Family planning perspectives
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More than one in 10 legitimate births that occurred in the United States during 1968, 1969, and 1972 were not wanted at all, and more than one-quarter of the births were timing failures. A substantial reduction in unwanted childbearing took place between 1968 and 1972. The proportion of legitimate births reported by their mothers to be unwanted ever declined from 13 percent in 1968 to eight percent in 1972. ⋯ Viewed from the cross-sectional perspective of period rates of population change, the elimination of unwanted legitimate childbearing would have had a substantial effect on population growth in each of the study years even without decreasing marital mistimed births or illegitimate fertility. The data also suggest that eliminating unwanted marital childbearing could significantly reduce completed family size. However, this conclusion must be viewed with great caution, since we do not know the future variations in timing and spacing of births, and the extent to which the childbearing experience of the sampled mothers is representative of their birth cohorts.