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The outcomes of the IS/MT pilot project and the expanded services program as well as program replications in other geographic areas suggest that efforts to support the teenage mother in the care of her firstborn infant can have a demonstrable effect. Completing school, securing employment, going off welfare, and acting on a decision to prevent subsequent unwanted pregnancies were all secondary effects of a 20-week postnatal mother-infant class program designed to positively influence infant development. Similar treatment effects have been reported by IS/MT replications in St. Louis and Genesee County, Michigan. Other program innovations, however, lacking the funds and/or the expertise to conduct adequate evaluations, are nonetheless significant because they provide a groundswell capable of establishing a climate for social change. At the community level, this is expressed in the creation of new service paradigms, as in Norfolk and Memphis, where individuals and agencies are transformed and experiment with new solutions to thorny problems. At the national level, it is expressed in coalitions and political alliances around a single issue, as with the Children's Defense Fund and adolescent and single-parent families. As one who has spent almost 20 years addressing the consequences of teenage parenthood, it is heartening to know that the time is near to address the prevention of the problem. Let us hope that the Children's Defense Fund agenda accurately reflects the beliefs and feelings of the majority of our citizenry and that our national priorities will change to include the reduction of teen pregnancy and teen parenthood.
The outcomes of the IS/MT pilot project and the expanded services program as well as program replications in other geographic areas suggest that efforts to support the teenage mother in the care of her firstborn infant can have a demonstrable effect. Completing school, securing employment, going off welfare, and acting on a decision to prevent subsequent unwanted pregnancies were all secondary effects of a 20-week postnatal mother-infant class program designed to positively influence infant development. Similar treatment effects have been reported by IS/MT replications in St. Louis and Genesee County, Michigan. Other program innovations, however, lacking the funds and/or the expertise to conduct adequate evaluations, are nonetheless significant because they provide a groundswell capable of establishing a climate for social change. At the community level, this is expressed in the creation of new service paradigms, as in Norfolk and Memphis, where individuals and agencies are transformed and experiment with new solutions to thorny problems. At the national level, it is expressed in coalitions and political alliances around a single issue, as with the Children's Defense Fund and adolescent and single-parent families. As one who has spent almost 20 years addressing the consequences of teenage parenthood, it is heartening to know that the time is near to address the prevention of the problem. Let us hope that the Children's Defense Fund agenda accurately reflects the beliefs and feelings of the majority of our citizenry and that our national priorities will change to include the reduction of teen pregnancy and teen parenthood.