Adolescent Parents, Programs and Policies for

This entry provides a brief overview of adolescent parenthood in the United States and its implications for young mothers. It will describe types of prevention and intervention programs for pregnant and parenting adolescents, briefly summarize evaluation findings of these programs, and explore the ways in which the issue of teenage parenthood has been addressed at a policy level.

While adolescent parenthood is not a new issue in the United States, the nature and context of teenage parenthood has changed. In the past, it was common for young, single women who became pregnant to get married or give up their children for adoption. During the last half century, however, young women have become increasingly more likely to keep their children and to be single parents; the proportion of nonmarital teenage births has risen from 13% in the 1950s to 79% in 2000 (Boonstra, 2002). While there has been a considerable decline in the number of adolescent births in the United States, in the last decade, the teenage birth rate is still among the highest of all Western countries (Brooks-Gunn & Chase-Lansdale, 1995; Child Trends, 2001). As an example, adolescent pregnancy rates in the United States were approximately 4 times those in France and Sweden in 2000 (Boonstra, 2002). Almost 480,000 teenage girls gave birth in the United States during that year (Child Trends, 2001).

The changing context of adolescent parenthood has raised concerns about the consequences of teenage childbearing for the mother and the child and has prompted a large body of research on the issue of adolescent parenthood (Brooks-Gunn & Chase-Lansdale, [Page 29]1995). Studies have shown that teenage mothers are more likely to be single parents, have more children, have lower academic achievement levels, live in poverty, and show poorer parenting skills than older mothers (Brooks-Gunn & Chase-Lansdale, 1995; Coley & Chase-Lansdale, 1998). Furthermore, teenage childbearing has been estimated to cost society $15 billion annually for social services and lost productivity (Maynard, 1996).