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Title: Are Children of Young Mothers Disadvantaged Because of Their Mother's Age or Because of Her Family Background?
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Turley Lopez, Ruth N. |
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Are Children of Young Mothers Disadvantaged Because of Their Mother's Age or Because of Her Family Background? Working Paper, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, October 2000 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: Department of Sociology, Harvard University Keyword(s): Age at Birth; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Family Background and Culture; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. While some studies have attributed the cognitive disadvantage of children born to young mothers to maternal competency and maturity level, this study suggests that maternal age per se is not an important predictor of children's outcomes because maternal age at subsequent births does not affect subsequent children. A controversial study by Geronimus et al. (1994) found that their disadvantage is not explained by mother's age but by her family background (as captured by the comparison of children born to sisters). This study extends their cross-sectional analyses and finds that maternal family background also explains the children's rates of cognitive improvement over time. Thus, family background is a more important preditor of children's outcomes than maternal age at birth. |
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Bibliography Citation
Turley Lopez, Ruth N. "Are Children of Young Mothers Disadvantaged Because of Their Mother's Age or Because of Her Family Background?" Working Paper, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, October 2000. |