Expert Insight

• According to "Early Parenthood: Tracking Parenting Teens After Graduation from High School" by Rick Caulfield and Malia Thomson, unexpected pregnancies tend to affect the ability of teens to stay in school. In fact, about 25 percent of teens who dropped out of high school stated that teen pregnancy was their reason. Of this percentage, half of these teen mothers never go back to high school to finish.
  
  

Significance

• When someone drops out of high school, whether she is a pregnant teen or not, she is twice as likely as high school graduates to become impoverished and three times more likely to become unemployed, according to SilentEpidemic.org. Since pregnant teens have a high dropout rate, their job opportunities can be cut substantially as a result of lack of education. In fact, only one-third of teen mothers receive their high school diplomas, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Teen Pregnancy.
  
  

Effects

• Less education for teen mothers generally relates to lower-paying jobs. For teens without high school diplomas, minimum wage jobs are the most common. Teens with these jobs tend to struggle to make ends meet while they are trying to provide for themselves and their children.
  
  

Considerations

• According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, less than two percent of mothers who have children before 18 have a college degree by 30. For these mothers who do not have a college degree, job opportunities can be more limited. There are many teen moms who do make it to college though. In fact, about half of community college students have been pregnant. For those moms who finish college, they are able to compete for higher-paying jobs.
  
  

Prevention/Solution

• Because teen moms who don't have much education tend to rely on public assistance to support themselves and their children, states have tried to develop prevention programs to decrease this trend. While states across the country have adopted teen pregnancy prevention programs, several nonprofit organizations have adopted on-the-job training programs for teen moms. New Moms Inc. (http://newmomsinc.org) helps teen moms with job training and to secure jobs as well.