This examination of changes in adolescent fertility emphasizes the changing social context within which adolescent childbearing takes place.

Today, one third of all American babies are born to unmarried mothers—a startling statistic that has prompted national concern about the consequences for women, children, and society. Indeed, the debate about welfare and the overhaul of the federal welfare program for single mothers was partially motivated by the desire to reduce out of wedlock births. Although the proportion of births to unwed mothers has stopped climbing for the first time since the 1960s, it has not decreased, and recent trends are too complex to attribute solely to policy interventions. What are these trends and how do they differ across groups? Are they peculiar to the United States, or rooted in more widespread social forces? Do children of unmarried mothers face greater life challenges, and if so what can be done to help them? Out of Wedlock investigates these questions, marshalling sociologists, demographers, and economists to review the state of current research and to provide both empirical information and critical analyses. The conflicting data on nonmarital fertility give rise to a host of vexing theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues, some of which researchers are only beginning to address. Out of Wedlock breaks important new ground, bringing clarity to the data and examining policies that may benefit these particularly vulnerable children.

A Little Pregnant is a poignant and refreshingly honest account of a husband and wife struggling over the course of a decade to have a child. Linda Carbone and Ed Decker offer a moving appraisal of their wrenching, confusing, frustrating, and sometimes comic ordeal. She feels ambivalent about having children; he has an urgent need to have them, at all costs. In alternating chapters, husband and wife present their own powerful versions of their descent into medical and marital turmoil -- as well as their story's unexpected happy ending.

In Positive Conceptions, Kristen Magnacca offers her firsthand experience of infertility--the heartbreak, depression and miscommunication--and how she and her husband, Mark finally devised the much needed life-saving strategy that led them to achieving pregnancy.

"For the better part of a decade, Marc Sedaka and his wife belonged to a thriving, exclusive club that no one in their right mind wants to join. They were one of more than six million American couples suffering with infertility. In that time, they battled through endless rounds of drug therapies, 16 artificial inseminations, 10 in-vitro fertilizations, 3 miscarriages, and 1 gestational surrogate (womb for rent) who carried their twin girls to term..."--P. [4] of cover.