US women welcome children after all

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | August 2, 2012

Melinda Gates take note: a new Guttmacher study says that those modern, long-term contraceptives she wants inject into developing countries aren’t working in her own. USAToday reports:

Researchers thought unintended births overall might drop with the introduction of longer-acting contraceptive methods, says statistician William Mosher, the report’s lead author. But they’re not used by enough people to make a difference. “If they are used by larger proportions of people, we might see a decrease,” he says.

The report also reveals more details about contraception. In 2008, for example, 19% of births were unintended; 36% of women who had an unintended birth said they didn’t use contraception because they thought they couldn’t get pregnant. But 23% of those women said they “didn’t really mind if I got pregnant.”

“A lot seems to have to do with the fact people are increasingly ambivalent about whether or not to have a child,” says Karen Guzzo, a sociologist at Bowling Green (Ohio) State University. “They’re in this committed relationship and are often cohabiting and not trying hard to avoid having a child, but they’re not trying to have one, either.”

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