Non-marital pregnancies in New Zealand since the Second World War

Abstract

SummaryShortcomings of the illegitimacy ratio as an index of the level of non-marital childbearing in New Zealand are exposed. Trends in the level of bridal pregnancy are analysed in terms of changes in age-specific probabilities of conceiving a child outside marriage, of ‘regularizing’ such a pregnancy before confinement, and of marrying when non-pregnant. Finally, trends in childbearing resulting from non-marital pregnancies are examined using an index which allows all relevant pregnancies to be related to a single population at risk, and which can be partitioned according to the eventual status of confinements as marital or non-marital. A substantial decline in such childbearing during the 1970s is established and attributed mainly to greater use of abortion. Marital births resulting from non-marital conceptions declined especially sharply.