248-253 Forum

Family Planning Perspectives of having once measured a very different part of the family-building cycle. Meanwhile, the shift in political and policy interest away from the end toward the beginning of the cycle means that the NSFG is measuring a much more complicated social reality. For an earlier generation of women (and men), these surveys did indeed measure what they were supposed to, namely fertility, or how many children a couple actually wanted. But for an increasing number of American women (and men), something entirely different is at stake—not fertility, but motherhood (or fatherhood, as the case may be). To the extent that more and more women are contemplating, not “excess” births at the end of the family-building cycle, but unexpected pregnancies at the beginning, what is really being tapped is the willingness to enter a new social role, not how extended that role should be. Drawing on the work of decision theorists, I submit that the decision whether or not to be a parent is a very different kind of decision—a threshold decision—and touches on a much more complicated decision tree than the decision to have a completed family size of four or five children.2 Other events in the larger social world have conspired to further complicate this decision. As parenthood becomes increasingly severed from marriage in all industrialized countries, deciding about a pregnancy means a decision not only as to whether one wants to become a parent, but whether one wants to become a parent with a particular partner inside or outside marriage.3 In decision-making terms, what has happened is that now both parties must decide whether they want to continue a pregnancy or wait for a more promising situation to come along, however that is defined. Add to these issues the fact that the women and men coming to the end of their reproductive lives at the close of this century have watched the fundamental Kristin C. Luker is professor of sociology and professor of