Does the conventional measure of unintended pregnancy capture the valorisation of motherhood in a young female inner city African-American population?

Aimee Afable-Munsuz, University of California, San Francisco
Ilene S. Speizer, Virginia Commonwealth University
Jeanette Magnus, Tulane University
Carl Kendall, Tulane University

This presentation discusses one approach to measuring locally constructed pregnancy motivations and relating them to a common measure of unintended pregnancy, defined as mistimed or unwanted. Data from in-depth interviews with 77 women, of reproductive age, recruited at public family planning and prenatal clinics in New Orleans were used to develop a series of 8 questions to measure a construct called valorization of motherhood. The questions were then tested on a different sample of 783 African-American women 13-24 years of age from the same clinic populations. Factor analyses of the 8 questions used to capture valorization of motherhood suggest the presence of two latent constructs, explaining 41% and 16% of the variance. ANOVA analyses suggest a strong statistical association between the constructs and pregnancy experience. There was no association between the constructs and the conventional pregnancy intention categories, suggesting limitations with regard to the generalizeability of the term “unintended pregnancy”.