Few studies have attempted to examine why the observed racial disparity in unintended pregnancy exists between African-American and White women. This dissertation combines alternative theories of adolescent childbearing in socially disadvantaged African-American communities, results of preliminary qualitative work, and a quantitative survey approach to build an explanation for the elevated risk of unintended pregnancy among African-American women, and thus the observed racial disparity. It hypothesizes that elevated levels of unintended pregnancy, estimated by a nationally recognized survey called the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), might be explained by the high adolescent pregnancy rate and the over-report of the unintended status of those adolescent pregnancies. To examine over-report of unintended pregnancy, this study uses a New Orleans case study to: (1) quantitatively explore experimental measures of two dimensions of pregnancy intentions: valorization of motherhood and the perceived importance of pregnancy timing; (2) determine which dimension is more congruent with women's contraceptive and childbearing behavior; and (3) assess the relationship between the two dimensions and the NSFG intention categories / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24319 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Contributors | Afable-Munsuz, Aimee (Author), Kendall, Carl (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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