is typically representative only at the national level; or they can attend to subnational contexts using rate schedules, which do not include information on life course statuses. The method and data source we in…
Relationship Dynamics and Young Women’s Contraceptive Use
Fertility Desires and Contraceptive Transition
Fertility desires are fundamental to understanding contraceptive use, yet the relationship between the two remains unclear and is the subject of much debate in demography. To understand the macrolevel relationship between fertility desires and contraceptive transition in low- and middle-income countries, we introduce a conceptual model that articulates the microlevel processes through which a desire to avoid childbearing translates into contracep…
The Collision of Global Scripts with Local Constraints
Extensive sociological research concludes that education informs people's desires for their lives and plays an instrumental role in facilitating the fulfillment of those desires. In this article, we ask if societal barriers can leave the most educated to desire outcomes that are unattainable and thus paradoxically place them at highest risk of unwanted outcomes. We answer this question by analyzing societal variation in the potential for educatio…
A partner‐specific critique of mistimed and unwanted fertility
Despite a long history in fertility research, the standard approach to measuring mistimed and unwanted fertility is both conceptually and operationally flawed. In the context of complicated sexual and reproductive lives that do not start and end with a single partner, researchers should reevaluate the usefulness of the constructs of mistimed and unwanted fertility. We conclude by offering recommendations for analysts and survey designers as well …
Women’s Life Experiences and Shifting Reports of Pregnancy Planning
Men’s Endorsement of Intimate Partner Violence and HIV Testing Behavior Across Sub-Saharan Africa
Life After Loss
The relationship between mortality and fertility is a key component of demographic transition theory, placing it at the center of extensive inquiry. Among other linkages, mortality in women's communities and social networks influences their subsequent fertility. Existing demographic research assumes this is principally due to volitional mechanisms, implying that exposure to mortality consolidates women's desire to become pregnant, leading to inte…
Visualizing Young Men's Fertility Desires
Fertility desires may not indicate precise plans; nonetheless, they contain important clues for understanding future fertility. On the basis of the dual assertion that fertility desires are (1) meaningful and (2) subject to revision with changing circumstances, this visualization provides a snapshot of young men's fertility desires using data from the Tsogolo La Thanzi study set in Balaka, Malawi. Scholars typically measure desires by summarizing…
Women's health decline following (some) unintended births
BACKGROUND: As many as one-in-three unintended births occur in Africa. These births have the potential to adversely impact women's health, but data and design limitations have complicated efforts to understand their consequences. Moreover, there is growing evidence that women often feel happy about an unintended pregnancy and this heterogeneity may be important for identifying the births that are - and those that are not - harmful to women's heal…
Perceived Infertility Among Young Adults in Balaka, Malawi
CONTEXT: Perceived infertility-an individual's belief that she or he is unable to conceive or impregnate a partner-may lead to contraceptive nonuse and unintended pregnancy, among other concerns, but has not been widely studied in low-income settings. METHODS: A measure of perceived infertility previously used in the United States was included in a 2015 survey of young adults in Balaka, Malawi. The prevalence of potential perceived infertility (i…
The Enduring Case for Fertility Desires
Persistently high levels of unintended fertility, combined with evidence that over- and underachieved fertility are typical and not exceptional, have prompted researchers to question the utility of fertility desires writ large. In this study, we elaborate this paradox: widespread unintendedness and meaningful, highly predictive fertility desires can and do coexist. Using data from Malawi, we demonstrate the predictive validity of numeric fertilit…
Unrealized Educational Expectations and Mental Health
The rapid expansion of schooling across low-income countries, combined with intensive governmental and nongovernmental efforts to promote education, has encouraged youth in these contexts to form exceptionally high educational expectations, despite immense structural barriers to achieving them. Consequently, many young people's educational expectations go unmet, driving concerns over the possible unintended consequences, including their elevated …
Evaluating sampling biases from third-party reporting as a method for improving survey measures of sensitive behaviors
Changing Childbearing Norms During an Era of ART Expansion in Malawi, 2009 to 2015
Tsogolo la Thanzi
Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT) was designed to study how young adults navigate sexual relationships and childbearing during a generalized HIV epidemic. TLT began in 2009 with a population‐representative sample of 1,505 women and 574 men between the ages of 15 and 25 living in Balaka, southern Malawi, where regional adult HIV prevalence then stood at 15 percent. The first phase (2009–11) included a series of eight interviews, spaced four months apart. Du…
Data Collection as Disruption
Research disrupts the social world, often by making respondents aware that they are being observed or by instigating reflection upon particular aspects of life via the very act of asking questions. Building on insights from the first Hawthorne studies, reflexive ethnographers, and methodologists concerned with panel conditioning, we draw on six years of research within a community in southern Malawi to introduce a conceptual framework for theoriz…
Birth Planning and Women's and Men's Health in Malawi
Despite the frequency with which it occurs, we know little about unintended fertility in sub‐Saharan Africa and even less about its implications for the health of the women and men who experience it. We use longitudinal data from southern Malawi to explore how young adults report on the planning of their births and to identify changes in their self‐rated health and subjective well‐being associated with having more‐ or less‐planned births. Our dat…
The Flexibility of Fertility Preferences in a Context of Uncertainty
From Ryder's (1973) “cloudy future” to Lee's (1980) “moving target,” the malleable nature of fertility preferences is widely accepted; however, tools for conceptualizing and measuring preferences have been slow to evolve. In this article, we seek to demonstrate that underpinning the number people give when asked about their ideal family size, and critical to interpreting it, is either a rigidness or a flexibility that is contextually situated and…
Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence
Childbearing ambivalence is often conceptualized as a state of conflicting desires about having a child that is characteristic of particular individuals or life stages. This study proposes that childbearing ambivalence is dynamic and situational, resulting from the multiple sociocultural frames surrounding childbearing. Using eight waves of prospective data from a population-based sample of young adults in Malawi, results show that 41% of women a…
Surprising Results
This study uses eight waves of data from the population-based Tsogolo la Thanzi study (2009–2011) in rural Malawi to examine changes in young women’s contraceptive practices, including the use of condoms, non-barrier contraceptive methods and abstinence, following positive and negative HIV tests. The analysis factors in women’s prior perceptions of their HIV status that may already be shaping their behaviour and separates surprise HIV test result…
The Flexibility of Fertility Preferences in a Context of Uncertainty
From Ryder's (1973) “cloudy future” to Lee's (1980) “moving target,” the malleable nature of fertility preferences is widely accepted; however, tools for conceptualizing and measuring preferences have been slow to evolve. In this article, we seek to demonstrate that underpinning the number people give when asked about their ideal family size, and critical to interpreting it, is either a rigidness or a flexibility that is contextually situated and…
Uncertainty and Fertility in a Generalized Aids Epidemic
Sociologists widely acknowledge that uncertainty matters for decision making, but they rarely measure it directly. In this article, we demonstrate the importance of theorizing about, measuring, and analyzing uncertainty as experienced by individuals. We adapt a novel probabilistic solicitation technique to measure personal uncertainty about HIV status in a high HIV prevalence area of southern Malawi. Using data from 2,000 young adults (ages 15 to…
Young Women’s Dynamic Family Size Preferences in the Context of Transitioning Fertility
Dynamic theories of family size preferences posit that they are not a fixed and stable goal but rather are akin to a moving target that changes within individuals over time. Nonetheless, in high-fertility contexts, changes in family size preferences tend to be attributed to low construct validity and measurement error instead of genuine revisions in preferences. To address the appropriateness of this incongruity, the present study examines eviden…
The Impact of Family Transitions on Child Fostering in Rural Malawi
Despite the frequency of divorce and remarriage across much of sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about what these events mean for the living arrangements of children. We use longitudinal data from rural Malawi to examine the effects of family transitions on the prevalence and incidence of child fostering, or children residing apart from their living parents. We find that between 7 % and 15 % of children aged 3–14 are out-fostered over the two-y…
The Enduring Case for Fertility Desires
Persistently high levels of unintended fertility, combined with evidence that over- and underachieved fertility are typical and not exceptional, have prompted researchers to question the utility of fertility desires writ large. In this study, we elaborate this paradox: widespread unintendedness and meaningful, highly predictive fertility desires can and do coexist. Using data from Malawi, we demonstrate the predictive validity of numeric fertilit…
HIV Infection and Fertility Preferences in Rural Malawi
Although HIV‐prevalence and fertility rates in sub‐Saharan Africa are among the highest in the world, little is known about how HIV infection affects the fertility preferences of men and women in the region. A quasi‐experimental design and in‐depth interviews conducted in rural Malawi are employed to examine how and through what pathways learning that one is HIV positive alters a person's childbearing desires. Among rural Malawians, particularly …
The relationship between orphanhood and child fostering in sub-Saharan Africa, 1990s-2000s
In countries most afflicted by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, orphanhood has increased dramatically, but the potential consequences of the increase have been mitigated by the ability of households to absorb orphans. This paper examines what the rising levels of orphanhood mean for the common practice of non-orphan child fostering in regions of high and low HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa, which has a long history of child fostering. Using D…
Increasing the acceptability of HIV counseling and testing with three C's
Beyond denomination
Despite the centrality of religion and fertility to life in rural Africa, the relationship between the two remains poorly understood. The study presented here uses unique integrated individual and congregational level data from rural Malawi to examine religious influences on contraceptive use. In this religiously diverse population, we find evidence that the particular characteristics of a congregation-leader's positive attitudes toward family pl…
Women's health decline following (some) unintended births
BACKGROUND: As many as one-in-three unintended births occur in Africa. These births have the potential to adversely impact women's health, but data and design limitations have complicated efforts to understand their consequences. Moreover, there is growing evidence that women often feel happy about an unintended pregnancy and this heterogeneity may be important for identifying the births that are - and those that are not - harmful to women's heal…
The Relationship between Partners' Family‐Size Preferences in Southern Malawi
Studies of the relative influence of partners' fertility preferences on behaviors tend to treat preferences as fixed, largely independent traits despite existing theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that they are moving targets that may be jointly developed within relationships. In this study, we use couple‐level panel data from married and unmarried young adults in southern Malawi to examine the relationship between partners' …
Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence
Childbearing ambivalence is often conceptualized as a state of conflicting desires about having a child that is characteristic of particular individuals or life stages. This study proposes that childbearing ambivalence is dynamic and situational, resulting from the multiple sociocultural frames surrounding childbearing. Using eight waves of prospective data from a population-based sample of young adults in Malawi, results show that 41% of women a…
Popular Moralities and Institutional Rationalities in Malawi's Struggle Against Aids
The AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is fertile ground for examining how moral evaluations evolve over time and across different settings. We compare the discourse on AIDS in Malawi as presented in the media with that of everyday conversations. Drawing on two sets of texts, newspaper articles and conversational journals, produced over a ten-year period from 1999 through 2008, we analyze their moral injunctions, or what individuals should or sh…
Life After Loss
The relationship between mortality and fertility is a key component of demographic transition theory, placing it at the center of extensive inquiry. Among other linkages, mortality in women's communities and social networks influences their subsequent fertility. Existing demographic research assumes this is principally due to volitional mechanisms, implying that exposure to mortality consolidates women's desire to become pregnant, leading to inte…
Tsogolo la Thanzi
Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT) was designed to study how young adults navigate sexual relationships and childbearing during a generalized HIV epidemic. TLT began in 2009 with a population‐representative sample of 1,505 women and 574 men between the ages of 15 and 25 living in Balaka, southern Malawi, where regional adult HIV prevalence then stood at 15 percent. The first phase (2009–11) included a series of eight interviews, spaced four months apart. Du…
Ethical and Public Health Considerations in HIV Counseling and Testing
HIV counseling and testing is broadly considered a critical component of HIV transmission‐prevention and treatment efforts. Given the severity of the AIDS pandemic in sub‐Saharan Africa, the potential societal benefit of testing is invoked to call for its massive expansion and to justify a shift from voluntary to routine testing. Surprisingly little evidence has demonstrated, however, that such a shift will result in the intended benefits to comm…
Sibling support and the educational prospects of young adults in Malawi
BACKGROUND: Extended kin networks are an important social and economic resource in Africa. Existing research has focused primarily on intergenerational ties, but much less is known about "lateral" ties, such as those between siblings. In contexts of high adult mortality (i.e., fewer parents and grandparents) sibling interdependencies may assume heightened importance, especially during the transition to adulthood. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we exte…
Data Collection as Disruption
Research disrupts the social world, often by making respondents aware that they are being observed or by instigating reflection upon particular aspects of life via the very act of asking questions. Building on insights from the first Hawthorne studies, reflexive ethnographers, and methodologists concerned with panel conditioning, we draw on six years of research within a community in southern Malawi to introduce a conceptual framework for theoriz…
Birth Planning and Women's and Men's Health in Malawi
Despite the frequency with which it occurs, we know little about unintended fertility in sub‐Saharan Africa and even less about its implications for the health of the women and men who experience it. We use longitudinal data from southern Malawi to explore how young adults report on the planning of their births and to identify changes in their self‐rated health and subjective well‐being associated with having more‐ or less‐planned births. Our dat…
Fertility Desires and Contraceptive Transition
Fertility desires are fundamental to understanding contraceptive use, yet the relationship between the two remains unclear and is the subject of much debate in demography. To understand the macrolevel relationship between fertility desires and contraceptive transition in low- and middle-income countries, we introduce a conceptual model that articulates the microlevel processes through which a desire to avoid childbearing translates into contracep…
The Collision of Global Scripts with Local Constraints
Extensive sociological research concludes that education informs people's desires for their lives and plays an instrumental role in facilitating the fulfillment of those desires. In this article, we ask if societal barriers can leave the most educated to desire outcomes that are unattainable and thus paradoxically place them at highest risk of unwanted outcomes. We answer this question by analyzing societal variation in the potential for educatio…
A partner‐specific critique of mistimed and unwanted fertility
Despite a long history in fertility research, the standard approach to measuring mistimed and unwanted fertility is both conceptually and operationally flawed. In the context of complicated sexual and reproductive lives that do not start and end with a single partner, researchers should reevaluate the usefulness of the constructs of mistimed and unwanted fertility. We conclude by offering recommendations for analysts and survey designers as well …
Visualizing Young Men's Fertility Desires
Fertility desires may not indicate precise plans; nonetheless, they contain important clues for understanding future fertility. On the basis of the dual assertion that fertility desires are (1) meaningful and (2) subject to revision with changing circumstances, this visualization provides a snapshot of young men's fertility desires using data from the Tsogolo La Thanzi study set in Balaka, Malawi. Scholars typically measure desires by summarizing…
Limitations of Clinic-Based Studies on HIV and Fertility Preferences
AffiliationsSara Yeatman is with the Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado Denver. Jenny Trinitapoli is with the Department of Sociology and Population Research Institute, Penn State University, University Park, PA. Sarah Hayford is with the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University, Tempe
Over-the-Counter Access, Changing WHO Guidelines, and Contraindicated Oral Contraceptive Use in Mexico
This study examines the prevalence of contraindications to the use of oral contraceptives in Mexico by sociodemographic characteristics and by whether this family planning method was obtained with or without a doctor's prescription. Using data on smoking behavior and blood-pressure measurements from the 2000 Mexican National Health Survey, the authors found that, under the 1996 World Health Organization (WHO) medical eligibility guidelines, the p…
Over-the-Counter Access, Changing WHO Guidelines, and Contraindicated Oral Contraceptive Use in Mexico
This study examines the prevalence of contraindications to the use of oral contraceptives in Mexico by sociodemographic characteristics and by whether this family planning method was obtained with or without a doctor's prescription. Using data on smoking behavior and blood-pressure measurements from the 2000 Mexican National Health Survey, the authors found that, under the 1996 World Health Organization (WHO) medical eligibility guidelines, the p…
Ethical and Public Health Considerations in HIV Counseling and Testing
HIV counseling and testing is broadly considered a critical component of HIV transmission‐prevention and treatment efforts. Given the severity of the AIDS pandemic in sub‐Saharan Africa, the potential societal benefit of testing is invoked to call for its massive expansion and to justify a shift from voluntary to routine testing. Surprisingly little evidence has demonstrated, however, that such a shift will result in the intended benefits to comm…
Beyond denomination
Despite the centrality of religion and fertility to life in rural Africa, the relationship between the two remains poorly understood. The study presented here uses unique integrated individual and congregational level data from rural Malawi to examine religious influences on contraceptive use. In this religiously diverse population, we find evidence that the particular characteristics of a congregation-leader's positive attitudes toward family pl…
The Impact of HIV Status and Perceived Status on Fertility Desires in Rural Malawi
HIV Infection and Fertility Preferences in Rural Malawi
Although HIV‐prevalence and fertility rates in sub‐Saharan Africa are among the highest in the world, little is known about how HIV infection affects the fertility preferences of men and women in the region. A quasi‐experimental design and in‐depth interviews conducted in rural Malawi are employed to examine how and through what pathways learning that one is HIV positive alters a person's childbearing desires. Among rural Malawians, particularly …
Increasing the acceptability of HIV counseling and testing with three C's
HIV is an enemy of childbearers’
In the sub-Saharan African AIDS epidemic there is no shortage of formal messages about HIV distributed through health clinics, NGOs and the media. These messages, however, do not always address the issues that are of most importance for people living in the epidemic and learning how to navigate it safely. In rural Malawi, one message that has been absent concerns the implications of HIV for childbearing. Using data from in-depth interviews, this …
Best-Friend Reports
We introduce the best-friend methodology for using surveys to measure the population prevalence of sensitive behaviors. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this tool by comparing self-reports to best-friend reports of sexual behavior and abortion history among young women in Malawi (n = 1493). Best-friend reports reveal higher and more believable estimates of abortion and multiple sexual partners. In contexts in which best friends commonly discus…
Uncertainty and Fertility in a Generalized Aids Epidemic
Sociologists widely acknowledge that uncertainty matters for decision making, but they rarely measure it directly. In this article, we demonstrate the importance of theorizing about, measuring, and analyzing uncertainty as experienced by individuals. We adapt a novel probabilistic solicitation technique to measure personal uncertainty about HIV status in a high HIV prevalence area of southern Malawi. Using data from 2,000 young adults (ages 15 to…
Stability and Change in Fertility Preferences Among Young Women in Malawi
CONTEXT: Although studies have demonstrated change in fertility preferences over time, there is a lack of definitive knowledge about the level and direction of change among individuals, especially young and unmarried women. Furthermore, little is known about the factors associated with changes in fertility preferences over time. METHOD: The analysis uses the first five waves of data from a longitudinal study of a random sample of women aged 15-25…
The relationship between orphanhood and child fostering in sub-Saharan Africa, 1990s-2000s
In countries most afflicted by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, orphanhood has increased dramatically, but the potential consequences of the increase have been mitigated by the ability of households to absorb orphans. This paper examines what the rising levels of orphanhood mean for the common practice of non-orphan child fostering in regions of high and low HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa, which has a long history of child fostering. Using D…
HIV treatment optimism and its predictors among young adults in southern Malawi
This study measures HIV treatment optimism and its predictors in a representative sample of young adults in southern Malawi. In 2010, 1275 women and 470 men between the ages of 16 and 26 were asked about their exposure to people on antiretroviral therapy (ART), sexual risk behavior, HIV status, and beliefs about ART. We used confirmatory factor analysis to develop a 4-item scale of the belief that HIV is a less serious health threat due to ART (r…
The social construction of Aids during a time of evolving access to antiretroviral therapy in rural Malawi
This paper draws upon a set of conversational journals collected over the past decade in rural Malawi, to understand how perceptions of AIDS are constructed as talk of antiretroviral therapy (ART) filters through social networks. Three distinct treatment eras frame our analysis: the early ART era (2001-2003), the ART expansion era (2004-2006) and the later ART era (2007-2009). We find that the early ART era was characterised by widespread fatalis…
Limitations of Clinic-Based Studies on HIV and Fertility Preferences
AffiliationsSara Yeatman is with the Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado Denver. Jenny Trinitapoli is with the Department of Sociology and Population Research Institute, Penn State University, University Park, PA. Sarah Hayford is with the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University, Tempe
Young Women’s Dynamic Family Size Preferences in the Context of Transitioning Fertility
Dynamic theories of family size preferences posit that they are not a fixed and stable goal but rather are akin to a moving target that changes within individuals over time. Nonetheless, in high-fertility contexts, changes in family size preferences tend to be attributed to low construct validity and measurement error instead of genuine revisions in preferences. To address the appropriateness of this incongruity, the present study examines eviden…
The Impact of Family Transitions on Child Fostering in Rural Malawi
Despite the frequency of divorce and remarriage across much of sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about what these events mean for the living arrangements of children. We use longitudinal data from rural Malawi to examine the effects of family transitions on the prevalence and incidence of child fostering, or children residing apart from their living parents. We find that between 7 % and 15 % of children aged 3–14 are out-fostered over the two-y…
The Relationship between Partners' Family‐Size Preferences in Southern Malawi
Studies of the relative influence of partners' fertility preferences on behaviors tend to treat preferences as fixed, largely independent traits despite existing theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that they are moving targets that may be jointly developed within relationships. In this study, we use couple‐level panel data from married and unmarried young adults in southern Malawi to examine the relationship between partners' …
Popular Moralities and Institutional Rationalities in Malawi's Struggle Against Aids
The AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is fertile ground for examining how moral evaluations evolve over time and across different settings. We compare the discourse on AIDS in Malawi as presented in the media with that of everyday conversations. Drawing on two sets of texts, newspaper articles and conversational journals, produced over a ten-year period from 1999 through 2008, we analyze their moral injunctions, or what individuals should or sh…
Sibling support and the educational prospects of young adults in Malawi
BACKGROUND: Extended kin networks are an important social and economic resource in Africa. Existing research has focused primarily on intergenerational ties, but much less is known about "lateral" ties, such as those between siblings. In contexts of high adult mortality (i.e., fewer parents and grandparents) sibling interdependencies may assume heightened importance, especially during the transition to adulthood. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we exte…
Men's heightened risk of Aids-related death
Women are frequently depicted as the face of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (SAA) [1–3], where they comprise nearly 58% of all reported HIV infections [4]. Donor dollars, policies and HIV programmes have followed suit, resulting in a near-exclusive focus on women (e.g. [5]). Although African women are represented as particularly vulnerable to HIV infection [6], it is men, not women, who are more likely to die of AIDS [7–9]. AIDS prevalence may have t…
The Sensitivity of Measures of Unwanted and Unintended Pregnancy Using Retrospective and Prospective Reporting
Surprising Results
This study uses eight waves of data from the population-based Tsogolo la Thanzi study (2009–2011) in rural Malawi to examine changes in young women’s contraceptive practices, including the use of condoms, non-barrier contraceptive methods and abstinence, following positive and negative HIV tests. The analysis factors in women’s prior perceptions of their HIV status that may already be shaping their behaviour and separates surprise HIV test result…
Birth Planning and Women's and Men's Health in Malawi
Despite the frequency with which it occurs, we know little about unintended fertility in sub‐Saharan Africa and even less about its implications for the health of the women and men who experience it. We use longitudinal data from southern Malawi to explore how young adults report on the planning of their births and to identify changes in their self‐rated health and subjective well‐being associated with having more‐ or less‐planned births. Our dat…
The Flexibility of Fertility Preferences in a Context of Uncertainty
From Ryder's (1973) “cloudy future” to Lee's (1980) “moving target,” the malleable nature of fertility preferences is widely accepted; however, tools for conceptualizing and measuring preferences have been slow to evolve. In this article, we seek to demonstrate that underpinning the number people give when asked about their ideal family size, and critical to interpreting it, is either a rigidness or a flexibility that is contextually situated and…
Conceptualizing Childbearing Ambivalence
Childbearing ambivalence is often conceptualized as a state of conflicting desires about having a child that is characteristic of particular individuals or life stages. This study proposes that childbearing ambivalence is dynamic and situational, resulting from the multiple sociocultural frames surrounding childbearing. Using eight waves of prospective data from a population-based sample of young adults in Malawi, results show that 41% of women a…
Psychology (32 works) · Demography (31 works) · Population (31 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Medicine (29 works) · Fertility (24 works) · Demography (22 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (20 works) · Family planning (18 works)