ABSTRACT
The childbearing behavior of native and foreign-born women has been a subject of interest for many years. At the turn of the century, fears about race suicide due to the low fertility of native-born white women and the high fertility of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe fueled considerable concern in both the popular and academic presses (Pagnini and Morgan 1990). Today we see some of the same concerns about immigration and fertility, although they are usually less about race suicide than about the perceived costs to the public of immigrants having more children than native-born Americans. For example, one woman who was discussing the children of Mexican immigrants said that “I didn’t breed them. I don’t want to feed them” (Kozol 1995).
