ABSTRACT
For nearly 20 years, there has been widespread acceptance of the conclusion that the cognitive development of children born to adolescent parents is deficient relative to that of children born to adult parents. The conclusion may be premature, however, because of sample biases and methodological flaws that characterize much of the research. The purpose of our study was to compare the school achievement scores of elementary-school children born to either adolescent or adult mothers using data obtained from a nationally representative sample of contemporary youth and their children. The effects of maternal age on children’s school achievement scores were negligible after controlling for maternal intelligence, sociodemographic status, and the quality of the home environment. Maternal age did have a direct effect on children’s math achievement after variations in maternal intelligence were statistically accounted for, but this effect disappeared after entering other variables into the regression equation. Also, after controlling for other variables in the model, maternal age was a significant predictor of Peabody Individual Achievement Tests (PIATs) scores among Blacks but not among Whites and Hispanics. These results, together with new trends in childbearing, suggest that researchers should reexamine conclusions about the effects of adolescent motherhood on children’s cognitive development.
