Marital Uncertainty and Childbearing

The author uses data from a U.S. sample of married adults and hypotheses guided by the Uncertainty Reduction Theory of Parenthood, developed by D. Friedman, M. Hechter and S. Kanazawa, in 1994 to examine how marital solidarity and uncertainty affect the odds of having a child. The analyses do not support the idea that couples who lack marital solidarity and are unhappy with their marriages use childbearing as a strategy to increase solidarity and, in turn, reduce marital uncertainty. Instead, the dominant pattern is that a solid marriage and compatability between spouses encourage parenthood and higher-order childbearing. The results are also discussed in terms of economic and normative theories of fertility