Palestinian women's pregnancy intentions: Analysis and critique of the Demographic and Health Survey 2004

In search of health: quality of life among postpartum Palestinian women

“…Similar to the findings of an ana lysis of the 2004 Demographic and Health Survey [28], the data indicate that there is an inverse relation between pregnancy wantedness and women's age and parity. The association between wantedness and a poorer perception of socioeconomic components of QoL may be linked to women's perceptions of the household's ability to cope with the costs associated with childrearing.…”

“…Previous studies have associated unwanted pregnancies with poor infant and maternal outcomes, negative behaviors during pregnancy and increased stress during pregnancy and after delivery [25][26][27][28]. Similarly, the results of this study indicate that an unwanted pregnancy is negatively associated with perceived QoL.…”

“…This is comparable with international literature [23,24], indicating that socioeconomic status is associated with health status, access to health services, wellbeing and life satisfaction. In this sample, women with better socioeconomic status were also less likely to have an unwanted or untimely pregnancy, which has been negatively associated with maternal wellbeing in other studies [25][26][27][28] and QoL in this study.…”

“…Pregnancy intention and wantedness have been issues of much debate in the literature [25][26][27][28]. Previous studies have associated unwanted pregnancies with poor infant and maternal outcomes, negative behaviors during pregnancy and increased stress during pregnancy and after delivery [25][26][27][28].…”

Women's growing desire to limit births in sub-Saharan Africa: meeting the challenge

“…Further, some have questioned the ability of DHS survey questions to truly capture intention to limit, particularly given the ambiguity that many women may feel when asked such questions 8 , 20 . Others argue that because African life is exceedingly uncertain, parents may neither deem the number of children born as important nor conceptualize an end to childbearing with any degree of meaning 21.…”