Non-marital pregnancy and the second demographic transition in Australia in historical perspective

BACKGROUNDAustralia has remarkably detailed data on non-marital pregnancy dating from 1908. They both offer insight into long-term trends in childbearing resulting from non-marital sexual activity and reveal in historical context key features of the second demographic transition and its genesis.OBJECTIVETrends are traced in rates of non-marital conception of children ultimately born both outside and within marriage. A range of related indices is also presented in examining how demographic behaviour surrounding non-marital pregnancy (i) helped generate the second demographic transition and (ii) unfolded as a component of it.METHODSCore indices are rates of non-marital conception partitioned into additive components associated with marital and non-marital confinement. Data on non-marital and early marital births (at marriage durations 0-7 months) are lagged back 38 weeks to a date of and age at conception basis to facilitate a common, unmarried, population at risk.RESULTSPost-war weakening of parental oversight of courtship was a fundamental trigger to the broader rejection of normative and institutional values that underpinned the second demographic transition. In tandem with denying the unmarried access to oral contraception it generated rampant youthful non-marital pregnancy, which undermined Judeo-Christian values, especially once abortion law reform occurred.CONCLUSIONSChildbearing following non-marital conception transitioned rapidly after the 1960s from primarily the unintended product of youthful intercourse in non-coresidential relationships to mainly intended behaviour at normative reproductive ages in consensual unions. Family formation increasingly mixed non-marital births and premaritally and/or maritally conceived marital births.COMMENTSAn earlier analysis of non-marital pregnancy in Australia (Carmichael 1996) traversed the entire period of European settlement, commencing with the convict era (1788-1840). It did not focus on the second demographic transition, as this updated analysis does.1. IntroductionIn the first English language exposition of the second demographic transition, van de Kaa (1987: p. 7) highlighted an associated -large change in norms and attitudes" in Western Europe between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. This signalled rapid adoption of a much more individualistic outlook on life, and was illustrated using survey data for the Netherlands. Among the attitude changes van de Kaa demonstrated were huge increases over periods of less than a decade to a decade and a half in acceptance of sexual relations between couples who intended to marry and between a girl and a boy she -likes a lot", and in acceptance of voluntary childlessness, divorce with children still at home, mothers of school-age children working, homosexuality, cohabitation with no intent to marry, and living apart together. There had also been a marked decline in the belief that married people were generally happier than single people.These sorts of attitude changes, variously also labelled -reflexive modernization" (Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994) and -social liberalism" (McDonald 2006), were occurring simultaneously in numerous developed countries including Australia (Carmichael 1998), and found expression in a variety of demographic indices. In this paper the focus is on trends in a range of measures pertaining to non-marital pregnancy and childbearing. They derive from data available for Australia since 1908 that tabulate annually (i) non-marital confinements yielding live births by age of mother and (ii) marital first confinements yielding live births by duration of marriage and age of mother. The latter data break duration down in months for the first year of marriage, allowing marital confinements following non-marital conceptions to be estimated (as the number of confinements within eight months of marriage). Together, the two sets of data facilitate a focus not just on non-marital fertility but also on childbearing (non- marital or marital) resulting from non-marital sexual activity. …