Adolescent Mothers

Rumeli Banik

This entry discusses adolescent mothers from a positive youth development perspective (Benson, 2003; Lerner, 2004). The traditional negative view of teenage mothers, in which they are deemed as “problems to be managed,” is contrasted with the perspective that these mothers are “resources to be developed” (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, Murray, & Foster, 1998). The last section discusses ways in which programs and interventions can be changed or developed to enhance the probability that teenage mothers and their children will be productively and positively contributing members of civil society. The view that adolescent pregnancy is an enormous social burden in the United States may be due to the number of teenage mothers. In recent years, there has been a decrease in teenage pregnancy rates, with the teen birthrate falling from 37 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 17, in 1990, to 27 births per 1,000 females in this age range, in 2002. ...

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