What influences parents to have a second child after their first is born? A recent issue of Developmentat Psychology presents the results of a study using 7,695 families in the prospective, nationally
representative British Millennium Cohort Study to examine
whether characteristics of the 1st-born child predicted parents' timing
and probability of having another child within 5 years after the 1st
child's birth. Infant temperament was assessed with the Carey Infant
Temperament Scale (Carey, 1972; Carey & McDevitt, 1978) at age 9
months, childhood socioemotional and behavioral characteristics with the
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 2001), and childhood
cognitive ability with the Bracken School Readiness Assessment
(Bracken, 2002) test at age 3 years. Survival analysis modeling
indicated that the 1st child's low reactivity to novelty in infancy,
high prosociality, low conduct problems, and high cognitive ability in
childhood were associated with increased probability of parents having
another child. Except for reactivity to novelty, these associations
became stronger with time. High emotional symptoms were also positively
associated with childbearing, but this was likely to reflect reverse
causality—that is, the effect of sibling birth on the 1st child's
adjustment. The results suggest that child effects, particularly those
related to the child's cognitive ability, adaptability to novelty, and
prosocial behavior, may be relevant to parents' future childbearing.
For the abstract.
For the abstract.
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