Teen Parenting Issue Brief

This brief provides information about teen parents in Massachusetts, including demographics and risk factors associated with becoming a teen parent. It explains the consequences of teen parenting for parents, children, communities, and taxpayers. It offers recommendations for how to meet the basic needs of children and ensure that teen parents get the education they need to be self-sufficient.

Who becomes a teen parent?
Demographics: More than 5,300 babies were born to teens in Massachusetts in 2000—more than 14 teens give birth everyday. These children join over 7,000 children of the Commonwealth already parented by teens.

Causes: Research shows that the causes of teen pregnancy and too-early parenthood are complex and include low educational attainment, poverty, sexual abuse, lack of caring adults in the life of a teen, and exposure to drugs and alcohol. The more risk factors that a teen faces, the greater the likelihood that he or she will become a teen parent.

Who Pays the Price?
Consequences for children: The children of teenaged parents bear the burden of their parents’ young age. They have poorer health, worse educational outcomes, and higher rates of adolescent childbearing and incarceration then the children of older mothers.

Welfare dependence: According to a recent AYF study, even teen parents who had finished their high school education did not make enough to sustain their families without state help.

Poor school achievement: One in three girls who gave birth in 2000 was two or more grades behind their expected grade level. Over sixty percent of teen fathers and mothers drop out of school at some point before or after becoming a parent. Fewer than one-third of teens who begin families before 18 ever complete high school.

Homelessness: A recent Alliance for Young Families study on teen parent homelessness indicated that over one third of Massachusetts teen parents experienced homelessness and its devastating consequences in 2000. According to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, the number of families on the waitlist for Teen Living Programs – a shelter program for homeless teen parents – has more than doubled in the last 6 months. The effects of homelessness on young children include significant developmental delays, emotional difficulties, poor nutrition, and poor physical health.

Recommendations
1. Massachusetts should commit more resources to the Teen Living Program.
Homeless teen families who are placed in stable housing as soon as possible can mitigate the damaging consequences to their children. In safe and structured Teen Living Programs, teen parents develop the tools for independent living such as budgeting and nutrition and personal skills such as conflict management. They also receive the counseling, medical services, and education that they need.

2. Massachusetts should fully fund support programs which help teen parents finish high school.
Programs that successfully guide teen parents through school and on to gainful employment, help teens avoid repeat pregnancies, and improve parent-child relationships can save the state in costs associated with long-term welfare dependence and the increased health and education needs of their families. The benefits of a high school education are beyond dispute: US census 2000 shows that the median income of a non-high school graduate is $18,000, compared to $25,000 for a high school graduate. A salary of $18,000 still leaves a family of three eligible for a host of taxpayer-funded public assistance programs, including food stamps, health care, housing, free school meals, and child care.

Massachusetts’ teen parent child care program (Services for Teen Parents and their Children, or STPC) is one such program. In addition to high-quality child care services, STPC programs (many of which are based in high schools) provide teen parents and their children with transportation to the child care site, parenting and life skills education, family planning services, and case management.

3. Massachusetts welfare legislation (TAFDC) should be amended to permit teen parents to pursue post-secondary education without the loss of essential support services.
In order to be contributors to the tax base rather than consumers of tax dollars, teen parents need higher education and training. Even teen parents who had completed high school or GED programs were only earning $13,000, leaving them eligible for a host of taxpayer funded programs. On the other hand, families headed by someone with advanced training earn almost twice as much as families headed by a high school graduate.

For teen parents who are enrolled full-time in an educational program, current TAFDC policy will not provide child care and transportation to teen parents beyond the associate’s degree.

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Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy
105 Chauncy Street, 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02111
617.482.9122 Main, 617.482.9129 Fax