Pregnancy in Adolescents: Lifestyle Management for Health

Each year in the United States, approximately 500,000 women younger than 20 years give birth. Adolescent parenting has been associated with many negative outcomes according to research studies from the past several decades. Recent better controlled research suggests, however, that being an adolescent at the time of bearing a first child may, in fact, add little to the overwhelming contextual risks of girls who find themselves having children while adolescents. There are indications that higher order births carry a much greater burden than do first births to women younger than 20 years. For those interested in minimizing the burden for these young women, interventions to prevent second births are important. Studies have looked at how best to provide care to these women and infants and ...