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Preface No human experience is at once so transiently private and lastingly public as an unintended pregnancy. When the mother herself is a young adolescent, only partially educated and almost wholly econorri~cally de- pendent, the pregnancy is inevitably enmeshed in a ragged tapestry of personal, interpersonal, social, religious, ethical, and economic dimen- sions. The peculiarly human gap between reproductive maturation and social self-suffiaencv sets the stage for the problem. Many factors beyond the controleven the ken of the young people involved complicate the scene. At every point, external expectations batter on newly emerging Unves, challenging young adolescents to balance immediate satisfaction and long-range consequences radically disproportionate from anything they have previously had to deal with. It is little wonder that in this very complicated arena research has been difficult and social consensus elusive. Our pane} was convened to collect, remew, and evaluate the data on trends in adolescent pregnancy and childbearing and on the antecedents and consequences of this phenomenon and to initiate proposals for the evolution of potentially helpful programs. We had the generous support of five foundations: the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, all of which have demonstrated a long-seanding interest in issues associated with adolescent pregnancy and childbearing. Many have made substantial investments in a growing body of relevant research and a lengthening list of targeted programs. Their interest in this study- and indeed, as a panel of scholars and experts, our interest in undertaking it is a concern about the prob- x: .
x~i PREFACE lems of early unintended pregnancy and parenting in our society and what is known about how to effectively address them. Our sponsors were models of what scholars hope forgenerous, supportive, and never intru- sive. The project officers were consistently helpful, but at no time was any of our work constrained by the foundations nor beholden to them. The staff of the National Research Council was consistently supportive, and our study director, Cheryl Hayes, who also serves as executive officer of the parent Committee on Child Development Research and Public Policy, was at once a colleague, a paragon, and the principal drafter of the report. Few people can approach the problem of teenage pregnancy d~spassion- ately. Becoming sexualiv active, using contraception, considering abor- tion or adoptionevery step is invested with a panoply of moral and religious questions, and these decisions are often undertaken alone by a frightened and immature young woman who would be considered a child in nearly any other context. A consciousness of this poignance pervades our report, and deliberately so. The panel believes that at each step how ever much one mav wish for a different outcome of a prior decision the potentially or actually pregnant teenager should be treated kindly and warmly and should have a complete see of options available without the interposition of moral hounding or economic Earners. Ir; -~;-neral, we believe preventive strategies should be given more public and private support than is now available. An international comparison StU`dy by the Alan Gut~macher Institute, of which the pane} was benefi- ciary, pro~ridec! valuable insight into the role of preventive services in countries of comparable levels of teenage sexual activity. Many social circumstances are closely related tO the problem of teenage pregnancy and childbearing. Youth unemployment, popery, poor educa- tion, single-parent families, television content all these and more are accompaniments and very likely determinants of the high rates of adoles- cent pregnancy in the United States. The hope for a solution tO the problem of teenage pregnancy is illusory without simultaneous ameliora- tion of some of these contributing factors. Pending such co-prehensive change, the pane! urges prevention rather than denial, kindness rather than exhortation, and research rather than doctrine. DANIEL D. FEDERMAN9 Chair Panel on Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing .