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Children born to early child bearers are more likely than other children to display problem behaviors or poor academic performance but it is unclear whether early childbearing plays a causal role in these outcomes. Using multiple techniques to control for background factors we analyze 2908 young children and 1736 adolescents and young adults in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults (CNLSY79) data sets to examine whether early childbearing causes childrens outcomes. We find evidence that teen childbearing plays no causal role in childrens test scores and in some behavioral outcomes of adolescents. For other behavioral outcomes we find that different methodologies produce differing results. We thus suggest caution in drawing conclusions about early parenthoods overarching effect. (authors)

In this article we use newly available data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate the effects of early motherhood on academic and behavioral outcomes for children born to early child bearers. We find that early motherhood’s strong negative correlation with children’s test scores and positive correlation with children’s grade repetition is almost entirely explained by prebirth individual and family background factors of teen mothers themselves. However early childbearing is associated indirectly with reduced children’s test scores through its linkage to family size (and thus to child birth order). We find a different pattern in predicting fighting truancy early sexual activity and other problem behaviors among adolescent and young adult offspring. For these behaviors maternal age at first birth remains an important risk factor even after controlling for a wide range of background factors and maternal characteristics. These results highlight the diverse pathways through which teen parenting might influence subsequent child well-being and social performance. (authors)