The Well‐Being of Children Born to Teen Mothers

Abstract

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.

Labor and Delivery Complications among Teenage Mothers

“…Subsequent research was highly critical of the conclusions reached in these initial investigations. Researchers hypothesized that girls who become mothers as teenagers are quite different in a variety of dimensions from the women who delay childbearing until an older age and that unobserved heterogeneity could be responsible for the difference in outcomes observed rather than teen motherhood itself (e.g., Geronimus 1987;Geronimus and Korenman 1992;Hoffman, Foster, and Furstenberg 1993;Levine, Emery, and Pollack 2007;Levine, Pollack, and Comfort 2001). The empirical work that followed in this area found that the large estimates of the impact of teenage childbearing reported in the first wave of research were reduced considerably once the authors accounted for omitted variable bias.…”

Health Outcomes for Children Born to Teen Mothers in Cape Town, South Africa

“…The literature on the intergenerational consequences of early childbearing is smaller and there are very few studies that control for selection into teen childbearing. Most of these studies rely on cousin or sibling fixed effects to isolate the impact of the mother’s young age at birth (Geronimus and Korenman 1993; Geronimus et al 1994; Rosenzweig and Wolpin 1995; Turley 2003; Levine et al 2007; Francesconi 2008). Other studies (Hofferth and Reid 2002; Levine et al 2001; Rosenzweig and Wolpin 1995) use panel data to control for pre-childbearing characteristics in a multivariate framework.…”

“…The literature on the outcomes of children born to teen mothers focuses on educational and behavioural outcomes (Geronimus et al 1994; Hofferth and Reid 2002; Turley 2003; Levine et al 2001; Levine et al 2007; Francesconi 2008). Two papers examine health outcomes of children born to teen mothers, specifically.…”

Longitudinal relations among Mexican-origin mothers’ cultural characteristics, cultural socialization, and 5-year-old children’s ethnic–racial identification.

“…Children of adolescent mothers are at increased risk for behavioral problems (Hofferth & Reid, 2002), as well as grade repetition, early sexual initiation, and truancy (Levine, Emery, & Pollack, 2007). Although overall rates of births to teenage mothers have declined by over 30% in recent years for the total population, there has been a decline of only 15% for Latina mothers, and Mexican-origin adolescents, in particular, face the highest risk for teenage pregnancy among all ethnic and racial groups in the U.S. (Martin et al, 2011).…”