TEEN MOTHERS INTO ADULTHOOD AND THE NEXT GENERATION

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DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) The proposed continuation study will follow a cohort of high-risk adolescent mothers into adulthood, and will also follow their children to age 11, to chart the changes and sequencing of adolescent mothers' drug involvement from adolescence to early adulthood, and to improve our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of risk to their children. Research on pregnant and parenting teenagers has focused primarily on maternal education and economic outcomes, and little is known about the behavior and quality of life for young mothers as they reach adulthood, including their vulnerability to drug use. Moreover, adolescent parenting and drug use may pose a risk for the development of the children of adolescent mothers. The nature of these risks and the mechanisms through which the intergenerational transmission of risk occurs have also not been well elucidated. Most studies have focused on adolescent mothers and their infants in the early years following the birth. The proposed study offers a unique opportunity to follow a largely intact cohort of young women and their children from teenage pregnancy to early adulthood. Our extant data come from 11 interviews with the mothers from pregnancy through 6 years post-partum; a videotaped mother-child interaction, obtained when the children were 6 years old; and a behavior checklist completed by the children's kindergarten teachers. In this continuation, we will conduct three annual mother interviews; three teacher assessments of child behavior and school progress; a child interview, when the child is 11 years old; and a taped mother-child interaction, when the child is 11 years old. To date, we have retained 98% of our original sample of 241 young mothers and we expect to have comparable success in the proposed continuation study. The proposed study is designed to ( 1) describe the changes and sequencing of drug involvement, and explore correlates of these changes, in an existing sample of young mothers who gave birth as teenagers, (2) test the original and an expanded theory of reasoned action's ability to predict adult drug use among these young mothers, and (3) test a model of intergenerational transmission of risk for child antisocial behaviors, including drug use intentions.