Academic and Behavioral Outcomes Among the Children of Young Mothers

In this article, we use newly available data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate the effects of early motherhood on academic and behavioral outcomes for children born to early child bearers. We find that early motherhood's strong negative correlation with children's test scores and positive correlation with children's grade repetition is almost entirely explained by prebirth individual and family background factors of teen mothers themselves. However, early childbearing is associated indirectly with reduced children's test scores through its linkage to family size (and thus to child birth order). We find a different pattern in predicting fighting, truancy, early sexual activity, and other problem behaviors among adolescent and young adult offspring. For these behaviors, maternal age at first birth remains an important risk factor even after controlling for a wide range of background factors and maternal characteristics. These results highlight the diverse pathways through which teen parenting might influence subsequent child well‐being and social performance.     

The Well‐Being of Children Born to Teen Mothers

Children born to early child bearers are more likely than other children to display problem behaviors or poor academic performance, but it is unclear whether early childbearing plays a causal role in these outcomes. Using multiple techniques to control for background factors, we analyze 2,908 young children and 1,736 adolescents and young adults in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults (CNLSY79) data sets to examine whether early childbearing causes children’s outcomes. We find evidence that teen childbearing plays no causal role in children’s test scores and in some behavioral outcomes of adolescents. For other behavioral outcomes, we find that different methodologies produce differing results. We thus suggest caution in drawing conclusions about early parenthood’s overarching effect.     

Teen Childbearing and Educational Attainment: A Comparison of Methods

This research examines the impact of teenage childbearing on secondary school completion, while focusing on the problem of causal ambiguity in the relationships among self-determined behaviours. Techniques for dealing with the teenage childbearing problem are discussed, and results from these methods are compared. Data from the High School and Beyond Study on young women (n = 5257) who were enrolled as sophomores in sample schools in February 1980 and who had not given birth before November 1980 are used. Results indicate that teen childbearing reduces the probability of completing high school by 8% to 10%. Some evidence suggests that programs that target reduction of teen childbearing in improving young women's education and subsequent economic and labor force outcomes.     

Teen Mothers and Welfare Reform: Challenging the Boundaries of Risk

A major component of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) included policies directed to encouraging marriage while discouraging nonmarital births. Teen mothers were of particular concern as policymakers argued that there is a link between teenage childbearing and welfare receipt. This paper seeks to reframe the concept of at-risk teen mothers by looking to the socially construction of boundaries—an imagery that brings to the forefront the complex relations between young mothers and welfare reform policy. From this standpoint, we discuss how welfare reform might address the multiple issues facing teen mothers including housing, education and training, child care, transportation, health, healthy relationships and parenting skills.     

Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Material Resources and Teenage Parenthood

Past research has largely ignored the influence of material resources on teenage parents' life outcomes. A lack of resources such as housing, child care, and financial support is hypothesized to explain the negative effect of teenage parenthood on educational attainment. Regression analyses use nationally representative data from the 1988 - 2000 National Education Longitudinal Study (N = 8,432, n = 356 teenage parents). Results support the hypothesis completely for the teenage fathers in the sample and partially for mothers: Resources substantially diminish the educational penalty teenage parents paid by age 26. Gender influences which types of resources are protective, providing policy implications. Help with child care is critical for teenage mothers, whereas housing and financial resources may be important for men.     

Unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships.

This paper investigates the relationships among unwanted childbearing, health, and mother-child relationships. We hypothesize that unwanted childbearing affects mother-child relationships in part because of the physical and mental health consequences of unwanted childbearing. Impaired mental health hampers women's interaction with their infants, and these poor neonatal relationships translate into poor mother-adult child relationships. Using the Intergenerational Panel Study of Mothers and Children--a 31-year longitudinal survey of a probability sample of 1,113 mother-child pairs begun in 1961--we demonstrate that mothers with unwanted births have lower quality relationships with their children from late adolescence (age 18) throughout early adulthood (ages 23 and 31). Furthermore, these lower quality relationships are not limited to the child born as a result of the unwanted pregnancy; all the children in the family suffer. Using the 1987-88 wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, a survey of a national probability sample of U.S. households, we show that mothers with unwanted births suffer from higher levels of depression and lower levels of happiness. We also demonstrate that they spank their young children more and spend less leisure time with them. We conclude that experiencing unwanted childbearing reduces the time and attention that mothers give their young children and that these early mother-child interactions set the stage for long-term, lower quality relationships.     

The Effect of Childbearing Age on Child Support Awards and Economic Well Being Among Divorcing Mothers

Most teenage mothers eventually marry but are at greater risk for subsequent marital disruption than those who delayed childbearing, and those who began parenting early are likely to experience greater economic insecurity as divorced/separated couples, we compare the economic status of ever-teen mothers and never-teen mothers at the time of divorce. We also examine the potential of an effective child support system to improve economic well being among families initially created by a birth to a teenager. The findings indicate that ever-teen mothers who experience a divorce have lower overall economic well being than their counterparts who delayed childbearing, and the former husbands of these women have less ability to pay child support than the husbands of never-teen mothers.     

Chronic and Proximate Depression Among Mothers: Implications for Child Well‐Being

This article uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Well‐Being Survey (N = 2,427) to examine the association between the chronicity and timing of maternal depression and child well‐being. Maternal depression, particularly chronic depression, is linked to internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors in children, and children have worse behaviors when mothers report proximate depression. Children of depressed and nondepressed mothers have similar cognitive outcomes. Results also suggest that boys are more vulnerable to maternal depression than girls and that socioeconomic advantage does not buffer children from the consequences of maternal depression. Given that impairments in early childhood may place children on disadvantaged life‐course trajectories, early intervention and treatment of depressed mothers may help ameliorate social disparities.     

Mother–child and teacher–child relationships and their influences on Chinese only and non-only children's early social behaviors: The moderator role of urban–rural status

Investigations regarding the differences between Chinese only and non-only children primarily examine children's social behaviors, which are closely related to their early relationships with mothers and teachers. In recent years, the number of non-only children born in urban areas has increased because of the softening of the One-Child Policy, which leads to the distribution of non-only children shifting from being primarily in rural areas to being in both urban and rural areas. The present study investigates the current characteristics and influences of mother–child and teacher–child relationships on Chinese only and non-only children's early social behaviors from the perspective of urban and rural differences. Data were obtained from 126 rural only children, 94 rural non-only children, 168 urban only children and 155 urban non-only children from 38 semi-urban kindergartens in Beijing, China. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that mother–child closeness positively predicted children's social skills particularly in non-only children, whereas mother–child conflict positively predicted internalizing behavior problems in all four groups. Teacher–child conflict negatively predicted children's social skills most strongly in urban only children. Teacher–child conflict aggravated rural only children's, urban only children's and non-only children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, but mother–child closeness buffered rural only children's externalizing behavior problems. Findings underscore the importance for mothers to improve closeness, especially with rural only children, and for teachers to avoid conflict with both urban only and non-only children, as well as with rural only children.     

The Probability of Teenage Parenthood: Parental Predictions and Their Accuracy

Teenage parenthood is an often-discussed topic in family economics since it has been shown to affect many outcomes for the teen, child, and household. Using a nationally representative longitudinal panel of American teenagers and their parents, two questions related to the probability of teenage parenthood are examined. First, how do predictions of this occurrence made by the teenager’s parents vary across the population? Second, how does the accuracy of these predictions vary? The actual prevalence and variance of teenage parenthood are also examined, and the determinants of its occurrence are estimated. Among other results, expectations and their accuracy are found to differ substantially across socioeconomic status and some demographics such as race and religion. The average American parent underestimates the probability their child will become a teen parent by only a small amount, but within certain demographic groups this outcome is considerably underestimated, and in others it is overestimated. These differences help explain the variability in teen parenthood effects, and more broadly, the analysis serves as a test of parents’ ability to judge their childrens’ future outcomes.     

Challenges and transformations: childbearing and changes in teens’ educational aspirations and expectations

Although much of the focus on teen childbearing has been on its potential costs to teen parents and their children, emerging research suggests that teen childbearing while challenging can be a positively transformative experience for teens. One such transformation is enhanced educational aspirations and expectations. Much of the research on the positive consequences of teen childbearing for teens’ educational orientations, however, has come from in-depth interviews with teen mothers that have methodological limitations. Using panel data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and NLSY79 – Young Adult Survey 1994 (NLSY79-YA) this study finds that over time, teens’ educational expectations and aspirations increase, on average, regardless of parental status. Nevertheless, there is significant heterogeneity in how expectations and aspirations change. Teen parents have lower odds of increasing, and greater odds of decreasing, their aspirations and expectations over a 2-year period compared to their childless counterparts. These patterns, however, shift across cohorts. Unlike the NLSY79, there are no differences in the odds of lowering aspirations and expectations between teen parents and non-parents in the NLSY79-YA. Moreover, the lower odds of increasing aspirations/expectations among mothers and white teen parents compared to fathers and black teen parents in the NLSY79 cohort are not found in the NLSY79-YA.     

Social Support Networks of Single Young Mothers

This study explored the nature of social support networks of young, unmarried mothers. Interviews were conducted with 18 young, female African American residents at an agency for homeless, unmarried mothers in a Midwest city. Quantitative results indicated the mean number of people in the participants’ networks was 19; analysis found a moderately strong correlation between the size of the support network and perceived level of support. Themes that emerged from coding the transcribed, qualitative interviews included the tension between needing support and wanting independence, the motivation generated for young mothers through relationship with their own children, the mixed nature of support from the young mothers’ families, the affect of presence or absence of support from the child’s father, the role of the young mother’s own mother in her support system, the lack of supportive relationships among young mothers in the program, and impressions the young mothers had of formal agency services. The authors discuss implications for case management and agencies working with teen mothers.     

Consequences of Teen Parents' Child‐Care Arrangements for Mothers and Children

Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (2001–2006; N ?7,900), the authors examined child‐care arrangements among teen parents from birth through prekindergarten. Four latent classes of child care arrangements at 9, 24, and 52 months emerged: (a) “parental care,” (b) “center care,” (c) “paid home‐based care,” and (d) “free kin‐based care.” Disadvantaged teen‐parent families were overrepresented in the “parental care” class, which was negatively associated with children's preschool reading, math, and behavior scores and mothers' socioeconomic and fertility outcomes compared with some nonparental care classes. Nonparental care did not predict any negative maternal or child outcomes, and different care arrangements had different benefits for mothers and children. Time spent in nonparental care and improved maternal outcomes contributed to children's increased scores across domains. Child‐care classes predicted maternal outcomes similarly in teen‐parent and nonteen‐parent families, but the “parental care” class predicted some disproportionately negative child outcomes for teen‐parent families.     

The early home environment and developmental outcomes for young children in the child welfare system

The quality of the early home environment is predictive of young children's subsequent cognitive, academic, and behavioral functioning. Limited research has focused on the effects of the early caregiving environment on the functioning of young children involved with the child welfare system. This study investigated the influence of children's home environments (i.e., number of children in the home, number of moves the child experienced, level of cognitive stimulation, and level of emotional support) during the first 2 years of life on their preschool developmental outcomes (i.e., cognition, language, social skills, and behavior problems).As anticipated, a high-quality early home environment promoted the well-being of preschool children who had entered the child welfare system as infants. Children who lived with greater numbers of children incurred more compromised cognitive, language, behavioral, and social outcomes. No significant associations emerged between the total number of placements and developmental outcomes; children who remained in the same home during infancy (typically the birth family home) had more compromised developmental outcomes in every domain except behavioral problems.Both cognitive stimulation and emotional support in the home predicted higher cognitive and language scores, decreased behavioral problems, and increased social skills. Early out-of-home placement and lack of emotional support interacted to predict children's behavioral problems. These findings are considered in the context of extant research and policy relevant to young children in the child welfare system.     

Prenatal Stress,Poverty, and Child Outcomes

It is well documented that children living in poverty experience disadvantages in virtually every area of health and mental health, development, academic achievement, and other areas, compared to their more well-off peers. Mechanisms behind these disadvantages certainly include the lack of resources of all kinds inherent in poverty, including access to health care, high-quality education, safe housing, nutritious food, and many other resources. Less well recognized is the contribution of prenatal stress to these gaps, as poor children’s disadvantages often start early in fetal life due to high stress experienced by their mothers. Animal research and emerging human research demonstrate that stress during pregnancy affects fetal brain development through the mother’s hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical axis, influencing the developing stress system and other parts of the brain of the fetus. Understanding these relationships among poverty, prenatal stress, and child outcomes is important for social workers, whose policy and service provider roles provide opportunities for amelioration at both micro- and macro-levels. This paper elucidates the consequences of prenatal stress, demonstrating that the physiological stress response operates prior to birth and directly influences infant and child biological, psychological, and social well-being. First, we briefly review the well-documented disadvantages experienced by poor children. Then, we describe the physiology of stress, clarifying the often-confusing definitions and elaborating to explain unique physiological aspects of stress during pregnancy. Finally, we discuss the important role social work may play in addressing this important problem.     

The effects of teenage childbearing on long-term health in the US: a twin-fixed-effects approach

This paper explores the effect of teenage childbearing on long-term health outcomes and behaviors of mothers using the Midlife Development in the US dataset. Within-family estimations, using samples of siblings, and twin pairs, are employed to overcome the bias generated by unobserved family background and genetic traits. The results suggest no significant effects on health outcomes, and modest effects on health behaviors, including exercise and preventive care. However, accounting for life-cycle effects demonstrates that teenage childbearing has significant effects on both health outcomes and behaviors early in life, but very few significant effects later in life. Moreover, teenage childbearing has a particularly acute effect among minorities. Finally, this paper provides evidence that the effects operate through reduced income and labor force participation, and matching with a lower “quality” spouse.     

Neighborhood Poverty and Children's Academic Skills and Behavior in Early Elementary School

Neighborhoods provide resources that may affect children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. However, it is unclear to what degree associations between neighborhood disadvantage and outcomes persist into elementary school and whether neighborhood disadvantage interacts with household disadvantage. Using data from the 2010–2011 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Cohort (N = 15,100 children) merged with census data from the American Community Survey, this study examines associations between neighborhood poverty and children's math, reading, and behavioral outcomes at kindergarten and first and second grades. Findings indicate that as tract‐level poverty increases, children's achievement worsens after controlling for child and family characteristics. These associations persist into second grade and are stronger for children in poor versus nonpoor households. Findings suggest that neighborhood disadvantage may contribute to poorer achievement scores, particularly among children with few household resources, but that household disadvantage and other characteristics largely explain behavioral outcomes. Research and policy implications are discussed.     

Young Women's Job Mobility: The Influence of Motherhood Status and Education

Previous research has found that women who become mothers in their 20s face larger wage penalties compared to women who delay childbearing until their 30s. Explanations for this have focused on the consequences of employment breaks early in one's career and reduced opportunities in the workplace following the birth of a child. In this article, the author uses panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 4,566) to examine another possible explanation: differences in patterns of and wage returns to job mobility. She found that young mothers, relative to childless women, make fewer wage‐enhancing voluntary job separations and often receive lower wage returns for these separations. Educational attainment exacerbates these patterns, largely to the disadvantage of women with less education.     

Structural Determinants of Infant Mortality in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan America1

Abstract A conceptual model of the impact of structural advantage and disadvantage on infant mortality rates is developed and fitted to countylevel data. This model includes mediating endogenous constructs representing medical care availability, the incidence of teenage childbearing, and low birthweight rates and is estimated for three residence categories. Both direct and indirect effects of social structure and teenage childbearing on infant mortality vary significantly across the categories. Structural advantage exerts a significant and negative direct effect on infant mortality rates in urban areas, but in rural areas this effect is indirect, operating through teenage childbearing and low birthweight. Structural disadvantage significantly increases infant mortality in both rural and urban settings, but the effects operate directly in metropolitan areas and indirectly in rural areas. These results underscore the central role that social structure continues to play in determining infant mortality rates in the United States.     

Teen Childbearing and Depression: Do Pregnancy Attitudes Matter?

The relationship between teen childbearing and depression has been extensively studied; however, little is known about how young women's own attitudes toward becoming pregnant shape this association. This study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to investigate whether the relationship between teen childbearing and adult depression is moderated by adolescent attitudes toward becoming pregnant. The results showed that although, on average, women who had first births between ages 16 and 19 experienced no more depressive symptoms in adulthood than women who had first births at age 20 or older, the relationship between teen childbearing and adult depression varied significantly based on adolescent pregnancy attitudes. When they had negative adolescent attitudes toward getting pregnant, teen mothers had similar levels of depression as adult mothers, but when they had positive adolescent pregnancy attitudes, teen mothers actually had fewer depressive symptoms than women with adult first births.