This diploma thesis focuses on the issue of women delaying pregnancy and parenthood to later in life. The aim of this thesis is to map out the health risks related to pregnancies in mothers who are over 35 years old, to find out the reasons for the later in life pregnancy and whether women realize the health risks associated. The thesis describes the health risks resulting from pregnancies in older women at the time of the birth and using the method of linear regression to analyze the dependence of the mother age of 35 or higher on the low birth weight of the live birth. Further, the issue of postponing pregnancy and motherhood is examined from women's point of view in more detail through the method of semistructured interviews, especially the reasons for delaying pregnancy and information about health risks. The results show that with women, who become pregnant at an older age, there is a certain increase in health risks; however, generally women are not very well informed about these complications. Keywords: fertility, fertility timing, health risks

Background: When asked what a desirable fertility level for populations might be, most politicians, journalists, and even social scientists would say it is around two children per woman, a level that has been labelled by demographers "replacement-level fertility." The reasons given for considering this level of fertility as something to aim at usually include maintaining the size of the labour force and stabilizing the old-age-dependency ratio. Objective: In this paper, we scrutinize this wide-spread view by introducing education in addition to age and sex as a further relevant source of observable population heterogeneity. We consider several criteria for assessing the long-term implications of alternative fertility levels and present numerical simulations with a view on minimizing the education-weighted total dependency ratio and complement this with the goal of reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emission in the context of climate change. Methods: We perform thousands of alternative simulations for different fertility levels (assumed to be constant over time) starting from empirically given population structures and derive the rate of fertility which yields the lowest level of our education-weighted dependency ratio. We study the sensitivity of our results to different parameter values and choose to focus on the actual populations of Europe and China over the course of the 21st century. Results: The results show that when education is assumed to present a cost at young age and results in higher productivity during adult age, then the fertility rate that on the long run keeps dependency at a minimum turns out to lie well below replacement fertility both in Europe and in China under a set of plausible assumptions. The optimal fertility level falls even lower when climate change is factored in as well. Conclusions: We conclude that there is nothing magical or particularly desirable about replacement level fertility. (authors' abstract)

Background: Fertile women that are about to undergo cancer treatment do not receive adequate information about fertility and fertility preservation. Not to have been able to make an active choice about undergoing fertility preservation may cause a suffering for these women. Purpose: To describe which experiences young women with cancer have of the information given about fertility and fertility preservation measures prior to the cancer treatment with regards to disease-suffering, care-suffering and life-suffering. Method: Literature review of qualitative and quantitative research. Results: Eight subcategories based on the three main categories disease-suffering, care-suffering and life-suffering were identified. Disease-suffering: (1) Anxiety and (2) Uncertainty. Care-suffering: (3) Attitudes and (4) Lack of information. Life-suffering: (5) Relations and Other social factors, (6) Psychological illness, (7) Longing for children and (8) Quality of life. Conclusion: Various measures are needed to ensure women’s right to information about fertility prior to cancer treatment in order to diminish disease-suffering, care-suffering and life-suffering. Caregivers need to talk with women about fertility related problems, both preventively and for healing purposes. Clinical significance: A clear and safer information policy is needed on fertility and fertility preservation for patients about to undergo cancer treatment.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1961 L85

published_or_final_version / Botany / Master / Master of Science

What is the connection between people and the landscape that surrounds them? How do changes in that landscape affect social life? This study of a dual-sited village community in southern Manggarai (eastern Indonesia) argues that places and pathways are crucially implicated in the constitution of persons and social relationships. Manggarai life takes place within a complex and contested 'landscape' of kinship and history, in which state policies and religious conversion are leading people to reinterpret traditional notions of growth, fertility and the land. In considering this landscape, the study connects literature on the southeast Asian 'House' with the analysis of transformative journeys, and descriptions of village layout and sacred geography with the ethnography of family intimacy. Rooms are shown to be central to the constitution of households and notions of siblingship, whilst ordinary houses are egalitarian collections of rooms, and sites of ritual remembering. Clan identity is embodied in the drum house, but the significance of this 'House' as a social institution is changing under the influence of state cultural politics. Marriage is conceptualised as creating 'paths' of relatedness, and individual alliance connections are maintained by emotional journeys along these paths. Within origin villages, named fields and sacred, stone platforms are potent signs both in and of history, but their absence in recently settled villages contributes to the ritual 'emptiness' of these sites. History is also revealed in the landscape through topogenies that relate ancestral journeys from place to place, and through the growth of seedling villages. However, recent histories have created new interpretations of this landscape. In particular, people engage with their community's division between a highland site and a lowland, satellite village by 'swinging' between the power of 'the outside', and the authority of the centred, ancestral interior.

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