n Contemporary studies indicate that teen pregnancy interferes with young women’s ability to graduate from high school and to enroll in and graduate from college. Conversely, planning, delaying and spacing births appears to help women achieve their education and career goals. Delaying a birth can also reduce the gap in pay that typically exists between working mothers and their childless peers ...

Background and objectives: Birth spacing is an important variable for identification of fertility acceleration, total fertility rate, and maternal and fetal health. Therefore, special attention has been paid to this issue by researchers in the fields of medical sciences, health, and population. In addition, proper analysis of this concept is of foremost importance. Application of classical anal...

The majority of studies of the birth spacing-child survival relationship rely on retrospective data, which are vulnerable to errors that might bias results. The relationship is re-assessed using prospective data on 13,502 children born in two Nairobi slums between 2003 and 2009. Nearly 48% were first births. Among the remainder, short preceding intervals are common: 20% of second and higher ord...

While the nutritional, immunological and anti-bacterial benefits of breast milk are incontestable, the contraceptive effect of breastfeeding is more apparent in the aggregate than at the level of the individual. Nevertheless, it has recently been recommended that lactating women not consider adopting contraception until the earliest of their first post-partum menstruation, the introduction of s...

Since the transition to democracy in Spain in 1975, both total fertility and rates of church attendance of Catholics have dropped dramatically. In this study the 1985 and 1999 Spanish Fertility Surveys were used to investigate whether the significance of religion for fertility behaviour -- current family size and the spacing of births -- changed between the survey dates. In the 1985 survey, fam...

Short birth spacing continues to be a problem in Uganda and Zimbabwe, resulting in negative infant, child, and maternal health outcomes. This study investigates community-level influences on birth spacing outcomes among women aged 15-49 in Uganda and Zimbabwe, using Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2011 (Uganda) and 2010-2011 (Zimbabwe). Women living in communities with higher mean m...

BACKGROUND Optimal birth spacing has health advantages for both mother and child. In developing countries, shorter birth intervals are common and associated with social, cultural, and economic factors, as well as a lack of family planning. This study investigated the first birth interval after marriage and preceding interbirth interval in Nepal. METHODS A community-based prospective cohort st...