ABSTRACT
The young women who were building on a reasonable foundation of prior educational success, access to post-high school education, family support, and their own and their child's good health met this challenge with a strong desire to succeed and considerable optimism about their futures. Their personal optimism depended on an ongoing context that allowed it to be sustained by reasonable success in the adaptation to young adulthood. This chapter discusses specific policy initiatives for adolescent mothers in the context of supporting their transitions to young adulthood. It reviews current initiatives in the light of this study's. It addresses the approaches to limiting fertility, reevaluating child support, fostering father involvement, supporting early adult transitions to work, addressing child-care needs, stabilizing housing, and promoting the physical and mental health of adolescent mothers and their children. Rhetoric concerning mandated paternity identification as a condition for welfare benefits for adolescent mothers suggests that either their desires to protect their partners from financial responsibility.
