The principal obstacle to accurate measurement of fertility planning intentions in cross-sectional surveys is the disposition of the respondent to provide the interviewer with a reconstruction of the couple's history which departs more or less from what actually happened... Since married couples in America are now close to effective planning of fertility, the future of reproduction in the United States will depend much more than in the past on reproductive intentions. From this viewpoint, the uncertainty of reproductive intentions as shown here suggests extreme circumspection in using current reproductive orientations for future projections.