Teen Pregnancy and Parenting:
Myths and Realities
Teen pregnancy has been called an "epidemic" and a national emergency. Stereotypes of teen parents abound: they are said to be uneducated, irresponsible, abusive, immoral, and destined to a life of poverty.
But what do we really know about teenagers who become parents? This article will begin by discussing how teen child bearing became defined as a problem and then examine a recent study to determine what myth is and what fact in our assumptions about teen parents is.
Census data reveal that the number of teenagers becoming pregnant and bearing children has not changed significantly since the Second World War. What have changed are society's norms about marriage and sexual activity.
In 1950, the median age of marriage for men was 22.5 years; for women it was 20. Thus, 50 percent of women were marrying in their teen years and 50 percent were marrying at age 20 or older. By the mid-1980s, this was no longer true: 50 percent of men were not marrying until they were 25 or older, while 50 percent of women were not marrying until they were at least 23.
Similarly, sexual activity outside of marriage has become more common and accepted. During the 1970s, the proportion of teen women who had experienced sex increased from 30 percent in 1971 to 50 percent in 1979. Contraceptive use among teens was also on the rise during the seventies. However, a large proportion of teens reported and continues to report sporadic and ineffective contraceptive practices (Chase-Lansdale & Invokes, 1987). These changes combined with economic and gender role shifts, have created the "problem of teen child bearing."
Of course, real issues do arise when young women choose to bear and rear their children without the personal economic resources or resources from a spouse. Thus far, the government has stepped in to help meet these needs, but ambivalence about allowing the government to take over the responsibilities of the family has caused policymakers to look for other means of addressing this phenomenon. In the meantime, teen pregnancy remains a concern for child welfare.
But is age really the problem? Consider a case scenario. Jan, a 15-year-old, lives with her parents in a small North Carolina town. She becomes pregnant and hides the pregnancy from her family until she is well into her second trimester. While her mother wants her to consider adoption, her father and boyfriend believe this will "scar her for life". In the end, she decides to keep the baby. Jan continues to live at home, but neglect reports begin to filter into the county CPS workers. Is Jan coming to the attention of CPS because her age prevents her from being a good parent, or is there some other problem?
In their 1993 article, Children of Adolescent Mothers: Are They at Risk for Abuse?, Ester S. Buchholz and Carol Korn-Bursztyn review a large sample of the literature to try to determine the role of age in parenting. Their work focuses on areas in which teen mothers are generally seen as deficient.
Teen mothers are often perceived as having inadequate coping skills and social supports. There is no doubt that teen mothers are caught between separating from their families and the need for help in child rearing. The literature suggests that a delicate balance must be in place for a teen mother to have the support she needs to be a good parent.
While teens who marry in response to pregnancy seem to have more difficulty than those who continue to live with their parents, a teen can also have trouble in her family's home. When the teen's mother "takes over", the young woman's sense of herself as a parent is undermined. In contrast, the mother who models parenting skills while encouraging her daughter to assume the maternal role provides the most social support. Child welfare workers will need to examine the dynamics between the teen mother and her family closely to understand whether a teen is truly a bad parent or whether her family is contributing to a sense of inadequacy.
Many assume that teens who become pregnant know the least about parenting. However, the literature reveals that pregnant and nonpregnant teens showed no difference in their knowledge of child rearing. However, all teenagers know less about child rearing than older mothers.
Another study, this time of married, rural teen parents, upheld the stereotype that teens are less nurturing and more negative and punitive in their interactions with their children. However, no comparison was made to older parents living in the same area, leaving open the question of what is considered "normal" parenting in the study community. A second study comparing teen and older parents in the same community found no difference in attitudes between the two.
Child welfare workers, then, would be advised to consider community norms when thinking about a teen's child-rearing attitudes. One way to consider this factor is to ask: would the behavior this teenager exhibits be so alarming if it were coming from an adult parent in the same community?
In terms of actual behavior with their children, the authors noted that while young mothers do not appear as equipped as older mothers to provide an environment that enhances their infant's cognitive development (i.e., age-appropriate toys and activities), they were not found to be more punitive than older mothers. Indeed, the children of teen mothers were well within normal developmental limits when studied at eight months of age. This finding came from a study hypothesizing that children of teen parents would have notable developmental delays.
When the potential for abuse was examined, studies cited by Buchholz and Korn-Bursztyn indicated that teens are more likely to be reported for maltreatment in cases that become "unsubstantiated." The authors suggest that teen parents may be more carefully scrutinized than older parents. When cases are substantiated, neglect is cited more often than abuse.
One of the most alarming findings noted by Buchholz and Korn-Bursztyn was the high rate of depression and stress in teen mothers. One study found their suicide rate to be seven times that of non-mothers. The difficulty of competing developmental crises--adolescent transition, child bearing, and possibly marriage or leaving home--leave the teen mother open to significant life stress that can impinge on her parenting ability. And at any age, depression and stress can predispose a parent to neglect or abuse a child.
This finding indicates that a teen parent's complaints of depression and stress should be taken extremely seriously. If the teen does not volunteer information about feelings of depression, ask questions such as "How does the stress you're feeling now compare to other difficult times in your life?" "Do you have people you can talk to about your feelings and who will give you a break from all of your responsibilities?"
The authors conclude that the role of age in teen parents' difficulties is much less clear than common assumptions would suggest. Rather, societal disapproval of teenage child bearing has reduced the social supports once available. Therefore, intervention should focus on increasing the number and quality of social supports and on maintaining an awareness of the stress and depression that threaten teen mothers.
Intervention Points: Teen Pregnancy
1.Examine both the sources and quality of social supports for the teen mother. Are the adults in her life "taking over" and keeping her from the responsibilities and rewards of motherhood?
2.Take statements about depression and suicide seriously. If these issues do not come up, ask. Symptoms of depression include dramatic changes in sleeping and eating patterns, inability to take pleasure in activities that were once enjoyable, and difficulty concentrating. Work with your local mental health center and medical clinic on screening and treatment for these problems.
3•Teen mothers may need help learning about their babies' development capabilities. See "Interventions with Teen Parents" for possible interventions in this area.
4•If teens are open to consider adoption, connect them with others who have placed children or have been adopted themselves.
5•Don't forget the father and his family. No matter what the young woman or her family says about his whereabouts or interests, his support of a plan can be crucial.
6•Teens do change their minds about placement. Consider interventions that will allow for parent education while supporting the adoption decision.
7•Help promote positive views of adoption in your community. Public service announcements, community forums, and question and answer sessions at local high schools are three possible forums for spreading the word about adoption.
Interventions with Teen Parents
Child welfare professionals working with teen parents may often find themselves wondering, "How can I teach this young mother better parenting skills and help her understand her infant?"
An Intervention Program to Build Competencies in Adolescent Parents speaks to this question. In this article, Butler and colleagues examine a year-long peer counseling program for teen parents. In this program, college women were trained to be "peer counselors" and matched with demographically similar teen mothers. The goals of the program were to decrease stressors and to increase parenting competencies in teen mothers. To see if having a peer counselor made a difference, the mothers were tested on a variety of measures before and after the intervention. They were then compared to a control group of teen mothers who did not have peer counselors.
At the beginning of the year, peer counselors worked at building rapport. This was followed by an education component, during which peer counselors gave the teens information about existing resources. The teen parents were very receptive to this information, in part because it was presented by someone close to their own age. The peer advocates attended childbirth classes, helped parents open bank accounts, and helped them consider education options.
At the start of the year, the mothers who were given peer counselors had more negative perceptions of their children than the control group mothers. During the year, all of the mothers' perceptions of their children became more negative, a common response to the realities of parenting. However, those with peer counselors were less negative than the control group. These mothers reported that they perceived their children's behavior to be "about average" or slightly better. The control group viewed their children in a more negative way, one that could lead to problem parenting.
Parent Education for Adolescent Mothers, by Dickinson and Cudaback, presents a less labor-intensive intervention aimed at helping teen mothers understand their child's development. The study examined the differences between two groups of teen mothers. One group received age-timed brochures detailing the developmental phases their children were in and suggesting activities to enhance the infants' development. A second group received the usual services offered to teen mothers in the area, but not the parenting brochures.
The brochures themselves were short, with a reading level of sixth grade or below. They explained specific tasks the babies were learning at a given phase of development and gave examples of how a mother could help her child's development. Toys, activities, and other types of stimulation were described.
Of the mothers who received the brochures, 93 percent reported reading them thoroughly, 95 percent tried at least one of the suggested activities, and 83 percent were motivated to obtain more things for their infant to touch, listen to, and play with. At the end of the intervention, these teens reported wanting more information about child development and requested a similar series for the toddler age.
Surveys showed that mothers who received the brochures were much less likely than the control group to have scores that would indicate risk to their children. However, the authors also note that in both groups the number of risk scores was high, indicating that brochures alone cannot address all the needs of teen parents. Mailing age-timed brochures to new teen mothers does represent an easily implemented, cost-effective way to provide teen mothers with strategies to assist in their child's cognitive development.
Preventing Pregnancy for Teens in Foster Care
With reunification issues to sort out, visitation and school plans to coordinate, and foster homes to support and monitor, working with children in care can be fairly complicated. Working with adolescents in care can be even more compels, especially when it comes to preventing pregnancy.
Society looks to the family to provide children with information about sex, and teens in foster care often find their families unable to provide guidance on sexual matters. This lack, coupled with the predisposing factors of abuse and neglect, may make teens in care more susceptible to becoming involved in early sexual activity and parenthood.
In Sex Education and Family Planning for Adolescents in Foster Care, researchers Polit, White, and Morton surveyed 48 states to determine what systems were in place to address sexuality for teenagers in foster care. The results of their survey were not encouraging. Only nine states had formal written policies on how family planning and related services were to be provided to child welfare clients. Five states mandated training on teen sexuality for foster parents, and only four required similar training for case workers.
Furthermore, when asked whose responsibility it was to talk to teens about sexually related issues, case workers believed it was the foster parents' responsibility, while foster parents looked to the agency to assume this role.
Many workers and foster parents were concerned about legal constraints regarding teen access to birth control and related information. Particularly when reunification is a goal, the responsibility of the birth parents was considered unclear. North Carolina law says that teenagers can consent without parental permission for medical treatment related to pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, mental health, or substance abuse (N.C. General Statute 9-21.5). Therefore, it would appear that family planning services can be accessed easily and without legal constraints.
The article described above was published in 1987. Perhaps new ways of dealing with this issue exist that are not documented in the literature. Practice Notes will keep you updated if we learn of progress in this area.
