Pregnant and Parenting Teens and Poverty

Teen girls who become pregnant and have children are frequently criticized while their pregnancies get blamed for causing adult poverty, welfare dependence, and other social problems. While the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law believes that delaying childbearing is important for the well-being of teens, we find these reactions and beliefs to be unwarranted and ultimately very harmful for several reasons. First, they obscure the fact that as a group these teens tend to be overwhelmingly poor even before their pregnancies. Second, these beliefs lead to the creation of policies that punish teens when they are already beset by the hardships that living in poverty brings. Third, these beliefs are harmful because they take our attention away from the real issues that contribute to and exacerbate living in poverty—problems in educational systems, decreased labor market opportunities, the absence of reliable child care, inadequate housing, and the lack of decent health care. And finally, regardless of economic status, far too many teen pregnancies are the result of rape, incest, and violence.

The situation for some Illinois teens who are pregnant or parenting has worsened because they have been dropped or pushed out of their schools. Recognizing that the achievement of educational success can have a positive impact on the lives of poor teens, the Shriver Center aims to eliminate the barriers that many teens, especially girls, living in Illinois face in their efforts to complete school. With this in mind, the Shriver Center and its partner organizations have built a coalition to identify the educational needs of teens who are expectant parents, parenting, or the victims of domestic or sexual violence. Our coalition has nearly completed drafting legislation, unique in its kind, which addresses these needs.

The Shriver Center recognizes that background disadvantages, mentioned above, and negative lived experiences of many poor girls and women are what adversely affect their schooling and impede their abilities to achieve labor market success, not teen childbearing alone. This view is supported by social science research that has examined teen pregnancy and childbearing and their relationship to schooling, labor market participation, and welfare use.
For example, one study emphasizes the impact of both disadvantage and experiences of academic discouragement on the likelihood that a teen girl will get pregnant and drop out of school. According to this study, ample research suggests that “when a young woman not only comes from a poor family but receives low grades in school and loses faith in her own abilities, she is more likely to get pregnant. Poverty and loss of self-confidence play more of a role in determining her decision to drop out of school than does the pregnancy itself….”/1/

Another study similarly notes the differences in the backgrounds of young women who will become teen mothers compared to the general population: “teen mothers are far more likely to have grown up in extremely impoverished circumstances and to have experienced prior school failure.” The author of this study is not surprised to find high rates of teen motherhood in disadvantaged communities where young women face severely limited life options./2/

Studies that have explored the relationships between teen childbearing and labor market participation and welfare use have also shown that women who give birth as teens do not necessarily fare worse than similar women who delay childbirth. In a study comparing labor market participation between teenage women who gave birth and teenage women who miscarried (subsequently delaying childbirth), researchers observed that early childbirth neither curtailed the number of hours worked annually by teen mothers through age 34 nor lessened their annual earnings through age 34. This study revealed that, in fact, teen mothers earned more at every age through 34 than they would have if they had delayed childbearing. The authors of this study note that, based on their evidence, women who give birth as teens not only come from less advantaged backgrounds but experience less success in school. They speculate that teen mothers are more likely to work in jobs that value job-specific experience and continuity rather than the attainment of higher education. For these women, then, early childbearing may be more compatible with their likely career paths./3/

In another study of African American sisters, researchers found that women who had not given birth as teenagers were as likely as their biological sisters who had given birth as teens to receive welfare as adults. Both sisters were also shown to spend a similar amount of time in poverty during their adult years. The authors of this study conclude that not only did both sisters “fare badly as adults” but also, more significantly, background disadvantages are “stronger predictors” of adult low income, poverty, and welfare use than giving birth as an unmarried teen./4/

Together these studies show that in order to understand and fight poverty adequately, policymakers and advocates must take into account the many issues and problems that can stand in the way of efforts by low-income youth and adults who are trying to improve their economic prospects. The Shriver Center remains focused on understanding these issues by communicating with clients who bring the complexity of their problems to light.

For more information on legislation to address these issues and the Shriver Center’s work in this area, contact Wendy Pollack at 312.263.3830 ext.238 or Aleeza Strubel at 312.263.3830 ext. 229.

Jennifer Lee, a VISTA volunteer at the Shriver Center, wrote this article.

1. Kristin Luker, Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 124. See especially chapter 5.

2. Arline T. Geronimus, “Teenage Childbearing and Personal Responsibility,” Political Science Quarterly, 112 (Autumn 1997): 405–30.

3. V. Joseph Hotz et al., “Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing,” Chicago Policy Review 1 (Fall 1996): 55–94.

4. Mary E. Corcoran & James P. Kunz, “Do Unmarried Births among African-American Teens Lead to Adult Poverty?” Social Service Review, June 1997, pp. 274–87.

December 21, 2004