The invisible teen parent: Exploring predictors of teenage fatherhood and its consequences for residency and educational attainment

Although previous research suggests that teenage fatherhood is associated with negative consequences for the father and child, public concern and research attention on teenage childbearing has centered on teenage mothers and their children. Recently, several researchers have called attention to the need for more studies on teenage fatherhood. This study draws upon adolescent parenthood and fatherhood literature and the life course perspective to derive attitudinal, social contextual, and sociodemographic variables that are used in models predicting teenage fatherhood and the residency and educational attainment of teen fathers. Furthermore, gender differences are explored to determine whether certain characteristics predicting teenage parenthood, residency, and educational attainment are gendered. The data for this study come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).; Results from this study suggest that applying the life course perspective provides a valuable framework for better understanding the transition to teenage fatherhood and the residency and educational trajectories of teenage fathers. Including attitudinal predictors along with more traditional social contextual and sociodemographic variables adds an important dimension to existing knowledge about teenage fathers. Analyses predicting teenage fatherhood indicate that the attitude that getting someone pregnant would be embarrassing to oneself is a strong predictor of teenage fatherhood, even when controlling for social context and sociodemographic variables. With respect to residency, a key finding is that teenage fathers have lower rates of residency with the child at birth but are statistically similar to adult fathers in ever residing with the child. Attitudes about wanting the child play a role in residency differences. In analyses of educational attainment, teenage fathers have fewer years of education and lower odds of graduating from high school versus those who did not become teenage fathers. Much of this effect is explained by selection into fatherhood of those with more negative attitudes about education and lower educational achievement. There are several gender differences in the analyses, suggesting that a "one size fits all" approach to studying teenage parenthood is not appropriate. Policy implications, directions for future research, and limitations are discussed.