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Updated: Oct 1, 2026
Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
Published on: February 2, 2017
Early childbearing and children's achievement and behavior over time
1Department of Family Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, USA. hofferth@glue.umd.edu
Insights
Children born to teen mothers face worse outcomes, but this effect diminishes when accounting for societal changes over time. Early motherhood
Area of Science:
- Sociology
- Developmental Psychology
- Public Health
Background:
- Historically, children of teen mothers were believed to face higher risks for adverse health, social, and economic outcomes.
- Recent research has challenged this notion, but often fails to consider temporal changes in child outcomes or the impact of early childbearing over time.
Purpose of the Study:
- To disentangle the influence of societal changes from the direct effect of mother's age at first birth on children's outcomes.
- To investigate how the perceived risks associated with early childbearing have evolved across different time periods.
Main Methods:
- Utilized data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
- Employed multivariate analyses to control for social and demographic factors.
- Separated the impact of changes in children's experiences from the 1960s to the 1990s from the effect of maternal age at first birth.
Main Results:
- Within specific birth cohorts, children of teen mothers showed lower achievement test scores and higher behavior problem index scores.
- After accounting for temporal trends, children of early-childbearing mothers performed worse on the behavior problem index and one achievement test compared to those whose mothers delayed childbearing.
- The perceived negative effects of early childbearing on children's outcomes are sensitive to whether achievement test scores are rising or falling over time.
Conclusions:
- Comparing outcomes solely by mother's age at first birth within the same period may inaccurately estimate the true effects of early motherhood.
- The direction and magnitude of early childbearing's impact on children depend on time trends in societal factors and child development.
- Policymakers must consider temporal dynamics and avoid decisions based on studies that neglect time trends in child outcomes and early childbearing effects.
Context:
Compared with children of older women, children of women who had their first birth during their teens have long been believed to be at higher risk for a host of poor health, social and economic outcomes. Recent studies have failed to confirm this belief, but none have taken into account whether children's outcomes or the effects of early childbearing on those outcomes have changed over time.
Methods:
Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Labor Market Experience of Youth and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are used to separate the influence of changes from the 1960s through the 1990s in children's experiences from the effect of mother's age at first birth.
Results:
Multivariate analyses controlling for social and demographic characteristics show that among children born to women from a particular birth cohort, those whose mothers first gave birth in their teens have significantly lower scores on a set of four achievement tests and significantly higher scores on a behavior-problem index than do children whose mothers delayed childbearing. However, when changes over time in children's outcomes and in the effect of early childbearing on those outcomes are taken into account, children born to women who began childbearing early score significantly worse than those whose mothers delayed their first birth on the behavior-problem index, but on only one achievement test.
Conclusions:
Comparisons by age at first birth among women born in the same period may misestimate the effects of early motherhood. Whether early childbearing's effects on children are overestimated or underestimated depends on whether test scores are rising or falling. Policymakers should be cautious in making decisions based on studies that do not take time trends into account.
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