Teenage Childbearing and Personal Responsibility

An Alternative View

Bibliographic Data

ID4833336
AuthorsA T Geronimus (0000-0001-6918-5777, corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume112
Issue3
Pages405-430
Publication date1997-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Science Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3195 • E-ISSN: 1538-165X
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2657564
OpenAlexW2077736377
LanguageEN
Citations received56

The introduction to this article which reexamines assumptions about the social costs of adolescent child-bearing in the US notes that proposals to create incentives and punishments to alter adolescent child-bearing behavior are receiving wide support from disparate political groups while diverting energy from searching debate about the nature of poverty. The article then describes the influence of assumptions about adolescent child-bearing on recent welfare reform proposals and legislation. A hard look at the consequences of adolescent child-bearing follows and reveals that the scientific evidence of a causal relationship between adolescent child-bearing and welfare dependency or between adolescent child-bearing and the health and development of the children of teen-age mothers is more modest and equivocal than commonly believed. Next claims of enormous social costs associated with adolescent parenting are debunked as exaggerations and it is noted that a full and careful accounting of the social costs remains to be performed. Such an accounting may in fact reveal higher social costs if these mothers delayed child-bearing. The article continues by reconstructing the popularized image that presents the adolescent mother as a single parent. In fact most teenage mothers are 18-19 years old about 40% are married and those who are not married benefit from the support and guidance of others. The life prospects of adolescents living in poverty are then contrasted with middle-income adolescents to show that most poor teenagers have little to gain by postponing parenthood. Finally the article spells out an alternative view of the rationality of adolescent child-bearing and questions the value of making reduction of teenage child-bearing an important goal of welfare reform instead of developing more effective general antipoverty policies

Moral responsibility · Political science · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law

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