ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the development of children born to teen mothers using empirical evidence from scholarly research, including the Notre Dame Adolescent Parenting Project (NDAPP) to rethink two cultural myths. The first cultural myth is teen pregnancies result in poor birth outcomes, and the second suggests that children of teen parents will experience cognitive delay, adjustment problems, and will themselves become teen parents. The chapter reviews birth outcome data on infant mortality, low birth weight, and prematurity. It organizes the evidence by domain, specifically addressing cognitive and academic; behavioral and psychosocial; early pregnancy and parenthood; employment, nonproductive activity, and earning; and arrests and incarcerations. The chapter also reviews some of this research organized by domain: cognitive and academic outcomes, behavioral adjustment and risky behaviors, teen pregnancy, unemployment, and criminal activity. It concludes by revisiting Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems theory as an alternative way to understand the multiple, interacting influences on children born to teen parents.
