An unselected group of 92 patients, suffering from Huntington's chorea in South Wales, has been studied in relation to the effects of the disease on employment, need for hospitalization, and the financial burden to the state. Results are compared with data from a matched control group. The difficulties of costing are discussed: a total figure of £21,500 is estimated to be the minimum unit cost per patient in 1980.

Parallel analyses of recent data from the United States, Thailand, Belgium, and Japan all confirm the finding that female age and not male age is the more important contributor to the decline in frequency of marital intercourse during the childbearing ages. The most probable explanation is the decline in female (but not male) androgen levels during the age span examined.

Twelve years' experience of AID in a non-NHS clinic is reviewed. Of 381 women treated, 230 became pregnant at least once; 308 pregnancies were achieved in 450 courses of treatment (68%) resulting in 263 live births (85%). For women aged over 35 years the pregnancy rate was 47%. Timing of insemination and treatment with clomiphene are described. The use of fresh or frozen semen and future developments are discussed.

The age structure of the population of married women resident in Aberdeen District starting a family has changed over the last two decades. Since 1970, successive populations have tended to be smaller in numbers and older. These tendencies may, in part, be accounted for by couples delaying the start of family building and the related reduction in the proportions of legitimate first births which were prenuptially conceived. Although a feature of all social classes, the later ages and longer marriage durations are class differentiated, women of the higher social classes tending to be older and to have been married longer than those of the lower social classes. The increasing proportion of first pregnancies terminated relates closely to the decline in the proportion of single women, pregnant for the first time, who marry and bear a legitimate child. Although complete comparisons for Aberdeen and Scotland are not possible, the trends with respect to legitimate first births are similar.

In this paper the genetic fitness of the two heterozygotes Hb A/E and β-thalassaemia trait, in Calcutta, is examined in terms of their reproductive performance. It is found from fertility that the heterozygote Hb A/E enjoys some selective advantage over the normal homozygote Hb A/A, but the other heterozygote (β-thalassaemia trait) does not. But from overall reproductive performance (fertility and infant mortality together) it is postulated that the heterozygotes will eventually suffer from a selective disadvantage in a place like Calcutta, where malaria was eradicated about three decades ago.

Since the 1960s, illegitimacy rates in Britain have increased and it is likely that the rise is related to a changing meaning of illegitimacy. Three cohorts of women bearing illegitimate babies in Aberdeen are studied in order to explore the social context of illegitimacy over the period of rising illegitimacy rates. One cohort of women bore their babies in 1954, a second cohort in 1964 and the third cohort in 1974. By using three sources of official data in conjunction—birth registrations, marriage registrations and hospital records—an effort is made to construct the careers of these women and thereby to obtain some insight into the circumstances in which illegitimacy occurs. It is found that there is a continuing pattern of women who bear illegitimate babies being young, single and primiparous, that the rates of marriage and timing of marriage after delivery of an illegitimate child for all three cohorts are similar and that there is no evidence of an increased incidence of cohabitation. More and better types of data on illegitimacy are needed to supplement the existing stock of official data.

This study analyses the first 366 couples attending the AID Clinic at Nottingham and outlines those social factors which appear to have some bearing on the success of AID treatment. Residence close to the clinic, social class and the employment of the wife all appear to affect success rates.

In a survey of 1475 urban Moslem wives in the age group 15–49 living in the capital city of the Sudan, knowledge of birth control was reported by almost all respondents while a significant proportion had used contraception at least once. The mean age of the users was 32·8 years, their duration of marriage was 15·1 years and their mean number of surviving children was 4·6. Those who had never used contraception had a higher mean age, a longer duration of marriage and more surviving children. Most of the users had an urban residential background and belonged to the high socioeconomic class. They held favourable attitudes to family planning. Although they thought that having a large family (more than five children) was not desirable, their mean preferred family size was no different from that of the never users.

The results indicate that contraception is used for the purpose of spacing births rather than limiting their ultimate number. At this early stage of contraceptive adoption in Sudan, the characteristics of the pioneer acceptors are similar to those observed in other African countries.

Economic reasons for wanting children predominate among 541 Malaysian adults and 2014 children, followed by happiness, love, and companionship, the latter group especially in several subgroups of young Malaysians identified as demographic innovators. Five empirically constructed value and cost of children indices with known reliability were used to predict variation in the achieved family size of parents as well as the desired family sizes of parents and children. Completeness of family appeared to be the best predictor of achieved family size, whereas intrinsic value of a large family was generally a good predictor of family size preferences.

The paper analyses results of a survey of sexual and reproductive behaviour in a sample of 2301 currently married women aged less than 50 years. The survey was conducted in 22 villages of the ICDDR, B field station in Bangladesh. Admittedly, the sample is not representative as co-operation could not be obtained from about one-third of eligible women. The results suggest higher coital frequencies among Hindu than among Muslim respondents. There appears to be a clear age and marriage duration pattern with coital frequencies declining rapidly to a plateau after about 5 years of marriage and among women aged 25 and over, followed by another steep decline at durations of marriage over 20 years and age 40 and more. Generally, recently married, young, non-breast-feeding, non-contracepting and pregnant respondents reported higher coital frequencies than their peers of opposite characteristics. Post-partum abstinence among both Muslims and Hindus was comparatively short, generally not exceeding 3 months.

The attitudes of 38 voluntarily childless husbands and wives towards contraception were studied. The couples used a range of birth control methods, the most popular being the pill. Although sterilization appears to be the optimal method of contraception for couples who do not want children, several disincentives to it were mentioned. Broadly these are the finality of surgical sterilization, the dislike some individuals have for undergoing surgery and the opposition individuals anticipate meeting to a request for surgery from their GP or a consultant. Overall, contraception presents at least as many problems to childless couples as it does to parents. Some problems are unique to the childless, resulting from the continuity and length of time of birth control.

To investigate the effect of social class on the secondary sex ratio, atotal of 7·2 million births in the period 1975–78 in Japan has been tabulated according to the occupation of the head of the household, paternal and maternal ages and birth order. Although the variation in the sex ratio among occupational classes is not statistically significant, the changes observed are compatible with those reported by other authors. Multipleregression analysis revealed that the association of birth order and paternal age with the sexratio is relatively consistent among different occupational classes, while that of maternal age varies substantially among occupational groups, a significant negative regression on maternal age being observed in agricultural workers.

Guam has experienced a dramatic socioeconomic development since the end of World War II, accompanied by one of the most rapid fertility declines on record. Although Guam has a very low mortality, comparable to that of the United States, its fertility is higher than in most countries with the same income level. It is suggested that the current high fertility results from the pro-natalist pressures associated with Roman Catholicism. The emigration of residents has been completely offset by immigration from the Orient and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Rural-to-urban migration, mainly from the south to the north, did not start until the late 1950s. Since the end of World War II, the military and alien population has accounted for approximately 40% of the total population and has had substantial demographic, political, and socioeconomic effects.

An analysis of the use-effectiveness of fertility awareness methods of family planning among clients in a San Diego, California, clinic reveals a 12-month failure rate (life-table method) of 13·2 failures per 100 women. This is comparable to results from previous studies of the use of fertility awareness methods (as defined by the sympto-thermal method) in developed nations. Also consistent with previous studies is the finding that fertility awareness method users tend to be young and well-educated. Motivational factors are identified as being most closely associated with successful use of this method of family planning.

Seasonal variation in human natality is examined over a period of several decades for an isolated Inuit settlement in the central Canadian Arctic. The results substantiate earlier reports of the existence of a birth season in the first half of the year. The 2-decade period coinciding with the gradual concentration of the regional population into the settlement experienced a temporary disruption of this traditional rhythmic pattern. Family planning has been introduced in the modern period, yet birth seasonality is even more pronounced than during previous decades. Both planned and unplanned births occur predominantly in the first half of the year, indicating the paramount importance of behavioural and social responses to extreme seasonal variation.

All centres of Sri Lanka Moor concentration were identified, together accounting for 87·2% of the total Moor population of the island. The variations in the child/woman ratio that occur locally between wards within these communities show strong negative correlations with two measures of departure from conservatism, the proportion of females of school age attending school and the proportion of males engaged in non-agricultural occupations. These two variates together account for the greater part of the variation in the child/woman ratio from ward to ward in 1971.

An examination of pregnancy histories for 969 Filipino women assessed the extent to which pregnancy wastage or loss of a live born child influenced completed family size. Respondents were ever married women 45—49 years of age at the time of the survey; most respondents were beyond their childbearing years. It was found that 56% of the women lost at least one pregnancy or a live born child. While it might be expected that the loss of a child would lower completed family size, the findings indicated that women who reported the loss of one or more children had larger completed families than their counterparts who sustained no miscarriages or childhood deaths. Implications of fertility–mortality relationships are discussed.

This paper examines the accessibility of post-partum sterilization at five hospitals in Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Of the women who planned sterilization 60% were sterilized. Services were not equally available to all women. While caesarean sections accounted for an extremely high percentage of deliveries at these hospitals, this type of delivery, and concurrent sterilizations, are not equally available to all women who indicated a desire to be sterilized. Since poor women are less likely to have caesarean deliveries, their access to sterilization is limited.

Cytogenetic investigations were undertaken on 120 couples in Newcastle with repeated pregnancy loss for which no anatomical or other obvious reason could be established. The level of major chromosome anomalies was high, with 6·7% of couples showing one member with an abnormal karyotype. One major anomaly occurred in a control series of 240 random newborns. The couples also showed an elevated incidence of chromosomal heteromorphisms. Similar studies in the literature are reviewed. It seems that major chromosome anomalies make an appreciable contribution to repeated reproductive loss, but proof of the involvement of minor chromosome variants though suspected is less clear.

In contrast to early studies of parental preference for the sex of their offspring which showed an over-riding son preference in terms of both the expressed desires for a male infant and of the sex ratio of completed families, more recent studies show that the desire for a balance of sexes outweighs the preference for a particular sex. A recent attitude survey in the UK (Dunnell, 1979) confirms this and also claims to find no difference in the pattern of preferences between social classes.

This article examines family building patterns among Aberdeen families over the last 20 years in the light of these earlier findings. The analysis shows first that considerably more families continue to have a third child after two children of the same sex than after one boy and one girl, thus supporting the proposition that parents prefer a balanced sex composition. Second, a multivariate analysis of the data shows in contrast to other findings that this tendency to continue to have a third child does vary according to social class.