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Abstract
Unlike many previous studies of the relationship between marital status and childbearing, which compared only completed fertility, this study decomposed differences in fertility between women in first and second marriages (in the United States) so that differences in fertility between the two marital status groups could be observed at certain points in the remarried women's marital histories--at separation, between marriages, and after remarriage.
For white women, differences in the childbearing behavior of the two marital status groups emerged between women who first married early and women who first married late. For both early and late marriers, at the time of separation little difference existed in the numbers of children born to women in first and second marriages, suggesting that women who eventually were to separate did not behave differently in their first marriages from women who were not to separate. At remarriage, the effect of the lost exposure to the possibility of a legitimate birth among remarried women was apparent--their mean parity at remarriage was lower than that of women in first marriages. For late marriers, the difference in parity at remarriage was particularly large. After remarriage, however, among the early marriers, the parity of remarried women approached the parity of women in first marriages. The early marriers who remarried had substantially higher rates of childbearing in their second marriages to the extent that, despite their lower parity at remarriage, the ultimate parity of remarried early marriers was not very different from that of women in first marriages. Among those who married late, in contrast, fertility rates within second marriages were not dramatically higher than rates within first marriages and, consequently, the difference in parity that existed at remarriage persisted throughout second marriages.
Less can be said regarding black women because of a paucity of data. Those who remarried had substantially fewer children than did women in first marriages, regardless of first marriage age. Because blacks who remarried spent more time than whites between marriages, the loss of exposure to the possibility of a legitimate pregnancy during the intermarital years may at least partially account for remarried blacks' relatively low parity.
