Unintended Pregnancy from His Point of View

Julie Fennell, Gallaudet University
Stan Becker, Johns Hopkins University

Unintended pregnancy affects many Americans and is associated with a variety of poor health outcomes for parents, their relationships, and their children. Since men are usually expected to make financial and social contributions as fathers, unintended pregnancy typically affects both women and men. Yet major research analyses on unintended pregnancy in the U.S. have only analyzed statistics for women. Moreover, conventional measures of unintended pregnancy only use information from women, occasionally employing women’s reports of their male partners’ perceptions of the pregnancy. In order to fill this gap, this paper uses data from the men's and women's National Survey of Family Growth, as well as separately collected supplementary interview data with 30 young adult men, to provide an overview of American men's experiences with unintended pregnancy. We pay special attention to unintended fatherhood, and we highlight statistical differences between the reports of men and women.