Groundbreaking Study On Teenage Childbearing Quantifies Devastating Consequences To Parents, Children, and Society

Delaying Childbearing Until Age 20 or 21 Significantly Reduces Serious Health Risks, Likelihood of Poverty for Parents and Children; Lessens Financial Burden on Society

Source

Forums

Related Articles

WASHINGTON, June 13, 1996 -- Adolescent parenthood has devastating effects on families, increasing poverty and significantly increasing the likelihood that the children of these young parents will face a life of poor health, physical abuse, neglect, prison and early childbearing, according to a groundbreaking study released today by the Robin Hood Foundation.

"Kids Having Kids" is the most comprehensive report done on the costs and consequences of teenage childbearing to parents, children and society. According to the study, adolescent childbearing costs U.S. taxpayers $6.9 billion per year, and the cost to the nation in lost productivity rises to as much as $29 billion annually.

Working in teams on eight coordinated studies, a collection of some of the nation's leading scholars focused their research on the roughly 175,000 American girls who bear their first baby at the age of 17 or younger and compared the associated economic and social costs to those mothers who delay childbirth until the age of 20 or 21, which is still two to three years younger than the national average.

"Adolescent childbearing is not only a significant personal tragedy, it should be regarded as a national calamity in that it commits young parents to a life of hardship, increases the likelihood that their children will suffer the same fate and has staggering economic and social costs for our nation as a whole," said David Saltzman, executive director of Robin Hood Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to fighting poverty in New York City and primary source of funding for the "Kids Having Kids" report.

"Early parenting wreaks havoc socially -- from the completion of education of the mother and father to their higher poverty rates, said Rebecca Maynard, "Kids Having Kids" editor and professor of education and social policy, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. "But the devastation to the lives of their children is prevalent and wide ranging."

A few of the hundreds of findings about children born to teenage mothers:

• Reproducing the Cycle of Poverty -- The girls born to adolescent moms are up to 83 percent more likely to become teenage moms themselves, thus reproducing the cycle of poverty and disadvantage for yet another generation.
  
  
• Trouble in School -- They are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grads and perform significantly worse on cognitive development tests. They are also far more likely to drop out of high school than are the children born to women from the same socioeconomic background who wait until the age of 20 or 21 to have children.
  
  
• More Childhood Health Problems -- They are more likely to be born prematurely and 52 percent more likely to be born low birth weight than if their mothers had waited four years to bear them.
  
  
• Increased Child Abuse and Neglect -- They are twice es likely to be abused or neglected.
  
  
• Behind Bars -- The teen sons of adolescent mothers are up to 2.7 times more likely to land in prison than their counterparts in the comparison group. By extension, adolescent childbearing in and of itself costs taxpayers roughly $1 billion each year to build and maintain prisons for the sons of young mothers.
  
  
• Foster Children -- Of the estimated 472,000 foster children in the United States, over 23,000 are the children of adolescent mothers, which in turn results in a taxpayer burden of approximately $900 million.
  
  

The study also examines the consequences of early parenting on teen mothers and the fathers:

• 70 percent of the mothers drop out of school.
  
  
• They are twice as likely to be dependent on welfare.
  
  

A unique component of the study is its examination of the costs and consequences of teen pregnancy on society:

• Teen childbearing costs U.S. taxpayers almost $7 billion every year.
  
  
• The cost to society in lost national productivity and avoidable expenditure of social service resources is as much as $29 billion each year.
  
  

"We hope the disturbing findings of this report will send a wake-up call to America about the need to find workable solutions to the devastating issue of teenage parenthood," said Paul Tudor Jones II, founder and chairman of the Robin Hood Foundation. "Without our help, the children of teenage mothers will themselves become teenage mothers, thus perpetuating the cycle of abuse, neglect, hardship and poverty."

The Robin Hood Foundation was created as a public charity in 1988 to find, fund and provide management help to the best and most innovative programs serving poor people in New York City. Since than, the foundation has provided more than $35 million in money, volunteer resources and materials goods to these programs.

CONTACT: Julie Harkavy, 202-739-0215, or Stephanie Bartolomeo, 212-484-7236, both for the Robin Hood Foundation.