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TRENDS IN FERTILITY BY PARITY IN EUROPE
... Older personsand in particular older womenrely heavily on their children, not only for informal care and practical support, but also for confiding and reassurance (Antonucci & Akiyama, 1987;Van der Pas, Van Tilburg, & Knipscheer, 2007). The parents of the baby boom generation were characterized by their high fertility, but subsequent cohorts had considerably fewer children (Cherlin, 2010;Devolder, Gonz alez, & Gavino, 2002;Kirmeyer & Hamilton, 2011). This gives rise to concerns about the welfare of new cohorts of older people (e.g. ...
... Bures, Koropeckyj-Cox, & Loree, 2009;Huijts, Kraaykamp, & Subramanian, 2013;Koropeckyj-Cox, 1998;Van den Broek, 2017;Zhang & Hayward, 2001), it focuses on the effect of additional children on mothers' mental health. A closer look at mental health differences between mothers of different parity is called for, because fertility declines in developed countries have to a substantial extent been driven by declines in higher-order births (Devolder et al., 2002). As explained in further detail later, the current study extends earlier work on the association between number of children and mother's mental health (e.g. ...
... In line with these findings, the current study showed that children are beneficial for older women's mental health. The finding that having an additional child had, on average, a causal protective effect against elevated depression and anxiety symptomatology in later life for white mothers should be considered in the light of the decline in the likelihood of higher-order births thatalbeit to a smaller extent than in European contexts has been noted in the United States (Devolder et al., 2002;cf. Kirmeyer & Hamilton, 2011). ...
Objectives: Members of the baby boom cohorts had fewer children than their parents. Given that adult children are an important source of social support in later life, this may have implications for the mental health of new cohorts of older people. This study investigates whether having additional children protects white mothers aged 65 and older against mental health problems.
Method: Data are from Wave 1 and Wave 5 of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (n = 3,845). An instrumental variable approach exploiting the preference for mixed-sex offspring is used to estimate the causal effect of additional children on the risk of elevated depression and anxiety symptomatology.
Results: The estimated instrumental variable model shows that additional children reduce the risk of suboptimal mental health among white mothers aged 65 and older.
Conclusion: Results suggest that declines in higher-order births may put new cohorts of older women at increased risk of suboptimal mental health.
Overweight or weight development related to pregnancy has been associated with number of deliveries (ie, parity).
This study evaluates 10-year changes in associations between obesity and parity.
The data were from the National FINRISK Study on women 25-64 years of age. The study included a questionnaire and anthropometric measurements in 1997 (N = 4193) and 2007 (N = 3578). Women whose body mass index (BMI) was ≥ 30 kg/m² were considered obese, and women whose waist circumference was ≥ 88 cm were considered viscerally obese. Women with no pregnancies were categorized as nulliparous, those with 1-2 deliveries as parous, and those with ≥ 3 deliveries as multiparous. Logistic regression models were used to estimate separately the odd ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs for BMI and waist circumference. Linear regression models were used to evaluate the main effect of parity on obesity and visceral obesity.
Women with 1 or 2 children were less often obese (OR = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.64-0.88) or viscerally obese (OR = 0.98; 95% CI, 0.85-1.14) than nulliparous or multiparous women. Multiparous women had more visceral obesity in 2007 (OR = 1.36; 95% CI, 1.16-1.60) than other parity groups. Multiparous women had the highest BMI or waist circumference even after adjusting for age, study year, and education. The year 2007 was significantly associated with visceral obesity (OR = 2.07; 95% CI, 1.87-2.30) and obesity (OR = 1.13; 95% CI, 1.01-1.28) when compared with 1997.
Parity is an important determinant of visceral obesity, which is more prevalent in younger age groups than a decade ago. Women with ≥ 3 deliveries were more often obese or viscerally obese than other women.
Parity progression measures are uniquely suited to the study of fertility in China, because Chinese policies and programmes focus so closely on parity and birth order. In this paper we present period parity progression ratios for China and its urban and rural areas for the years 1955–81, using the birth history data from the one-per-thousand fertility survey of 1982. Our period parity progression ratios differ from those introduced by Henry in that they provide an overall level of fertility which may be compared with measures based on age-specific birth rates. We compare the two measures empirically for China, finding both similarities and divergences, and then analyse the relation between them. It is suggested that, where fertility is low and fluctuating, as in China, the parity-progression-based measures provide a substantially truer picture of fertility levels and trends than do age-based measures.
A method is presented for analysing maternity history data to provide period estimates of parity progression ratios, birth intervals and related indices. This is applied to a sample of the marriage and maternity histories from the Census of England and Wales of 1971 and shows: (a) a general increase through the 1950s and into the 1960s in period estimates of marriage and parity progression ratios, especially in the progression from first to second birth; (b) a general acceleration of fertility with, again, the second birth interval becoming particularly short and compact; and (c) very steep declines in third and fourth birth progression ratios from the mid-1960s. Birth interval distributions altered during the period examined. Decomposition of a progression-based total fertility index shows change in the ratios for lower birth orders to have dominated the fertility upswing and declines in ratios for higher birth orders to have initiated the subsequent decline.