How Parenting and Family Dynamic Influences Teen Pregnancy, Research Paper Example

Teen pregnancy is not an issue that is specific to modern age, but rather has been around for as long as sexual intercourse has been around. As culture progresses, and the influences of family dynamics are being studied on a more in-depth level, the more researchers gain in understanding how family dynamics and parenting styles influence adolescent behavior. The following research paper will focus on how parenting styles and parent’s influence effect adolescent behavior especially in regards to teenage pregnancy in the framework of older parents versus younger parents. The paper will be broken down into the following sections: literature review; methodology; analysis; and conclusion.

Literature Review

In McWhirter et al.’s book “At Risk Youth” the authors examine to effects and reasons for teen pregnancy. The authors do this through close examination of certain sociological factors such as race, income, and education in teen populace in 2013. Although the body of work as a collection holds up to scrutiny, the text does not elaborate on the global percentage of teen pregnancies, nor does it examine teen pregnancy outside of American culture. Also, although the book doesn’t directly reference older parents versus younger parents it does state that a more stable home life (e.g. financially, morally) has a great positive effect on teens. The socioeconomic cut of culture that McWhirter is studying however, such examples are rare in young parents whose education level has not lead to great financially independence.

Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy’s article “Teenage Births: Outcomes for Young Parents, and Their Children” highlights distinction outcomes of teen pregnancy (the article focuses more on moms rather than fathers). The outcomes of teen pregnancy are listed as a downward spiral for teen mothers. The study lists such outcomes as higher risk of poverty, their children being less ready for school that propels them toward delinquent behavior and subsequently their offspring become teen parents. It is this focus on age differences in parents that makes this study strong and pertinent to this research paper.

Farber’s book “Adolescent Pregnancy” offers a more fully comprehensive look at teen pregnancy. The author examines the plight of the pregnant teen through socio-economic terms, as well as family dynamic. The author takes a step beyond a study of pregnant teens and isolated behavior and looks to preventative ways that parents play a detrimental or influential role in their child’s lives including age differences in parents and the effect it has on teenage pregnancy.

Thomas Gullotta, and Gerald Adams’s book “Handbook of Adolescent Behavioral” offers a value based approach to teen pregnancy and the role parents have in their behavior. Although this approach reasons that lack of positive parental influence on a teen’s life leads to pregnancy, the study focuses more on prevention and less on ways in which parents influences teens lives after the pregnancy. Also, the studies focus on certain socio-economic places but do not bring this dynamic into the study as a main contributing factor in teen pregnancy.

Bill Albert’s article, “Parental Influence and Teen Pregnancy” does a succinct job in highlighting the problems with teen pregnancy, but it is a bit trite in going into any detail about how parents can influence adolescent behavior. Although the article highlights how parents should be positive role models, the article doesn’t delineate this advice into any cultural, economic, or sociological context. Meaning, that the bullet points highlighted are great advice, but perhaps not applicable to parents of all walks of life.

Methods

In studying teen pregnancy it is best for a researcher to their own fieldwork. This means that secondary studies are not necessary unless the work requires a compare and contrast to past studies. This would, however, require that the current study adhere to the specifications and limits in variables to the previous study—something that would affect any quantitative results. The best course of action for methodology in dealing with teen pregnancy would be survey research, and in-depth interviews. By approaching the subject with this trifecta, there would be a more comprehensive look at teen pregnancy. A specific geographic location—lets say all urban areas/cities with no less than 50,000 teen pregnancies reported each year—would be the research pool. For teenagers who were willing to participate in-depth interviews would be given to teenagers and their parents in order to gain a better understanding of home life and the influences that effected their choices and behaviors. Research would consist of a 24 month long study in which parental behavior and age after the pregnancy is also observed and accounted for in the report.

As this method would be participant observation, interns from neighboring college would be used in order to create a type of campaign center in which teens could come and be interviewed. An anticipated 50% drop out rate would be included in the study as many teenagers may either abort, run away, or have various factors contributing to them not fulfilling the time requirement for the study. Individuals would be made to fill out a questionnaire containing information on their home life, the way they were raised, what abuses they were subject to (alcohol, physical, etc. either at home or in their peer group), how many of their friends are or have been pregnant, if they come from a single parent household (or other), their gpa in school, after school program participation, after school activities (qualitative), at what age they became sexually active, how many pregnancies have they carried to full term, how many abortions, how many given up for adoption, how many miscarriages, and other relevant questions. Follow up interview questions after the questionnaire would include a focus on home life versus peer influence. Whether or not their parents were teenage parents, how close the teenager feels to their parents, how influential their parents are in their behavior and choices (whether or not the teenager is imitating their parent’s behavior when the parents were teenagers, or the parents are trying to build a better life for their teenager). Chief among the criteria for these interviews will be how old the teen’s parents are, and with this knowledge teens will be broken up in groups according to their parent’s ages (group A will be teens whose parents were teens when they were born, and group B will be adult aged parents when their kids were born—thus age groups for parents will be 13-19 and 20 and up). These interviews will also consist of asking the teenager for their parent’s cooperation. There will be two different groups then; teenagers whose parents participated and those who did not.

Analysis

“Family and social issues as well as psychological and interpersonal characteristics contribute to teen pregnancy” (McWhirter et al., 196). There are also other factors, small factors but nonetheless important factors that also contribute to teen pregnancy such as parenting styles and parenting age. McWhirter states, “Teens born to poor and less educated teenage parents are more likely to bear children during adolescents (194). In this study it showed that teenagers’ progeny were more likely to get pregnant as a teen as opposed to older parents giving birth whose progeny waiting until after their adolescents was over to have a child.

Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy states that, “Children of teen mothers are more likely to be unemployed and to become teenage parents themselves than those born to women who delay childbearing” (10). The study goes on to state other statistics contributing to teen pregnancy but the age of the parent stands out as something very influential in determining teen pregnancy. The study goes on to state that many teen mothers in foster care were more likely to have their children in foster care and repeat the cycle as adolescents in foster care are “at an increased risk of pregnancy compared to their peers” (16). Also, once out of foster care, teenage fathers are 19% more likely to impregnate a teenager. The study goes on to account for children of teenage mothers (defined as being between the ages of 18-19) are “almost 40% more likely to have a reported case of abuse or neglect than children born to mothers ages 20-21” (16)—a fact that propels children being in foster care later in their lives and becoming another statistic in teenage pregnancy.

Most studies point toward a pregnant parent’s offspring making the same life choices that lead to teen pregnancy, “teens mothers whose own early childhood was fraught with poverty, family chaos, and dysfunction, often struggle with emotional psychological issues related to unmet needs for love, affiliation and nurturing” (Farber 209). Thus, the inadequacy that parents feel, and have a driving need to fulfill, in turn creates a home in which that fulfillment is found in sex, alcohol, and relationships with the opposite sex that aren’t emotionally stable. Farber goes on to state that teens whose parents are involved in their lives even after a pregnancy, are less likely to have another child, and with strong home support, also able to focus on school and allow their education to break the cycle of teens having babies, and so forth.

The parent dynamic in teen pregnancy is certainly a driving force; “parent’s sexual values in combination with parent-child communication, have an important effect on adolescents’ intercourse experience” (Gullota and Adams 573). The long term effects of positive communication and expression in the study were found to so greatly influence the 7^th graders in the study that all the way into the 12^th grade, these values and “parental warmth” stuck and the study group had little problems with substance abuse, early intercourse, “depression, impulse control, academic and prosocial [sic] activities and teen’s use of substances and association with sexually active peers” (Gullota and Adams 573). These parents in the study were not given specific ages, however, it may be surmised that due to the level of emotional maturity, and financial support they offered their teens, there were not teenagers themselves when they became pregnant.

Conclusion

Simply stated, parents have an influence on teenager’s behavior and choice, and the age of the parent directly effects the parent’s stability both emotionally and financially. When a teen becomes pregnant, depending on the socio-economic background of their neighborhood, certain elements in their life are the same such as involvement in school, parent’s involvement in their life, and whether or not they were a child of teenage pregnancy. This last element is one of the greatest influences. As studies show a teen parent is more likely to have their offspring become pregnant during adolescents. The studies in this research paper show that there is a direct link between parental age and a teenager’s risk of becoming a pregnant.

Works Cited

Albert, Bill. “Parental Influence and Teen Pregnancy.” Education.com 26 July 2007. Web. 24 April 2014.

Farber, Naomi. “Adolescent Pregnancy: Policy and Prevention Services.” New York City, NY; Springer Publishing Company. 2009.

Gullotta, Thomas and Gerald Adams. “Handbook of Adolescent Behavioral Problems: Evidence-Based Approaches to Prevention and Treatement.” Columbus, Ohio; Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005. Print.

McWhirter, J, Benedict McWhirter, Ellen McWhirter, and Robert McWhirter. “At Risk Youth.” Belmont, CA; Cengage Learning. 2013. Print.

Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy. “Teenage Births: Outcomes for Young Parents, And Their Children.” New York City, NY; Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. 2008. Web.