Fertility of American Women - Essay Example

Due Article Review We have all seen the, late 1950s and 1960s, cookie-cutter, middle suburban neighborhoods with identical houses with white picket fences. The man comes home from work to his wife, who is waiting with dinner, drinks, and two well behaved children; one girl and one boy. The world has definitely changed a lot in the last half a century and so have the ways that we are having children. The article, by Jane Lawler Dye, Fertility of American Woman: 2008, vividly explains how those patterns have changed, particularly in the last decade, and provides some very interesting percentages and numbers.

The study that was performed began with a single question asked to woman of childbearing ages, between 15 and 50. The question was, simply, have you had a birth in the last 12 months? The intended outcome was to determine the, “…current fertility rates based in the number of women reporting a birth in the previous 12 months per 1000 women in the specified group.” (Lawler Dye 5) She believes it will provide a thorough picture of fertility trends among differing ages, cultural backgrounds, and economic groups within the United States.

One of the most interesting groupings of numbers were presented in discussing the differences in the numbers of woman who are now having children much later in life than in previous decades. Women with college educations, associate degrees and higher, and then pursue a career throughout their 20s and 30s are more likely to have their children in their 40s. However, these numbers are offset by the number of young woman without education, including not receiving a high school diploma, which have much larger numbers of children per 1000 surveyed.

These same women, those with no continuing education, also tend to be the largest portion of single parent or non married cohabitation living arrangements. Another interesting highlight of the article was the percentages in relation to birth rates within different economic groups. The women living below the poverty line are more likely to have a birth while receiving public assistance at a rate of 160 births per 1000 surveyed, while only 56 births per 1000 were born to women living below the poverty line but not receiving assistance.

This number could be quite disturbing. There are a lot of children being born into state aid or in the worse cases these are children intentionally being created to increase or maintain the monies received by recipients of the aid.(Lawler Dye 10) However, to offset these numbers only 6% of the women surveyed currently were receiving aid, which is very low compared to the overall number of women included in the study. Ultimately, the article was very informative and supported itself quite well.

However, there are few areas that one might question in the validity of all the statistics they have accrued. Firstly, in the case of survey information the results are easily tainted by the receiving of dishonest answers, by misunderstanding of the questions asked, and if the results are not properly classified and coded. However, the researchers acknowledge and worked very hard to and have included and focused upon,”… overall design of surveys, the wording of questions, review of the work of interviewers and coders, and statistical review of reports to minimize these errors.

” (Lawler Dye 15) The only question that might remain is in relation to contraception and abortion which was not considered. The number of the children being born is important but to truly determine fertility rates would you not want to, also, take into consideration all the pregnancies that are not taken to full term. Regardless of your personal opinions on the subject the fertility rates may look very different if those two options were not present and might be relevant to overall fertility potentials in the United States.

Beyond this one question that I felt was under-addressed this article was thorough, well organized, and concise in the information it was intended to share.Work CitedLawler Dye, Jane. United States. U.S. Department of Commerce. Fertility of American Women: 2008. U.S Census Bureau, 2008. Web. http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p20-563.pdf