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Title: Maternal Age at First Birth and Children's Behavior and Cognitive Development
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Morrison, Donna Ruane Moore, Kristin Anderson Meyers, David E. |
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Maternal Age at First Birth and Children's Behavior and Cognitive Development Presented: Bethesda, MA, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Children, Behavioral Development; Fathers, Absence; Fertility; General Assessment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) The aim of this paper is to further illuminate the processes through which an early birth affects child well-being. Since it is not possible to capture the developmental status and well-being of a child with a single indicator, such as an IQ score, most child experts prefer a developmental profile that covers a breadth of dimensions or domains. For this reason, this study examines the effect of the mother's age at first birth on three measures related to the child's cognitive development and academic achievement -- the reading and mathematics sub-scales of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test cognitive, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) -- and one measure of social behavior -- the child's score on the mother-rated Behavior Problems Index (BPI). The study uses a national-level sample of children and limits its analysis to first borns to eliminate the possible confounding influence of birth order. The explicit assumption of the present study is that the consequences of being born to a teenage mother do not derive from the mother's age per se, but are largely the product of the correlates of early child-bearing such as low maternal education and father absence, some of which reflect selectivity into early motherhood and some of which are consequences of the timing of her first birth. |
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Bibliography Citation
Morrison, Donna Ruane, Kristin Anderson Moore and David E. Meyers. "Maternal Age at First Birth and Children's Behavior and Cognitive Development." Presented: Bethesda, MA, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992. |