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Institute for Research on Poverty Conference report. Enormous attention has been paid to adolescent mothers and their children. The United States has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than any other industrialized country. In 1988 alone, there were 488,941 births to women under the age of 20. If there were no adverse effects of adolescent parenting, the high incidence of teenage childbearing in the U.S. would not surface as a policy issue. Because of the high personal and social costs of teen parenting, the antecedents, consequences, and factors associated with adolescent motherhood have been widely researched. In contrast, young fathers are infrequently the focus of researchers. Knowledge of this population contains neither the breath nor depth of knowledge concerning young mothers. Currently, there are only six published studies of young fathers which use nationally representative data. Of the six, one focuses on absent fathers many of whom are in their early to mid twenties. The remaining five use outdated data, are narrowly focused, or use biased subsamples of nationally representative data. Consequently, public policies directed towards this population are made in a virtual vacuum of knowledge. However, few public policies are specifically targeted at teen fathers. To partially fill the void of knowledge concerning teen fathers, this article provides a general overview of this population. The data for the ensuing analyses are derived from two different sources. The description of the teen father population is based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experiences-Youth Cohort (NLSY). NLSY is a balanced panel which includes information on 6,403 males ages 14-21 in 1979. The second source of data is a survey mailed to the directors of Child Support Enforcement (CSE) programs and State Court administrators in eve ry state and the District of Columbia in January, 1993.