• Attitudes toward Conception Using a Deceased Spouse's Cryopreserved Gametes
  Presented by: Jason D. Hans

• Couple Decision-Making Processes of Remaining Voluntarily Childless
  Presented by: Kyung-Hee Lee, Anisa Zvonkovic

• Partner Commitment, Gender, and Depressive Symptoms for Expectant Cohabitors
  Presented by: Melissa Anne Curran, Shannon Alicia Corkery, Jessica Hope Post

• CANCELLED. How Neighborhood Environments Attenuate the ‘Marriage Advantage' in Birth Outcomes among Women in the US
  Presented by: Jennifer Buher Kane

Co-sponsored by Family and Health Section

Abstracts

Attitudes toward Conception Using a Deceased Spouse's Cryopreserved Gametes

Presented by: Jason D. Hans

Attitudes toward the posthumous use of a spouse's cryopreserved gametes for the purpose of procreation were examined using a multiple-segment factorial vignette with 864 respondents. Key contextual predictors of attitudes included the length of the marriage, the sex of the deceased, parenthood intentions prior to the death, the cause of death, and the supportiveness of the deceased's parents.

Couple Decision-Making Processes of Remaining Voluntarily Childless

Presented by: Kyung-Hee Lee, Anisa Zvonkovic

 The current study examined the decision-making processes of voluntarily childless couples and developed a theoretical model emphasizing the dyadic and temporal aspects using grounded theory. Conjoint interviews with 21 married couples revealed that the decision-making process involves moving from agreement to acceptance. Moreover, this study identified four different decision-making types (mutual postponer, mutual early articulator, negotiator-postponer, and negotiator couples) and found that the meaning of each stage and the process from agreement to acceptance are different for each type. This study confirmed that decision-making is a process and expanded our understanding of voluntarily childless couples by delineating the decision-making processes.

Partner Commitment, Gender, and Depressive Symptoms for Expectant Cohabitors

Presented by: Melissa Anne Curran, Shannon Alicia Corkery, Jessica Hope Post

Using the inertia model (Stanley, Rhoades, & Markman, 2006), we test associations of personal commitment and depressive symptoms in cohabiting couples expecting their first child together (N = 128 individuals). Using an Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM), we find, as expected, highest depressive symptoms are reported by women whose male partners are lower on personal commitment. To identify and understand individuals most at risk for depressive symptoms, we discuss the need to study gender in combination with partner commitment, especially for expectant cohabitors, who are a rapidly increasingly population of individuals within the U.S.

How Neighborhood Environments Attenuate the ‘Marriage Advantage' in Birth Outcomes among Women in the US

Presented by: Jennifer Buher Kane

Past research demonstrates ""marriage advantages"" with respect to several indicators of health across the life course, but infant health has received comparatively little attention. Capitalizing on recently-released data from NSFG (2006-8), this study links individual- and neighborhood-level data to examine how neighborhood environments mitigate infant health risk among married, cohabiting, and single women. Results from multilevel models indicate that marriage is increasingly protective against the risk of poor infant health in neighborhoods stricken with high levels of violent and serious property crime, whereas cohabitation is increasingly risky. Findings lend greater contextualization to persistent infant health disparities concentrated among unmarried women.