Don't Know Much About History

Reports on a study by Helen Rauch-Elnekave on the relationship of teenage pregnancy and school. Early motherhood gives underachieving girls something to be proud of; Details of study; Results.

By PT Staff published January 1, 1992 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

Americans are approaching the epidemic of teenage motherhood all wrong, according to a Delaware researcher. Early pregnancy is not about sex-it's about school.

Teenage mothers have an unusually high incidence of learning problems that go undetected and untreated, Helen Rauch-Elnekave, Ph.D., finds. So all the teaching about sex, AIDS, and pregnancy--or even the distribution of condoms--isn't going to help much. Schools should concentrate more on beefing up their teaching programs.

Early motherhood gives underachieving girls a chance to do something they can be good at and feel proud of, contends Rauch-Elnekave, of the Alfred I. duPont Institute Children's Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. It's really a misguided adaptation to a serious, if overlooked, school problem.

Of 64 teenage mothers studied, a vast preponderance were academic underachievers, to put it mildly. Achievement-test scores, available for 39 of the girls, ranked more than half of them one or more years below grade level in Total Reading and Total Language. Over a third were two or more years below grade level. Of the 64, half became pregnant before age 15.

Despite their obvious academic deficiencies, only two of the girls had undergone any psychoeducational evaluation and been placed in special-ed classes. When asked why one girl with obvious learning problems had not been tested, her school counselor answered that neither her parents, nor teachers requested it.

If teenage girls can't show mastery in the schoolroom, they have to show it elsewhere, says the Delaware psychologist. In their environment, teenage motherhood is the norm, and a majority of the girls reported their pregnancy with pride.

It's high time to question federal policy that "promotes sexual abstinence as the primary method for preventing adolescent pregnancy," Rauch-Elnekave told the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. It's time, too, she says, to remedy the failure of our public school systems to provide positive academic and social experiences for children from deprived environments.