223-230 Landry

In previous analyses of the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey (NMIHS) and the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we found that after differences in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics were taken into account, mothers who had intended to conceive were more likely than those who had not to recognize their pregnancy within the first six weeks and to initiate prenatal care within the first eight weeks. Contrary to expectations, however, once they had begun prenatal care, women whose pregnancies had been mistimed or unwanted and those whose pregnancies had been planned were similar with respect to most behaviors that could affect the newborn’s health.4 In this article, we examine the effects of planning status on the health of the newborn and the mother’s care of the infant, once again using the 1988 NMIHS and the 1988 NSFG.* Since these surveys provide us with nationally representative data, we are able to obtain a more complete picture of factors affecting newborns’ health and mothers’ infant care practices than was possible in previous analyses, which were based on narrow subgroups of the population (for example, married women)5 or on samples that are not representative of *We use data from the 1988 NSFG rather than the 1995 cycle of the survey for two reasons. The analyses presented here are part of a larger study, which began prior to the availability of the 1995 data. Also, the NMIHS has not been conducted again, and since our measures are sensitive to changing standards of care and medical advice for pregnant women, we wanted the data from the two surveys to be contemporaneous. The Effects of Pregnancy Planning Status On Birth Outcomes and Infant Care