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.

Marc Sedaka stood by while he and his wife endured endless rounds of drug therapies, sixteen artificial inseminations, ten in-vitro fertilizations, three miscarriages, and, finally, a gestational surrogate (“womb for rent”) who carried their twin girls to term. He was as supportive and loving as he could be, but he really wished he’d had a book like What He Can Expect When She’s Not Expecting during the process. Most books about dealing with infertility are geared toward women, leaving the man to his own devices when it comes to comfort and encouragement (never a good idea). With the help of his own infertility doctor, Sedaka provides straightforward guy-friendly advice on situations such as: What questions you should ask at the consultations. How to help rather than annoy. What kinds of tests you and your wife should expect. How to console a wife who appears inconsolable. How to enjoy procreation sex. Sedaka’s accessible, empathetic voice, combined with the fact that he experienced everything he writes about, makes this a must-have book for any infertile couple.

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.

"While all other European nations increased in population during the [nineteenth] century, the population of Ireland decreased at every census except one between 1841 and 1961; the number of persons living in Ireland in 1966 was less than half that of 1841. Of all Western European countries, Ireland has the greatest amount of postponed marriage and permanent celibacy, and yet it also has the highest marital fertility rate ... It is unsettling to social scientists to admit the existence of an apparent exception to so many well known and widely accepted theories concerning population growth, urbanization, emigration, age and marriage, and family size. The aim of this book is to distinguish some of the more interesting elements of Irish life which are indeed peculiar to Ireland from those which Ireland shares, to a greater or lesser degree, with other countries"--