Living at home helps teen mothers stay in school.

2004 AUG 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Federal law requires that unmarried, minor-aged mothers who receive public assistance live at home (or in an approved adult-supervised setting). One rationale for this policy is that a young mother's parents might help her finish school if the family shares a home.

Yet critics of the policy worry about the potential harm if the young mothers' parents ca not or will not provide help with the baby. Plus, staying in their parents' home might be stressful or even dangerous if the daughters did not get along with their parents before the baby was born, or if family relationships were abusive.

To explore this issue, R.A. Gordon, University of Illinois at Chicago; P.L. Chase-Lansdale, Northwestern University; and J. Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University, used data from the Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP), a survey that followed more than 550 mothers and their low-birth weight, premature babies from birth through age 3.

"We focused on mothers who were 13 to 25 when their children were born. The study measured school enrollment six times during the 3-year period, and parenting skills twice, including whether young mothers knew the age at which children typically accomplished certain milestones, the rigidity of their parenting beliefs and the level of warmth and learning stimulation in their interactions with their child," the researchers explained in Child Development [2004;75(4)].

"We found that living at home helped teenage mothers stay in school during the first 2 years of their babies' lives but had little effect on their parenting. In contrast to our study, prior research had found that young mothers who lived at home were less skilled as parents," reported Gordon and coauthors.

"Our findings suggest that this correlation may not reflect a true consequence of living at home. Rather, some characteristics of the ...