ABSTRACT
Historically, research regarding fertility has primarily limited itself to women because of the difficulty in establishing confident links between fathers and their biological, often nonresident, children (Cherlin & Griffith, 1998). Our previous research suggests the most important reason that female fertility reports are more accurate than those of men is that mothers are more likely to be living with their children (Mott, 1998). Accurate information about adult relationships, particularly male relationships, has also been more difficult to obtain, reflecting the greater complexity of contemporary relationships, in part the result of increased ambivalence among couples about the beginning and ending points of more casual unions, such as cohabitations. Gaining accurate information is also more difficult to obtain because of couples' tendencies to reinterpret the meaning of prior relationships. These issues inform a major theme of this chapter, the willingness and ability of young men to accurately report earlier relationship and related fertility events.
