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Research has shown that parents with higher socioeconomic status provide more resources to their children during childhood and adolescence. The authors asked whether similar effects associated with parental socioeconomic position are extended to adult children. Middle-aged parents ( N = 633) from the Family Exchanges Study reported support they provided to their grown children and coresidence with grown children ( N = 1,384). Parents with higher income provided more emotional and material support to the average children. Grown children of parents with less education were more likely to coreside with them. Parental resources (e.g., being married) and demands (e.g., family size) explained these patterns. Of interest is that lower income parents provided more total support to all children (except total financial support). Lower income families may experience a double jeopardy; each grown child receives less support on average, but parents exert greater efforts providing more total support to all their children.

Frank Furstenberg examines how the newly extended timetable for entering adulthood is affecting, and being affected by, the institution of the Western, particularly the American, family. He reviews a growing body of research on the family life of young adults and their parents and draws out important policy implications of the new schedule for the passage to adulthood. Today, says Furstenberg, home-leaving, marriage, and the onset of childbearing take place much later in the life span than they did during the period after World War II. After the disappearance of America's well-paying unskilled and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs during the 1960s, youth from all economic strata began remaining in school longer and marrying and starting their own families later. Increasing numbers of lower-income women did not marry at all but chose, instead, non-marital parenthood-often turning to their natal families for economic and social support, rather than to their partners. As the period of young adults' dependence on their families grew longer, the financial and emotional burden of parenthood grew heavier. Today, regardless of their income level, U.S. parents provide roughly the same proportion of their earnings to support their young adult children. Unlike many nations in Europe, the United States, with its relatively underdeveloped welfare system, does not invest heavily in education, health care, and job benefits for young adults. It relies, instead, on families' investments in their own adult children. But as the transition to adulthood becomes more protracted, the increasing family burden may prove costly to society as a whole. Young adults themselves may begin to regard childbearing as more onerous and less rewarding. The need to provide greater support for children for longer periods may discourage couples from having additional children or having children at all. Such decisions could lead to lower total fertility, ultimately reduce the workforce, and furthdr aggravate the problem of providing both for increasing numbers of the elderly and for the young. U.S. policy makers must realize the importance of reinforcing the family nest and helping reduce the large and competing demands that are being placed on today's parents.

As the transition to adulthood becomes more protracted and less orderly, fewer young people occupy adult roles and experience the social control associated with these roles. One might therefore expect behaviors associated with the teenage years to spill over into older age groups, reflecting postponed entrance into full social adulthood. We test this hypothesis by examining trends over time in the age distribution of crime, substance use, and violent death. We find little evidence that behaviors typical of adolescence are moving upward to older ages. Although the achievement of adult roles is being pushed to older ages, this stretching of the transition to adulthood is not reflected in the observed patterns of substance use, violent death, and arrests.

Using the 2002 (Cycle 6) National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), which was the first NSFG to interview men, we document the prevalence and correlates of sequential parenthood with different partners (multipartnered fertility) among a representative sample of American men. Nearly 8% of American men aged 15-44 report having had children with more than one partner, with sharp differences by age, race/ethnicity, and income-over one-third of poor black men aged 35-44 report having had children with two or more mothers, and 16% report children with three or more mothers. Fathers of two or more children by multiple partners appear to be more disadvantaged than fathers with two or more children by the same partner. Multipartnered fertility is strongly related to prior birth characteristics; men not in a coresidential union at the preceding birth are more likely to have their next birth with a new partner and controlling for prior-birth characteristics accounts for the elevated risk of Hispanics and blacks in baseline models. Results also suggest that multipartnered fertility is becoming more prevalent as younger cohorts transition to a new-partner birth more quickly and at a higher rate than older cohorts.

Context: Although early nonmarital fertility has been well studied, less attention has been paid to the subsequent fertility of young unwed mothers. In particular, the frequency with which these young women have subsequent births with a new partner (multipartnered fertility) and the risk factors associated with doing so are unknown., Methods: The proportion of young women who had a first birth and the proportion who subsequently had a child with a new partner were determined among a sample of participants in Waves 1 (1995) and 3 (2001-2002) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Multivariate analyses identified characteristics associated with multipartnered fertility., Results: By Wave 3, when these young women were 19-25 years old, 29% had had a first birth, and 3% had had births with multiple partners. Among women with a nonmarital first birth, 14% subsequently had a birth with another partner, and 41% with two or more children had had multiple partners. The prevalence of multipartnered fertility differed sharply by race and ethnicity. Most new-partner births occurred outside of marriage, especially among black women. Respondents who had no contact with their partner after informing him of their first pregnancy or who had not wanted to have a child with him had an increased likelihood of multipartnered fertility., Conclusions: The context in which first births occur sets the stage for subsequent childbearing. Programs that help women avoid having births in unfavorable circumstances, such as in early and unstable relationships, may reduce the prevalence of multipartnered fertility.

Following a critique of the 1990 decennial census procedures, we conducted a field study among low-income, inner-city residents in 1991 to examine how they conceptualized and managed the civic task of census response. Interpretations about the purpose and meaning of the census, about commitment to the task, and about connection to government, singly and together with literacy skills (e.g., reading and general literacy competence), were associated with errors that are not detectable by evaluative methodologies used regularly by the Census Bureau. The validity and reliability of census data, and possibly other self-administered survey research, will be increased by greater use of knowledge about both interpretation and literacy skills in formulating data collection procedures.

This article reflects on the process that leads to perceptions of teenage childbearing as a social problem and examines whether that process will occur in developing countries as it has in the United States. In postindustrial Western economies, family and adult control over young peoples' sexual behavior has loosened, while marriage rates have declined. In the United States, nonmarital births to adolescents, particularly among poor minorities who have few opportunities and reasons to delay childbearing, have become a cause for public concern. However, the economic, educational, and nuptial changes that have occurred in other postindustrial countries have not necessarily led to fertility problems among teenagers, because of a greater willingness to acknowledge their sexual activity and to provide the resources to prevent their childbearing. Although developing nations may undergo changes that result in more schooling and greater autonomy for adolescents, whether nonmarital births will come to constitute a problem will depend on many different factors; the United States provides an example of the conditions they may wish to avoid.

We measure the quality and quantity of fathers' involvement with adolescent children in intact families over time using longitudinal data from The National Survey of Children. We examine differentials in fathers' involvement by children's and family characteristics and model the long-term effects of fathers' involvement on children's outcomes in the transition to adulthood. Fathers are more involved with sons than with daughters and they disengage from adolescents with increasing marital conflict. We find beneficial effects for children of father's involvement in three domains: educational and economic attainment, delinquent behavior, and psychological well-being. The course of affective relations throughout adolescence also has a beneficial effect on delinquent behavior and psychological well-being.

In 1992, nine Philadelphia high schools opened drop-in centers where students could receive reproductive health information, condoms and general health referrals. Analyses of survey data collected in 1991 and 1993 suggest that the presence of the condom availability program did not increase the level of sexual activity among students in these schools and may have contributed to safer sex practices. The proportion of students who had used a condom at last intercourse increased from 52% to 58%; although the change was not statistically significant, it exceeded the increase in a group of comparison schools. Changes in the proportions of students who had ever had intercourse, who had had sex in the previous four weeks, who had used a condom at last intercourse and who had recently had unprotected sex were greatest in schools with higher levels of program usage; however, only the decline in recent unprotected intercourse among students in high-use schools (from 14% to 6%) approached statistical significance.

This paper draws on new data on intergenerational transfers of time and money that were collected in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We use these data to examine the effects of divorce on these transfers. We find that the timing of divorce is critical. Fathers and mothers involved in late divorces have similar levels of transfers with their adult children, while divorce during a child's childhood years increases transfers with mothers and sharply lowers them with fathers. Somewhat surprisingly, we find no evidence that divorced fathers who paid child support are more likely to be involved in intergenerational transfers than those who did not pay child support.

In an assessment conducted 30 months after a Philadelphia-area project increased the resources that community family planning agencies devoted to teenage services, teenagers in targeted communities showed no generalized improvement in rates of pregnancy and childbearing, in knowledge or use of clinic services, or in attitudes toward contraception compared with those of teenagers in the entire city. Samples of adolescents aged 14-18 from the clinics' catchment areas and from the entire city were interviewed in mid-1988, when the project's activities began, and 2.5 years later. The results suggest that while community family planning clinics may provide effective services to the teenagers who seek them out, they may not be the most effective strategy for decreasing rates of pregnancy and childbearing in the overall teenage population.

This article explores the remarkable shift in marriage and divorce practices that has occurred in the last third of this century in the United States. Initially, information is presented on trends in divorce and remarriage; commonalities and differences between family patterns in the United States and in other industrialized nations are discussed. The author then identifies some of the factors that have transformed marriage practices in the United States and describes how changes in these practices have altered the family experiences of children. Finally, the author suggests trends in family patterns that might occur in the near future and discusses various policy initiatives and how they may influence the future of the family.

Teenage childbearing in the United States has long been regarded as an important social problem with substantial costs to teen mothers and their children. Recently, however, several researchers have argued that the apparent negative effects of teenage childbearing primarily reflect unmeasured family background rather than the true consequences of a teen birth. To distinguish the effect of teen childbearing from that of family background, we use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and compare teen mothers with their sisters. We find that accounting for unobserved family background reduces, but does not eliminate, the estimated consequences of early childbearing. Statistically significant and quantitatively important effects of teen parenthood remain for high school graduation, family size, and economic well-being.

National, longitudinal surveys from Great Britain and the United States were used to investigate the effects of divorce on children. In both studies, a subsample of children who were in two-parent families during the initial interview (at age 7 in the British data and at ages 7 to 11 in the U.S. data) were followed through the next interview (at age 11 and ages 11 to 16, respectively). At both time points in the British data, parents and teachers independently rated the children's behavior problems, and the children were given reading and mathematics achievement tests. At both time points in the U.S. data, parents rated the children's behavior problems. Children whose parents divorced or separated between the two time points were compared to children whose families remained intact. For boys, the apparent effect of separation or divorce on behavior problems and achievement at the later time point was sharply reduced by considering behavior problems, achievement levels, and family difficulties that were present at the earlier time point, before any of the families had broken up. For girls, the reduction in the apparent effect of divorce occurred to a lesser but still noticeable extent once preexisting conditions were considered.

Using data from the National Survey of Children, this paper examines the hypothesis that the amount of time children spend viewing television and the extent to which the content viewed is sexual in nature is related to the initiation of sexual activity. Several theories that would lead to this hypothesis are reviewed. The data do not provide any strong or consistent evidence for such links. However, some aspects of the context in which television is viewed are related to sexual activity. The authors suggest ways in which the design and measures could be strengthened to provide a more rigorous test of the hypothesis.

Twenty years after a mostly black group of Baltimore women became adolescent mothers, the majority of their first-born children had not become adolescent parents, a finding that challenges the popular belief that the offspring of teenage mothers are themselves destined to become adolescent parents. Almost all of the offspring had had intercourse by age 19. About half of the young women had experienced a pregnancy before that age, and approximately one-third of the young men reported having impregnated a partner before age 19. The Baltimore youths were just as likely to have had a live birth before age 19 as were the children of teenage mothers in a national sample of urban blacks, and both of these groups were more likely to have done so than were the children of older mothers in the national sample. In the Baltimore sample, maternal welfare experience only increased a daughter's likelihood of early childbearing if welfare was received during her teenage years. Within the Baltimore sample, a direct comparison of the daughters who became adolescent mothers with their own mothers at a comparable age reveals that the daughters have bleaker educational and financial prospects than their mothers had, and are less likely to ever have married. These results suggest that today's teenage parents may be less likely than were previous cohorts of adolescent mothers to overcome the handicaps of early childbearing. This trend could portend the growth of an urban underclass, even though only a minority of the offspring of teenage mothers go on to become adolescent parents.

The existing discrepancies between adolescent and societal constructions of teenage sexuality in America are further exacerbated by AIDS. Male and female teenagers receive different and often conflicting messages about sexuality from diverse sources; their parents' lack of frankness about sexual intercourse contrasts sharply with the media's emphasis on sex and with highly rationalistic discussions about sexuality in schools, complicating adolescents' decisions about entering and continuing sexual relationships. Survey research indicates that not all teenagers engaging in sexual intercourse reduce risks of HIV infection as much as they might. While AIDS has prompted many teenagers to change their sexual behavior, serious questions remain about adolescents' conceptions of the dangers of unprotected sex.

Improving communication about sex and birth control between parents and their children has often been cited as a means to encourage young people to use contraceptives more effectively. In an attempt to test this hypothesis, we interviewed 290 adolescents at family planning clinics in southeastern Pennsylvania three times in the course of 15 months about their communication with their families and their use of contraceptives. At the time of their first clinic visit, two-fifths of the teenagers said that their mothers knew that they had gone to the clinic; this proportion rose to almost three-fifths six months later and to about three-quarters at the end of 15 months. However, the proportion of teenagers who said that they had discussed sex or birth control with their mothers remained almost the same; the proportion who said that they would never discuss such topics with their mothers also remained fairly constant. The teenagers whose mothers knew of their clinic attendance at the time of their first visit were no more likely to have had extensive conversations with their mothers about sex or contraception than were the teenagers whose mothers found out afterwards. Among a subsample of the mothers of these young women, fewer than one-third said that they had ever discussed their daughters' sexual activity with them. There was only a modest level of correspondence between the mothers' responses and their daughters' replies; for the most part, the mothers thought that they were much more communicative about sex and birth control than their daughters perceived them to be.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

To what extent do siblings in the same family experience different parental treatment, sibling interaction, and peer relationships? Are such within-family experiential differences related to differences in the siblings' emotional adjustment? The present study explored these questions concerning within-family environment using data from 348 families that each included 2 siblings 11-17 years of age. The results indicate that siblings in the same family experience different environments, as reported by parents and to a larger extent by the siblings themselves. The results also demonstrate that within-family environmental differences are related to differences in development between siblings. Both the parent and sibling reports of the environment converge on the finding that the sibling who is more psychologically well adjusted (as reported by parents, siblings, and teachers) also experiences more maternal closeness, more sibling friendliness, more peer friendliness, more say in family decision making, and more parental chore expectations as compared to the other sibling.

An attempt to find a reliable way to measure contraceptive continuation among teenagers was made in a study of 445 adolescents under age 18 who made an initial visit to one of nine federally funded family planning clinics in the Philadelphia area in 1980 and 1981. The participants were interviewed at their initial visit and at six and 15 months to collect information on background characteristics, pregnancy history and contraceptive use. A cross-check of the information on contraceptive use reported during the study showed that 38 percent of the respondents who reported that they had been continuous users during the 15 months supplied information at other points indicating that they had not always used contraceptives during that period. In an attempt to examine the effects of adolescent reporting errors on measures of contraceptive use, the investigators constructed three alternative measures of contraceptive continuation. The simplest measure assessed current use at 15 months. A second measure accepted only reports of continuous use at 15 months and ignored inconsistent data. The third measure corrected for inconsistent data. Applying these measures to the study population produced proportions of contraceptive continuation ranging from a low of 43 percent when the most stringent measure was used to a high of 82 percent for the current-use category. Whatever the measure used, much of the discontinuation appears to have occurred in the first three months after the initial visit to a family planning clinic.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

This article has examined the origin and consequences of racial differences in teen sexuality, pregnancy, and childbearing. Black/white differences in rates of early and out-of-wedlock childbearing have been declining in the past several decades though the incidence of nonmartial fertility among younger teens is still about five times as high for blacks as for whites. Early sexual behavior, irregular use of contraception, and a much lower probability of marrying prior to having a birth all contribute to the racial differential. Evidence suggests that both normative and socioeconomic differences may account for these demographic patterns. Black teens show markedly higher tolerance for childbearing before marriage. They also express much greater reservations about the viability of marriage, especially at an early age, than do whites. These views may affect their willingness to risk early pregnancy and initiate intercourse at an early age. Several types of interventions that might reduce black/white differences in teen childbearing were reviewed. The most promising of these involved simultaneously strengthening the community sanctions that discourage early parenthood while expanding social opportunities. Presently, poor, especially poor minority youth, may feel that they have little to lose by entering parenthood prematurely. Unless we are able to persuade these youth that they have a larger stake in the future, we are unlikely to see a dramatic decline in the incidence of early childbearing among blacks. This does not necessarily mean that racial differences are destined to persist. Increasingly, white youth are subject to many of the same conditions that have produced high rates of early and out-of-wedlock childbearing among blacks. Thus, racial differences may decline not because the situation of blacks is improving but because white youth are less willing to defer sexual activity or less able to marry when pregnancy occurs. This may at least change the perception of early childbearing as a "black" problem. Whatever else it is, teenage childbearing represents the inability of our society to manage the transition to adulthood effectively. This ineptitude appears to be, to a growing extent, colorblind.

This paper examines the association between sex education and adolescent sexual behavior. Data from the 1981 National Survey of Children show that 15- and 16-year-olds who have been exposed to sex education are less likely to be sexually experienced, and are neither more nor less likely to discuss sex with parents at home. Retrospective or longitudinal data are needed to more directly test the casual link between sex education and experience.

The adolescent mothers consistently experienced great difficulty in realizing their life plans, when compared with their classmates who did not become pregnant premaritally in their early teens. Marital instability, school disruption, economic problems, and difficulty in family size regulation and child-rearing were some of the complications brought on by their premature, unscheduled childbearing.

A program to provide teenage family planning clinic patients with special services designed to improve their ability to practice contraception effectively and avoid conception produced neither of these expected effects. Two types of special services were tested in nine clinics: one, to promote greater involvement of the teenager's family through special counseling sessions (family support); and the other, to provide more frequent contact between the teenager and clinic staff through telephone calls (periodic support). The services were provided in the six weeks following the first clinic visit. Only 36 percent of the girls who agreed to be in the family support group attended any counseling sessions, and only five percent of them came with a parent. Participation was greater in the periodic support group--84 percent of teenagers in the group received the follow-up phone calls. During the 15 months following the initial clinic visit, there were no significant differences in regularity of contraceptive use and pregnancy rates between the teenagers who received the special support services and those who received only the regular clinic services. About 40 percent of the special-service groups reported always using a contraceptive method during the study period, compared with 48 percent of controls; and about 40 percent of the former said they had rarely or never used a method, compared with 27 percent of the latter. The cumulative 15-month pregnancy rate was about 13 percent in both the special-service and the control groups.

The popular belief that early childbearing almost certainly leads to school dropout, subsequent unwanted births and economic dependence is greatly oversimplified, if not seriously distorted: A longitudinal study of over 300 primarily urban black women who gave birth as adolescents in the middle to late 1960s shows that a substantial majority completed high school, found regular employment and, even if they had at some point been on welfare, eventually managed to escape dependence on public assistance. Relatively few ended up with large families; most had fewer births than they had wanted or expected at the time they first became pregnant. The study also found that the pathways to success were surprisingly diverse. Although young women who gave birth at an early age were disadvantaged when compared with their peers who bore children later, huge variability existed. Teenage childbearing lowered the women's likelihood of economic success and increased their likelihood of having a large family. However, the women who had more economically secure and better-educated parents were more likely to succeed--perhaps as a result of receiving a greater amount of direct aid and having other family resources available. In addition, differences in educational motivation and performance were especially important factors. Young mothers who had been doing well in school and who had had high educational aspirations at the time of their first birth were much more likely than others to be successful later. Additional births at young ages also constrained the mothers' ability to attend school and accrue job experience. Women who had more children in the five years after their first birth did less well in school, had lower aspirations and came from more disadvantaged families than did women who curtailed their fertility. However, even when such factors were controlled for, subsequent fertility lowered the chances of economic success in later life. Changes in the mothers' life courses affected some aspect of their children's behavior at all ages, but there was no simple or recurring pattern of influence. For example, a mother's welfare receipt was associated with behavior problems in her child during the preschool years, but not later on. In contrast, the mother's marital status was not related to behavior problems during the preschool period but was clearly related to such problems during the child's adolescence.

Clinic records were reviewed for a sample of 498 adolescent family planning clients to document clinic use patterns. For a subsample of 359 adolescents, relationships are explored between clinic use and contraceptive use, demographic characteristics, social relationships, and contraceptive attitudes. The average adolescent was observed for 15 months and made 3.5 visits to the clinic. Twenty-two per cent of the adolescents never returned after an initial visit. Revisits tended to occur in three-month intervals. In the first six months, the probability of making the first revisit was .70; the probability of a second revisit was .45. Adolescents whose visit patterns deviated from the routine clinic protocols were more likely to be inconsistent contraceptive users. The single significant correlate of regular clinic use was the adolescents' satisfaction with their contraceptive methods. Service providers should ensure that adolescents select a suitable contraceptive method and closely follow adolescents whose clinic use patterns deviate from standard protocols.

This article reviews recent evidence on the changing patterns of childbearing among adolescents and the impact of premature parenthood on the life course of young mothers and their children. Although adolescent mothers experience conspicuous disadvantages in educational attainment and economic well-being, over time the differences between early and later childbearing appear to diminish somewhat, at least for Blacks. The children of teenage mothers, however, are distinctly worse off throughout childhood than the offspring of older child-bearers. The reasons for this disparity are explored. The concluding section discusses a range of preventive and ameliorative strategies for reducing the cost of early child-bearing. The evidence supports the need for more integration among services and the importance of increasing the availability of services to those in need.

What is known about adolescent sexual behavior is reviewed. First, the onset of sexual behavior in the teenage years is considered as a function of cohort, gender, and ethnic differences. Omissions in the research on sexual behavior other than intercourse are highlighted. Possible biological, social, and social cognitive processes underlying teenage sexual behavior are then considered. Next, demographic trends in the use of contraceptives and antecedents of regular birth control use are reviewed. Finally, some of the successful program initiatives directed toward altering sexual and contraceptive practices are discussed, keeping in mind the importance and relative lack of well-designed and carefully evaluated programs.