Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Preface No human experience is at once so transiently private anc] lastingly public as an unintended pregnancy. When the mother herself is a young adolescent, only partially educated and almost wholly economically cle- pendent, the pregnancy is inevitably enmeshed in a ragged tapestry of personal, interpersonal, social, religious, ethical, and economic dimen- sions. The peculiarly human gap between reproductive maturation and social self-sufficiency sets the stage for the problem. Many factors beyond the control even the ken-of the young people involved complicate the scene. At every point, external expectations batter on newly emerging drives, challenging young adolescents to balance immediate satisfaction and long-range consequences radically disproportionate from anything they have previously had to deal with. it is little wonder that in this very complicated arena research has been difficult and social consensus elusive. Our pane] was convened to collect, review, and evaluate the data on trends in adolescent pregnancy and childbearing and on the antecedents and consequences of this phenomenon and to initiate proposals for the evolution of potentially helpful programs. We had the generous support of five foundations: the Forc] Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, all of which have demonstrated a long-standing interest in issues associated with adolescent pregnancy and childbearing. Many have made substantial investments in a growing body of relevant research and a lengthening list of targetec! programs. Their interest in this study-and indeed, as a panel of scholars and experts, our interest in undertaking it is a concern about the prob . Xt
xii PREFACE lems of early unintended pregnancy ant} parenting in our society ant] what is known about how to effectively address them. Our sponsors were models of what scholars hope for generous, supportive, and never intru- sive. The project officers were consistently helpful, but at no time was any of our work constrained by the foundations nor beholden to them. The staff of the National Research Council was consistently supportive, and our stucly director, Cheryl Hayes, who also serves as executive officer of the parent Committee on Child Development Research and Public Policy, was at once a colleague, a paragon, and the principal drafter of the report. Few people can approach the problem of teenage pregnancy dispassion- ately. Becoming sexually active, using contraception, considering abor- tion or adoption-every step is invested with a panoply of moral and religious questions, and these decisions are often undertaken alone by a frightened and immature young woman who would be considered a child in nearly any other context. A consciousness of this poignance pervades our report, and deliberately so. The pane} believes that at each step- however much one may wish for a different outcome of a prior decision- the potentially or actually pregnant teenager should be treated kindly and warmly and should have a complete set of options available without the interposition of moral hounding or economic barriers. In general, we believe preventive strategies should be given more public and private support than is now available. An international comparison study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, of which the panel was benefi- ciary, provided valuable insight into the role of preventive services in countries of comparable levels of teenage sexual activity. Many social circumstances are closely related to the problem of teenage pregnancy and childbearing. Youth unemployment, poverty, poor educa- tion, single-parent families, television content all these ant] more are accompaniments ant} very likely determinants of the high rates of adoles- cent pregnancy in the United States. The hope for a solution to the problem of teenage pregnancy is illusory without simultaneous ameliora- tion of some of these contributing factors. Pending such comprehensive change, the pane} urges prevention rather than denial, kindness rather than exhortation, and research rather than doctrine. DANIEL D. FEDERMAN, Chair Pane] on Adolescent Pregnancy and Childbearing
