What Young Adults Know-and Don't Know-About Women's Fertility Patterns

September 21, 2012 What Young Adults Know-and Don't Know-About Women's Fertility Patterns:  Implications for Reducing Unintended Pregnancies

Young adults have surprisingly low levels of "fertility awareness knowledge" (defined as accurate knowledge about the time during a woman's menstrual cycle at which she is able to become pregnant), according to new analyses by Child Trends, based on recent national survey data.  What Young Adults Know and Don't Know About Women's Fertility Patterns notes that only one-third of unmarried young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 know that there is a certain time in a woman's menstrual cycle when she is most likely to become pregnant and can identify that time as being roughly halfway between her two periods. Key findings include: Young adults who have received sex education or sexual and reproductive health care, and those who have had children are no more likely to be able to identify a woman's fertile period than those who have not.  Women have more accurate fertility awareness knowledge than men -and, among women, knowledge appears to increase with age. Fertility awareness knowledge is lowest among young adults who have less education or are a racial or ethnic minority.    Fertility awareness knowledge also appears to be higher among young adults who have used more traditional methods to avoid pregnancy (that is, methods such as withdrawal or natural family planning, which rely on the ability to track a woman's fertile period and abstain from sex or use more effective methods during that time).  However, significant gaps in knowledge remain among these method users, In-depth interviews with more than 50 young, urban, minority women who have used natural family planning (NFP) suggest that some NFP users are motivated to use the methods to prevent pregnancy, but lack the knowledge to implement these methods effectively. Being able to accurately identify when women are most fertile may help young adults make more informed decisions about sex and contraceptive use, thus reducing the high number of unintended pregnancies among this group.   Read more.

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