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Heini Väisänen and Rachel K. Jones

reporting trying to get pregnant among those with higher education compared to those
with lower education, even while both groups’ report a similarly weaker pregnancy avoid-
ance attitude. Interestingly, no significant interactions between education and other cova-
riates were found, although TCA suggests otherwise. It may have been partly due to the
small sample size in our study.
Some of the associations were not surprising, such as transitioning into a stronger union
being associated with weaker avoidance and trying to get pregnant. However, given that
employment situation is often associated with fertility intentions in the literature (Becker,
1991; Chibber, Biggs, Roberts et al, 2014), it is interesting that changes in hours worked
did not have a clear association with pregnancy attitudes. It may be that women interpret
such changes as favorable or unfavorable depending on their other life circumstances. In
addition, as the data did not assess whether women who reported working no hours in the
week prior to the interview were on leave, not working by choice or had been laid off, it
may be that in some cases we did not capture the kind of change that affects pregnancy
planning with this variable.
Young women (aged 18 to 24) were less likely to transition in any direction in their
pregnancy attitudes compared to older women. These patterns might reflect that younger
women are more often pursuing education, stable employment and relationships thus, mo-
tivated to postpone childbearing confirming our hypothesis that there is more fluctuation
in these attitudes among older women By contrast, women in their late 20s often transi-
tioned into weaker pregnancy avoidance and started trying, which suggests that this is seen
as a preferred age to have children.
Women who had young child(ren) more often reported shifting to weaker pregnancy
avoidance and transitioning into trying to get pregnant. These women may wish to have
their children relatively closely spaced.
These results highlight the importance of taking a holistic perspective of women’s lives
when studying pregnancy attitudes. Since we know that these attitudes are associated with
consistency in contraceptive use (Frost, Singh, and Finer, 2007; Moreau, Hall, Trussell et
al, 2013), this should be taken into account when contraceptive counseling is given. As
pregnancy attitudes may change rapidly, women should know how to adjust their contra-
ceptive use accordingly. This result also has a methodological implication: cross-sectional
studies may not capture the entire story of pregnancy attitudes, as these studies assume
that these measures are fairly stable over time.
There were limitations in this study. Women who were lost to attrition between waves
were younger and less educated than women who stayed. However, if we observe this
much change even among our sample of women probably leading more stable lives, there
is no reason to expect that the associations would be weaker in a less biased sample.
Moreover, we lacked information of partner’s characteristics which may affect pregnancy
intentions (Chibber, Biggs, Roberts et al, 2014). A larger sample size would have permit-
ted a more detailed examination between different types of transitions in attitudes. Al-
though the partner’s characteristics such as his occupation or age may have influenced
respondents’ pregnancy attitudes, this information was not collected and in turn, we were
unable to control for these characteristics. Similarly, it may be that the association between
changes in relationship status and the outcome depend on whether the women are in their
first or subsequent union and on the duration of the partnership. However, this information
was not collected either. Future studies on the topic should consider measuring and study-
ing these characteristics.
The strengths on the study include the innovative study design exploring rarely studied
associations between changes in women’s lives and fertility intentions. Moreover, there are
very few existing longitudinal studies at the national level measuring adult women’s fertil-

International Journal of Population Studies | 2015, Volume 1, Issue 1 119