ABSTRACT
Teenage pregnancy and parenthood have always existed. However, before 1975 they received little attention or comment in theUnited States. In brief, the rapid rise in the number of younger adolescents having intercourse, in their birthrate, and in babies born to single teenage mothers all contributed to concern about early parenthood (Brooks-Gunn and Furstenberg, 1989; Coley and Chase-Lansdale, 1998; Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, and Chase-Lansdale, 1989; Maynard, 1997; Moore et al., 1993). The upward trendwitnessed in the 1980s regarding the proportion of EuropeanAmerican andAfrican American adolescent girls who had never had sexual intercourse was followed by stabilization in 1990s rates of sexual debut, although the percentage of Latina adolescents initiating intercourse continued to increase. By the mid-1990s, 60% of African American, 56% of Latin American, and 51% of non-Hispanic European American teenagers between 15 and 19 years old reported having initiated intercourse (Besharov and Gardiner, 1997; Singh and Darroch, 1999). Approximately 77% of females and 85% ofmales report having initiated intercourse by the age of 20 years (Brown, 2000). Moreover, sexual intercourse is also becoming increasingly common for young women earlier in adolescence (Brooks-Gunn and Paikoff, 1993).
