Does the wantedness of a pregnancy predict a child's educational attainment? Family Planning Perspectives

ondary schools.7 Further evidence indi-cates that the father-daughter relationship is especially problematic for unwanted daughters, and this too may influence their educational attainment.8 One study, however, found no difference in academ-ic performance by wantedness.9 In this article, we report on the academ-ic progress at adolescence and early adult-hood of a 1966 cohort of births in Finland; we assess whether the wantedness of a pregnancy has an independent effect on ed-ucational attainment when family back-ground is taken into consideration. This co-hort was born when abortion was allowed in Finland for medical reasons only, with women needing the authorization of two physicians to obtain the procedure. (The law was liberalized in 1970 to allow women to request an abortion for economic and social rea-sons as well.) We also ex-amine gender differ-ences in educational attainment among chil-dren born from unwant-ed pregnancies. Methodology The data come from a survey of 12,068 women who gave birth in 1966 (to 12,231 babies) in the two northernmost provinces of Finland