Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-799-5126
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Why is it a problem if a teenager decides to have a child? The one thing educators almost never say: "Because she is not married" even though teen birth rates peaked in 1957 and it is the explosive growth in the unwed teen birth rate that has fueled the public crisis. Yet experts and educators routinely omit this underlying cause of the crisis from our public description of it.

In doing so, we camouflage the single most important reason for the growth in unwed teen childbearing: the changing marriage behavior of single white teens. Between the early 70s and 90s, the proportion of single pregnant teens who married before the birth dropped from almost half to just 16 percent. To put this in perspective: if legitimation rates had remained constant, the number of first babies born to unwed teen mothers would have risen about sixteen percent, from 774,000 unwed teen births in 1970-74 to 897, 000 unwed teen births in 1990-94. Instead the number of first babies born out of wedlock to teen mothers roughly doubled from 774,000 unwed teen births in 1970-1974 to 1,418,000 out of wedlock teen births between 1990 and 1994.

Experts now acknowledge that the teen contraceptive crisis is not merely one of lack of knowledge or access , but weak motivation. One study of high-risk teens found: "The rate of conception associated with ambivalence towards childbearing has been shown to be as high as that associated with a positive desire for a child." In another study, only high school girls firmly opposed to having a child out of wedlock were at lower risk for nonmarital birth. When asked whether they, personally would consider bearing an out of wedlock child, fewer than half of American high school girls in the late 80s answered unambiguously, "no." A decade later, 40 percent of women who become mothers for the first time are not married.

Yet our prevention programs continue to define the problem exclusively as one of age. Children shouldn't have children," we say, even though three-fifths of teen mothers are also legal adults, 18 and 19 years old. While we focus on age as the source of problems, the unwed birth rate for white women in their early twenties continues to rise, up two percent since 1994, and up 136 percent since 1980. Current prevention strategies may have succeeded only in persuading more young women to postpone unmarried childbearing until their early twenties.

Is this good enough? If the goal is keeping children and mothers out of poverty, the answer is clearly: no. According to one recent analysis, "The economic situation of older, single childbearers is much closer to that of teen mothers than that of married childbearers." In terms of emotional health, the picture is similar: "adolescent mothers experience significantly more mental health problems and significantly less well-being than married adult mothers," concludes one recent study, "but report similar levels of psychological adjustment when compared to single adult mothers." Very young ages add an additional level of difficulty, but for most older teens, postponing childbirth until they are at least twenty will not significantly change their life course.

Marriage, not age, marks the big divide in child and maternal well-being. Even after controlling for such variables as socioeconomic status and race and parental warmth, discipline, and time, "the net effects of non-intact family structure on child development outcomes are negative and strong," reports one recent study. Research suggests young women (and their babies) are best off postponing children until marriage, and postponing marriage until they are at least 23 years old.

Adding a marriage argument to our teen pregnancy prevention programs would thus have one immense advantage over our current strategy: it would be true. This is not more moralistic, and a lot more realistic, than misinforming young people that waiting until their 20th birthday is the key to escaping poverty and problems.

Why should a teen wait to have a baby? The most important reason is the one we aren't now saying: Because children long for committed, full-time fathers, and mothers deserve the help a husband can provide.