The Outcomes of Teenage Motherhood in Europe [antikvár]

Abstract Research in many countries has confirmed that teenage mothers and their famihes are often at a disadvantage compared with those whose children are bom in their twenties or thirties. But there has never been an opportunity for a systematic comparison between countries, based on a common data source. This paper analyses the current positions of women whose first child was bom when they were teenagers, across 13 countries in the European Union, based on the European Community Household Panel survey. Outcomes considered include educational attainment, family structure, family employment and household income. Teenage mothers were disadvantaged in all countries, but the severity of their position varied substantially between countries. 1. Introduction Aims Although the age range during which women are conventionally assumed to be fertile is between 15 and 44, nine out of ten babies in western countries are born when their mother is in her twenties or thirties (Eurostat 2000). Relatively few women conceive and give birth before the age of twenty. And, as a combination of prolonged education, increased employment opportunities and the availability of contraception have tended to delay women's decision to start their families, teenage motherhood is increasingly rare in many countries. Even in countries where fertility rates among teenagers have not been falling, it is seen as increasingly exceptional, as the average age at which other women have their first child has risen. Teenage motherhood has been of concem to governments for two distinct reasons - medical and socio-economic. Teenage mothers and their babies show higher than average risks of unsatisfactory progress during pregnancy, difficulties at the birth, and poor health in subsequent years (Eraser and others 1995, Strobino 1992, Cunnington 2001). Teenage mothers and their families have also been shown to experience social disadvantage on such measures as education, housing, employment and family income (Hoffman and others 1993, Ribar 1999, Wellings and others 1999). In practice these two types of problem are probably not as independent as they may seem, since the medical problems may be associated as much with low levels of care as with any straightforwardly physiological difficulty associated with early conception (SEU 1999). During the peak fertility period in the mid- to late-twenties, as many as 120 women in every thousand have a baby in the course of a year (see page 12). Teenage birth rates are much lower (UNICEF 2001): between 6 and 14 per thousand in the continental west-European countries, though between 18