Rising demand for schooling on the part of many Pakistani parents has immediate implications for the cost of children. To fulfill their educational aspirations, parents must invest more than they have in the past in each child both directly, in terms of various costs associated with school attendance and indirectly, in terms of missed opportunities for labor. Variations among communities in schooling conditions, partly driven by demand for schooling as it is expressed at the community level and partly driven by district and provincial educational policies, would be expected to be associated with variations between communities in family-building strategies. Survey results presented in this report are the outcome of a research strategy designed to test the association described above. The goal was to visit a range of rural villages or communities reflecting very different socioeconomic and schooling conditions to explore the possible links between schooling and family-building strategies at the community level. The study outlined in the report was undertaken in 1997 in 12 rural villages in the Punjab and North Western Frontier Province (NWFP); within each community 60 households were selected systematically in each of the two provinces. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied to the data. The study captured variations in schooling availability and quality across the sites sampled. Girls, in particular, suffer in terms of school quality since public girls' schools offer fewer amenities. The data indicate changes in parents' attitudes toward education are related to their reproductive behavior. Contains extensive figures and tables and 18 references. (BT)