Intergenerational transmission of school-age parenthood.

A long-term follow-up of a group of black New Haven women who were young mothers in the late 1960s revealed that the majority of their offspring had not become parents by age 19. The offspring who experienced early parenthood were most likely to be female and to report significant depressive symptoms. Of those children--both male and female--who did become young parents, many were the offspring of women who had moved out of their mothers' homes within 26 months of the child's birth, and of women who reported suffering from lifetime depression. The data indicate that emotional deprivation, particularly at an early age, may predispose adolescents to seek emotional closeness through sexual activity and early parenthood.