Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College’s Population Health Series. This study asks whether obesity is associated with young women’s life course childbearing experiences. Weight is a physical status with important biological and social components that is linked to several proximate determinants of fertility. As such, negative consequences of obesity may accumulate over the life course leading obese young women to be stratified into disadvantaged positions for childbearing. This leads to hypotheses that obese young women have fewer children, a higher risk of remaining childless and later timing of first birth than their non-obese counterparts. Twenty-three years of data from a sample of NLSY79 female respondents who were ages 20 to 24 in 1981 are analyzed to test these hypotheses, which are all supported. In fact, obese women’s predicted probability of remaining childless is almost the same as their probability of winning a coin toss. Their estimated probability for giving birth in each study year is even lower. Results confirm obese young women’s position of disadvantage for childbearing and suggest that negative consequences of obesity accumulate across a life domain that is incredibly important for the vast majority of American women.
Biography
Michelle Frisco is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Demography at Penn State University. Her research focuses on intersections between family life, education, and health/health risk-behavior during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. Much of her previous scholarship identifies the ways that family structure, family structure transitions, and different aspects of parenting influence adolescent health and well-being. Her most recent research, has examined the consequences of body weight for adolescent mental health and family formation trajectories with an eye towards understanding the complexities in these associations.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Frisco, M. L., & Weden, M. (2013). Early Adult Obesity and US Women’s Lifetime Childbearing Experiences. Journal of Marriage and Family, 75(4), 920-932. [Link]
Frisco, M. L., Weden, M. M., Lippert, A. M., & Burnett, K. D. (2012). The multidimensional relationship between early adult body weight and women’s childbearing experiences. Social Science & Medicine, 74(11), 1703-1711. [Link]
Kane, J. B., & Frisco, M. L. (2013). Obesity, school obesity prevalence, and adolescent childbearing among US young women. Social Science & Medicine. [Link]
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