This article presents qualitative data on the contraceptive practices of fifty-one unmarried pregnant women selected at a Dublin maternity hospital. Seven categories have been constructed from data to capture the ways in which the women became pregnant, namely ‘fertility denial’, ‘destiny dependence’, ‘progressive remissness’, ‘occasional or intermittent risk-taking’, ‘calculated risk-taking’, ‘pro-active fertility management’, and ‘contraceptive failure or misuse’. It is argued that the variations noted in women's experiences in approaching pregnancy occurred against a background of patriarchal discourses that sometimes intersected to produce contradictory effects.
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