Involvement With Past-Union Children and Couple Childbearing Intentions

Parents with children from both past and current unions create complex stepfamilies. The author investigated the association of past-union children with intentions for a second or third child in the current union of 1,739 couples in the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study. Both partners' reports of their own resident and nonresident past-union children as well as fathers' reports of involvement with nonresident past-union children create a comprehensive measurement of past-union children. The analysis revealed that coresident past-union children were more closely associated with childbearing intentions than were nonresident past-union children and that weekly contact with nonresident children had a stronger link to intentions than did payments. These results suggest that the value of the past-union children as siblings and the time commitment made to these children are particularly salient to parents' decisions about further childbearing in their current union.Peer Reviewe