Non-heterosexual young women have a higher rate of unintended pregnancy than their heterosexual peers, but their fertility behaviors are understudied. We use longitudinal data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study to investigate mechanisms contributing to non-heterosexual women’s higher pregnancy risk. These data include weekly reports of relationships, sex, and contraceptive use over 30 months. We compare the relationships and fertility behaviors of three groups: exclusively heterosexual (consistent heterosexual behavior, identity, and attraction); mostly heterosexual (heterosexual identity with same-sex behavior and/or same-sex attraction); and LGBTQ (any non-heterosexual identity). We find that mostly heterosexual and LGBTQ women behave differently from exclusively heterosexual women in ways likely to elevate their risk of unintended pregnancy: more distinct partners during the study period, more sexual intercourse with men, less frequent contraceptive use, less use of a dual method (condom plus hormonal method), and more gaps in contraceptive coverage. Mostly heterosexual women resemble LGBTQ women in their contraceptive behavior but have significantly more intercourse with men, which may increase their pregnancy risk relative to both LGBTQ and exclusively heterosexual women. We conclude by considering implications for LGBTQ health and the measurement of sexual minority populations.

Using a reproductive coercion framework, we investigate the role of intimate partner violence (IPV) in pregnancy during the transition to adulthood. We use two types of data from a population-based sample of 867 young women in a Michigan county: a 60-minute survey interview with 2.5 years of weekly follow-up surveys, and semi-structured interviews with a subsample of 40 pregnant women. The semi-structured interviews illustrate the violence women experienced. Discrete-time logit hazard models demonstrate that threats and physical assault are associated with higher pregnancy rates during ages 18 to 22. However, this holds only when the violence is recent; violence occurring more than a month earlier is not associated with higher pregnancy rates. These associations are independent of violent experiences with prior partners, which are also associated with higher pregnancy rates. Fixed-effects models show that during violent weeks, women perceive more pregnancy desire from their partners, have more sex, and use less contraception than during nonviolent weeks. Finally, mediation analyses and the semi-structured interviews are consistent with reproductive coercion: violent young men are more likely to want their girlfriends pregnant, and they use threats and physical assault to implement their preferences via sex and contraceptive non-use, which in turn increase pregnancy rates.

Social surveys both reflect and shape beliefs about sexuality. Social norms construct the “authorized vocabulary” of surveys and the resulting data influence the research questions that can be answered and the policies likely to be inspired by study findings. Scholars have called for balancing attention to pleasure vs. danger and normative vs. non-normative practices in studies of sexuality as well as for collection of data on sexual desires, behaviors, and identities. We combine these calls into what we term the sexuality prism. To better understand how data about sexuality are typically collected and what research they facilitate or constrain, we analyze six decades of materials from four of the largest social surveys in the United States and five national surveys focused on sexuality, health, and family formation. We find that these surveys do not allow for investigations of the full sexuality prism. Instead, they tend to assume and narrowly investigate the “charmed circle” of sexuality: heterosexual, married, monogamous, and potentially procreative couplings. When surveys ask about non-normative practices, they do so primarily in the context of risk (e.g. sexually transmitted diseases) and ignore non-normative practices that are not deemed “risky.” The focus on risk likely explains the greater attention to sexual behaviors and the shortage of questions about sexual desires and identities. Moreover, most questions about sexual practices highlight the dangers of sex, rather than the pleasures. Not only does this severely limit the scope of U.S. sexuality research, it also means that, individually and collectively, these surveys reify “sex negativity.”

Sexuality researchers have demonstrated how the progressive campuses of selective universities shape hookups, sexual fluidity, and same-gender sex among straight-identified women (“straight girls kissing”). However, this research cannot fully explain a puzzling demographic pattern: women with the lowest levels of educational attainment reported the highest lifetime prevalence of same-gender sex. To make sense of this puzzle, I draw on interviews with 35 women systematically recruited from a demographic survey. I find (1) early motherhood forecloses possibilities to develop or claim LGBTQ identities as women prioritize seemingly incompatible discourses of self-sacrifice and good motherhood; (2) sexual friendships and safety strategies provide opportunities to meaningfully explore same-gender sex and desire; and (3) participants reject “queer” and embrace “bisexual” in the opposite pattern observed among their more privileged peers. This study underscores the situated nature of sexuality knowledge by offering an intersectional analysis of how women beyond the college hookup scene and located outside spaces permeated with LGBTQ discourses enact sexual fluidity and make meaning of same-gender sex.

This article explores race differences in the desire to avoid pregnancy or become pregnant using survey data from a random sample of 914 young women (ages 18–22) living in a Michigan county and semi-structured interviews with a subsample of 60 of the women. In the survey data, desire for pregnancy, indifference, and ambivalence are very rare but are more prevalent among Black women than White women. In the semi-structured interviews, although few women described fatalistic beliefs or lack of planning for future pregnancies, Black and White women did so equally often. Women more often described fatalistic beliefs and lack of planning when retrospectively describing their past than when prospectively describing their future. Using the survey data to compare prospective desires for a future pregnancy with women's recollections of those desires after they conceived, more Black women shifted positive than shifted negative, and Black women were more likely to shift positive than White women—that is, Black women do not differentially retrospectively overreport prospectively desired pregnancies as having been undesired before conception. Young women's consistent (over repeated interviews) prospective expression of strong desire to avoid pregnancy and correspondingly weak desire for pregnancy, along with the similarity of Black and White women's pregnancy plans, lead us to conclude that a “planning paradigm”—in which young women are encouraged and supported in implementing their pregnancy desires—is probably appropriate for the vast majority of young women and, most importantly, is similarly appropriate for Black and White young women.