If Things Were Different in My Life: Structural Inequity and Childbearing Desires in Emerging Adulthood

Background and Purpose: While pregnancy plans and desires are complex across developmental groups, pathways to actualizing childbearing goals are particularly fraught for emerging adults in the U.S., who contend with financial and housing insecurity and the stigma of young parenthood. This study investigates the way emerging adults envision their own pregnancy plans and desires and the degree to which young adults feel they have the agency and resources they need to actualize their childbearing goals, with particular attention to the role of structural inequity.

Methods: In order to explore pregnancy planning and desires in emerging adults, we conducted in-depth, qualitative interviews with 50 young women (ages 18-24) and their male partners. Couples were purposively sampled for maximum diversity in racial/ethnic background, SES, educational attainment, and parenting status. We conducted a thematic analysis regarding structural context and childbearing desires.

Results: Beliefs that pregnancy plans and desires could be actualized were stratified by level of economic and social advantage. More advantaged participants had pregnancy plans that aligned with their desires. While these participants expressed feeling as though they would desire a pregnancy now “if things were different in their lives,” these responses were actually reflective of desiring children at a later stage in their development, when they had personal expectations of achieving milestones associated with pregnancy preparedness. These participants did not desire things to be different now but rather, envisioned a future in which they would surely be different, by virtue of being further along a life path they already perceived themselves to be on.

For less advantaged participants, two distinct themes emerged. For some, childbearing plans were delayed due to the lack of financial, structural, and social supports they perceived to be necessary for pregnancy preparedness. While these participants expressed desires to bear children earlier, they felt the need to delay pregnancy until they could contend with structural barriers. Thus their pregnancy plans, shifted by way of structural inequity, were not in accordance with their true pregnancy desires. Other participants in the less advantaged group expressed significant doubt about whether they would ever have everything they should have to raise a child. As such, the alignment of pregnancy plans and desires was not germane. The traditional pregnancy planning paradigm, which leans heavily on structural preparedness, appeared inapplicable, as they did not believe their lives would be dramatically different in the future.

Conclusions/Implications: This analysis indicates that structural inequities, which may already accelerate the transition to adulthood, influence the trajectory from personal desire to the actualization of childbearing goals in emerging adulthood. These findings have important implications for social work and its social justice mission, as our results suggest that emerging adults may be prevented from exercising self-determination in family planning in the context of intractable structural inequity.