A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Conference Themes and Policy Implications

The major themes and policy issues raised during the two-day conference are synthesized below. Most of the central issues were related to at least one of the following objectives:

• preventing teen pregnancies;
• improving educational and training opportunities for pregnant and parenting teens; and
• developing comprehensive, systemic approaches to improve outcomes for teen parents and their families.

Prevention

Conference participants recommended that school-based and school-linked programs incorporate asset-based approaches to strengthen identity and boost self-esteem.

While knowledge about and access to contraceptives are important, the goals of programs must be broad. Speakers observed that teens become pregnant for diverse reasons. "Always there is a high percentage of kids who have babies by accident," said Patricia Canessa of the National Association on Adolescent Parenting, Pregnancy, and Prevention, "[But] adolescent pregnancy many times becomes a solution if they have unfulfilled needs."

Margo Jaenike with the Task Force on Reducing Teenage Pregnancy in Cameron County, Texas explained, "We have expanded our programs to focus on...family violence prevention, substance abuse prevention...on the connections between high-risk behaviors adolescents engage in." The abstinence-based program developed in her area of south Texas could more accurately be portrayed as a "resiliency" program, Jaenike added, where the assets and resources of individuals are developed as part of an effort to solve their problems.

This approach can help teens anchor their lives with goals other than childbearing. Conference participants urged similar efforts with the siblings and of children teen parents. Margy Burns with Youth Health Service noted that her Elkins, West Virginia program attempts to identify children at high risk of becoming pregnant during adolescence and tries to reach the children of teen parents with prevention-oriented initiatives while they are still very young.

The Teen Parent Population

Which teens fail to receive services, and which services aren't they getting? For anyone involved in the implementation of programs, this question raises a fundamental concern. Practitioners—whether social workers, health professionals, educators, or others who run programs—typically handle cases or respond to problems that come to their attention.

While they know that the universe of need is much larger, they have not surveyed the population and assembled inventories of what those needs might be.

Preliminary answers can be found in birth records, Dr. Wendy Wolf, president of the Center for Assessment and Policy Development, explained at the conference. When births to teen mothers are aggregated over several years, with some adjustments for repeat pregnancies and aging, the population in need can be estimated. "A typical mid-size city with about 500 births to girls 18 and under on an annual basis will have about 800 to 900 adolescent parents who are eligible for services," Wolf said. By subtracting the numbers served by alternative schools, currently the principal source of services to teen parents, a rough estimate of the gap can be obtained.

Is outreach to this population hampered because pregnant and parenting teens are "invisible" within schools and local communities? Perhaps, conference participants said, but only because of institutional tendencies to turn a blind eye to their problems. "While they [are] known to the health and child welfare system, they [are] not necessarily known to the schools," said Wolf. The issue, then, is not invisibility but whether anybody is looking.

Early Intervention

Programs to encourage teen parents to become self-supporting should strive to intervene early while students are still attending school, encourage a prompt return to school after childbirth, and use mentors to motivate teen parents to stay in school. Although additional research and experimentation are needed to determine which programs for teen parents and their families are working, the issue of timing is not in doubt.

Programs that reach teens while they are still in school have a greater chance of improving educational and economic outcomes than efforts to rescue teens after they have dropped out. The New Chance demonstration program, which was evaluated by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), targeted comprehensive educational and supportive services on a population of very disadvantaged young mothers. The women, aged 16 to 22, had all of the following characteristics when the demonstration program began: (1) a first child born while they were teenagers, (2) dropped out of school, and (3) lived on welfare.

This program had multiple objectives, including improvements in educational attainment and employment prospects as well as reduced dependency on welfare. Compared to the control group, women receiving services from New Chance were more likely to obtain GEDs (45 percent vs. 33 percent) and earn some college credits. However, after three and a half years, majorities of both groups still lived on welfare and had at least one more child to support.

The final report confirmed that the program had no positive impact on repeat pregnancies: 75 percent of the New Chance participants and 73 percent of the control group had become pregnant again.⁽¹⁵⁾ Birth rates for both groups were also the same, about 55 percent.⁽¹⁶⁾ The high rates of repeat pregnancies paralleled the disappointing findings of other programs aimed at discouraging childbearing. Perhaps the women lacked the motivation to avoid pregnancy, the researchers suggested, or else they faced pressures to have children that the programs could not counter.

On the other hand, a statewide initiative in Ohio provides evidence of the value of early interventions. The Learning, Earning, and Parenting Program (LEAP) uses financial incentives to motivate pregnant and parenting teens who receive welfare to complete high school. LEAP provided bonus payments of $62 each month to participants who attended school regularly and deducted $62 from participants who did not attend regularly. The program began in 1989 and MDRC tracked the progress of participants and a control group for four years.

The most positive finding was a much higher rate of completion of the requirements for a GED among the LEAP participants who were in school when the program began—10 percent among LEAP participants, compared to 4.4 percent for the control group . However, for teens who had already dropped out, LEAP only modestly increased school attendance (1.5 months, compared to one month for controls) and had no effect on either high school graduation or obtaining a GED.⁽¹⁷⁾ "Apparently it is more difficult to work with teens after they have dropped out of school," the MDRC report stated. "Therefore, it is important to develop interventions and policies that prevent teens from dropping out in the first place." ⁽¹⁸⁾

LEAP also had an early positive impact on employment and earnings for the group of teens initially enrolled in school. However, after two years, the control group appeared to catch up with the LEAP participants, leading some to wonder whether a GED is valuable for successful participation in the work force.⁽¹⁹⁾

Ohio used the MDRC evaluation findings to make changes in the LEAP program in 1996, explained Enright of the Ohio Department of Education. With a shift in focus from school attendance or "seat time" to achievement, the program attempts to place students at appropriate educational levels and move some of the older, long-term dropouts to work or training activities.

Another Ohio initiative—the Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills (GRADS) program—works with LEAP to strengthen school-based services to pregnant and parenting teens. The program uses mentoring relationships between students and teachers to emphasize prenatal and neonatal care and child development and parenting. "As long as there is one person who really cares about that teen, is an advocate for [him or her], that teen is more likely to stick with it," Enright said. In 1996, the dropout rate among teen parents in GRADS was about 14 percent, as compared with 60 percent nationwide.⁽²⁰⁾ The GRADS program won recognition as an educationally superior program from the U.S. Department of Education, and 16 other states have programs modeled on GRADS.⁽²¹⁾

Lengthy absences after having a baby weaken teen mothers' ties to school and should be avoided to prevent school dropout, some conference participants warned. While the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) sets an outer limit of 12 weeks after childbirth for teens receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), some states have developed guidelines intended to shorten this interval. "In California," said Ronda Simpson-Brown of the state's Department of Education, "we have some programs [in which] the girls come back in 3 days. They have childcare. [We] do not want them home watching TV. [We] want to keep them linked to school...Whenever the doctor says they can come back to school, whether it is 6 weeks or whether it is 2 weeks," they come back.

Once pregnant and parenting teens quit school, many reasons prevent them from returning. Some do not want to leave their children in other people's care; some find jobs they don't want to give up. Others view their schools as unwelcoming, physically dangerous places, or hold low expectations because they failed at school in the past. However valid or practical some of these considerations may be, dropping out of school puts teen parents and their families at a lasting disadvantage.

A Comprehensive Approach

While conference participants agreed that some current initiatives show promise, many lack key components like health services or high quality child care. "Few programs," said Wolf, "put it all together for a large number of girls." Initiatives to provide comprehensive educational and support services to pregnant and parenting teens require stable and flexible sources of funding.

Schools, community-based organizations, and other providers face substantial barriers. Wolf, in her studies of program implementation, identifies four major challenges:

• providing flexible educational programs with support services that, at the same time, allow students access to the full range of educational options within the school systems;
• providing support services (such as case management, health services, transportation) to teen parents in an efficient and effective manner;
• providing an adequate supply of quality child care and child development programming at or near schools, while linking all children, regardless of arrangement (centers, family day care, or relative care) to a broad range of preventive services; and
• obtaining sufficient, stable funds and blending funds from different sources to support program services for a broad range of teen parents and their children.⁽²²⁾

Silver Springs High School in Grass Valley, California, a small high school that receives funding from California's education programs for pregnant and parenting teens, is successfully facing the challenges with a network of 40 agencies that established this alternative school for 150 students. "We got to education last," said Marilyn Keeble. "We could not even get to [our students'] educational needs because they had all these other needs."

To assemble its network, the Silver Springs staff applied for grants to bring services, including infant and toddler care, health care, and mental health counseling, to the site. To fund the mental health component, Silver Springs tapped into multiple sources, because if a particular funding stream dried up, the school quickly had to identify a substitute source to make up the difference. When it needed a bus to transport teens to school, Silver Springs obtained funding through a federal grant for job training.

A local hospital and other private groups contributed to the Silver Springs effort. The school even established a foundation to provide scholarships to its graduates who could not otherwise afford college or post-secondary training. A graphic depiction of this network, showing funding sources for each major category of services, is included in appendix B.

The scramble for funding may not have daunted the enterprising administrators at this school, but the magnitude and complexity of the process could easily doom attempts to replicate such networks. One conference participant summed up the funding situation this way: "not enough of it, too categorical, and very hard to leverage."

Besides the difficulties involved in blending sources of funding, program administrators have to cope with other rigid or conflicting regulations that make it hard to meet the multiple needs of pregnant and parenting teens. "A school's funding is tied to the number of students and the amount of time [they] spend on campus, rather than what they're learning or what they need," said Burns. If a school needs a counselor but "doesn't have enough students, it won't get one."

Joan Davis of the Living for the Young Family through Education (LYFE) program in New York City cited another example of administrative inflexibility. One of the 41 child care centers operated by the city is housed in a building with special education programs. When the center's staff tried to arrange for teen mothers to bring their babies to the facility on the special education buses (after offering to equip them with car seats), the answer was no. "Babies are not allowed to be on buses with special education students," Davis reported that she was told. "Everywhere you go, you run into a roadblock."

Three Generations

Conference participants urged policymakers to seek multi-generation solutions, since the typical teen parent family encompasses three generations. The PRWORA clearly envisions this configuration, requiring minor parents who receive TANF to live with their own parents in most circumstances. Conference participants stressed the importance of viewing teen parent issues from the perspective of whole families to meet the needs of children, teen parents, other siblings, and grandparents simultaneously.

The PRWORA also requires teen parents who receive TANF to attend school unless they have already graduated from high school or obtained a high school equivalency degree. While completing high school is clearly an appropriate course for a teenage mother that improves prospects for her children, someone must care for her baby during school hours. Since infant care is often scarce and expensive, the mother may have trouble making reliable arrangements.

Often, teen mothers turn to their relatives for help. But members of the grandparent generation may be working and struggling to provide for other siblings of the teen parent, and quitting work to care for a grandchild may not be the best alternative. The income loss could have devastating consequences for the family, and one study found that many relatives who provided child care did not use good or safe practices. The researchers attributed this lower quality of care to a lack of "intentionality:" The relatives cared for children because of the pressures of family circumstances, rather than because they freely chose child care as their vocation.⁽²³⁾

If a child is disabled, a low-income family may try to cover required services through Medicaid or the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.⁽²⁴⁾ But if the child's special needs cannot be met through these sources, the family may see welfare as the only option. The possibility that working families confronting such choices could face dependence on welfare is not hypothetical. An example of the harsh intergenerational trade-offs encountered by a Washington, DC family is provided in appendix C.⁽²⁵⁾

"Obviously, there are complex challenges," said Nancye Campbell with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, adding that often the children of teen parents "are the ones who have been found to pay the biggest burden." Teen mothers may eventually "catch up" economically, she explains, but "their children still have significant deficits. How we combine our service delivery and focus on the mom's needs [and] the baby's needs is critical to improving outcomes for all."

"We try to include as many extended family members as we can in our prevention activities," said Jaenike whose program primarily serves Mexican-American teens. From a cultural as well as policy perspective, she added, "to include the parents...the kid, and the grandparents and extended family members...makes sense."

Fathers

"Where have all the fathers gone?" For many teenage mothers struggling to raise their children alone, this folksong lament too often applies. But the pattern can be changed, conference speakers agreed. Conference participants urged schools and communities to strengthen the involvement of fathers in the care and support of their children.

Most often, according to state and national data, the fathers of children born to adolescent mothers are adult men. The younger the mothers are, the larger this gap in ages is likely to be.⁽²⁶⁾ Fathers in their late teens or twenties are usually out of school. Some strive to support their children. But if problems with housing, employment, substance abuse, or the criminal justice system dominate their lives, the fathers tend to neglect their parenting responsibilities.

The Paquin School in Baltimore, an alternative public school offering comprehensive educational, health, and supportive services to pregnant and parenting teens, sponsors a Young Fathers Program. In collaboration with the Baltimore City Department of Social Services and the Baltimore Urban League, the Paquin program reaches an average of 200 to 250 men every 6 months. "Most of these young men come voluntarily to learn things to help them become effective fathers," said Sheridan Stanley, coordinator of the Paquin program. "At least 50 percent were referrals by other young men in the program...They would go back into their neighborhoods...They would say come and take a look at this. You better check this out."

The program links the young men with critical services and supports, seeking to remove a variety of impediments to active fatherhood. It provides classes during mornings and evenings, including preparation for the GED test. "We have young men who are homeless," Stanley said. "We address that need. If we have [cases of] substance abuse, we take them for that service. If they have a court date...we not only take them to court, we advocate for them."

Conference participants also encouraged states to develop guidelines on statutory rape to distinguish cases involving predatory rape and other circumstances as an alternative to mandatory reporting of every known case. Because of the age difference between teen mothers and the fathers, many of the fathers face the risk of prosecution for statutory rape. As states attempt to crack down on this crime, conference participants observed, the threat of prosecution is likely to increase, with potentially harmful consequences for many teen parent families.

Simpson-Brown explained that in California, as of January 1, 1998, statutory rape cases must be reported as child abuse. The requirement gives no discretion to educators, health professionals, caseworkers, and others with knowledge of a pertinent age differential between teenage girls and their partners. Enforcement in many cases, however, does nothing to protect young girls, speakers noted. And reporting requirements like California's could undermine efforts to strengthen the involvement of fathers in teen parent families. "We are trying to bring people together," said Simpson-Brown, "but this [mandated reporting] has a counterproductive result."

Parenting

Conference participants urged schools to offer classes in parenting education, accompanied by home visits, to provide teen parents with up-to-date information about health, nutrition, and the developmental needs of their children.

Parents learn how to parent by experience and example, and teen parents are often disadvantaged in both respects. Many have not grown up in stable, two-parent families. Programs working with teen fathers report that large proportions of these young men had little or no contact with their own fathers during childhood. Program directors also observe that many teen parents come from backgrounds of abuse or households where discipline is harsh. For some teens, pregnancy is viewed, however unrealistically, as a means of escaping domestic violence or other problems. To become responsive parents themselves, these teens will require more than basic, custodial training in how to care for babies.

Margy Burns of Elkins, West Virginia described the teen fathers served by the Youth Health Service in this rural area. "Their expectations about children were significantly different [from] older populations," she said, noting that only one father in four had appropriate expectations about parenting. Because these fathers lacked an understanding of developmentally appropriate behavior, they reacted by demanding too much of young children and tended to rely on corporal punishment to discipline them. The West Virginia program involved these fathers in counseling and a variety of group activities to strengthen their ties to their families and impart nurturing attitudes.

Parenting skills can be learned. Instruction should encompass nutrition, health, and child development, including the need to provide infants and toddlers with a nurturing and stimulating environment. Classes may also focus on budgeting, life-skills, and on improving the parents' self-esteem. Some alternative schools integrate parenting education and child development classes into their regular curricula. Child development, for example, might help fulfill a high school science requirement.

Home visits by trained professionals should complement whatever parenting education is provided in a classroom setting, conference participants advised. For teens who cannot drive or who otherwise lack access to transportation, home visits are the only way to assure that services reach them.

The Parents as Teachers program, established by the Missouri Department of Education, now operates in every school district within the state. The program sends nurses, social workers, and educators to the homes of new parents on a monthly basis: teen parents are usually contacted more frequently. During home visits, the professionals provide health screenings of babies as well as practical guidance to parents about the physical, cognitive, and emotional needs of children from birth to age five. Parents as Teachers has active programs in 48 states, though operations are not as widespread as in Missouri.

Programs should emphasize the value of nurturing and stimulating environments for children beginning in infancy. During the last fifteen years, neuroscience research has radically altered views about cognitive and emotional development in infants and children. Scientists no longer assume that brain development is largely ordained by genetics; instead, together with heredity, environmental conditions, including experiences early in infancy, substantially influence brain growth and the circuitry that determines adult capacity.

Synapses are the connections that transmit signals along pathways within the brain. According to a 1997 report on the conclusions of significant scientific research in this field:

It is during the first three years of life that the vast majority of synapses are produced. The number of synapses increases with astonishing rapidity until about age three and then holds steady throughout the first decade of life...Those synapses that have been activated many times by virtue of repeated early experience tend to become permanent; the synapses that are not used often enough tend to be eliminated. In this way early experiences—positive or negative—have a decisive impact on how the brain is wired.⁽²⁷⁾

The research indicates that early attachments and experiences play a critical role in brain development, and this knowledge has heightened concerns about the care infants and young children receive. Fostering strong, nurturing relationships between infants and their parents and other caregivers is critical to healthy intellectual and emotional development. Conversely, unhealthy and traumatic environments for young children impair their development. If they are not countered, these negative influences can leave lasting damage. Impoverished families and others who suffer from severe stress, depression, and substance abuse are often the ones most at risk. "The brain itself can be altered—or helped to compensate for problems—with timely, intensive intervention," the report further states. "The brain's ability to change and to recover lost functions is especially remarkable in the first decade of life."⁽²⁸⁾

Teen parents need parenting education and child development classes in providing nurturing and stimulating environments for their children and respond to their children's needs. However, the crucial period from infancy to age three coincides with the period in which many teen parents will be trying to complete high school. There is unlikely to be a parent at home caring for the child full-time. Substantial increases in child care resources will be required to assure that families have access to high quality care and stimulating environments for their children during these critical early years. The progress of the children will also need to be followed more attentively. Some states, including New York and California, plan to issue student identification numbers to children in school-based programs of early care, so that the results will be easier to track.

⁽²⁸⁾ Ibid., p. 37.

[The Research Base]

[Conference Themes and Policy Implications (part 2 of 2)]