1. Where Next For
Teenage Parents?
Judy Corlyon
The Tavistock Institute
University of Greenwich
25th April 2012

2. The presentation
• Teenage parents: who are they?
• Problems they face
• Policies – old and new – which affect them
• Groundhog Day

3. How many pregnant
young women?
Conceptions in England and Wales 2010
• 34,633 conceptions to under-18s
49.9% led to abortions
• 6,674 conceptions to under 16s
62.5% led to abortions

4. Who becomes pregnant?
Predominantly those who:
• Dislike school
– Boring, repetitive, irrelevant, unsupportive
• Are unhappy and/or hard up
– Family conflict/breakdown, violence, time in
care
• Have limited expectations
– parenthood preferable to school or low-paid
job, unaware of alternatives
• Live where early parenthood is the norm

5. How many mothers?
Births in England and Wales 2010
• 22,842 to 18s and under
610 within marriage or civil partnership
• 3,896 to 16s and under (1,047 under 16)
38 within marriage or civil partnership
• Total: 723,165 births. Average age of
mother having first child is 29-30

6. How many fathers?
• Even more invisible than young mothers in
policy, practice and research
• Information only if included on birth registration +
sparse. In 2010:
• 10,093 registered to parents both under 20
• But 16, 376 registered with mother under 20 and
father 20-24
• Very similar to young mothers, but harder to
engage and often ignored

7. Characteristics
Typically:
• No confidence, low self-esteem, high
levels of insecurity and anxiety
• Desire for secure and loving relationships
• Baby as recipient and donor of love
• But not all have unhappy childhoods
• Or have accidental pregnancies

8. Risks
• Education and employment
• Health and well-being
• Housing
• Finance
• Relationships
• Parenting

9. Education and
employment
• About 70% NEET
• In spite of sometimes good intentions:
– Previous experience of education poor
– Re-integration into school a problem
– Specialist schooling provision patchy
– Employment limited
– Childcare unavailable/unaffordable/unsuitable
• Need flexibility

10. Care to Learn
• Help with the cost of childcare and associated
travel for teenage parents to continue education
• Up to £160 a week (£175 in London boroughs)
per child
• Paid direct to the childcare provider – must be
registered with Ofsted
• But not Grandma – unless she’s registered with
Ofsted, lives apart from the child and cares for
other children

11. Health and Well-being
• Late take up of antenatal services
• Low birth-weight babies + prone to illness
• Incomplete immunisations
• More A&E visits with children
• Likely emotional and behavioural
problems
• Mother’s depression ↔ tension,
deprivation, social exclusion, lack of
confidence

12. Housing
• With family or relatives
– Support, but tensions, stress & overcrowding
• Hostels/ B&B (often for care leavers)
– Unsuitable and lacking support
• Independent housing with support (recommended
in Teenage Pregnancy Strategy)
– Can be beneficial but regimented and no fathers
• LA or private housing
– likely to be small, low-quality, unsafe & in poorer
areas →isolation & loneliness
• Unlikely to lead to home-ownership later in life

13. Finances
• Intergenerational poverty
• Limited education → limited employment
• Lack of knowledge re benefit entitlement
• Difficulty negotiating the system
• Reliance on family
• Unused to budgeting
• Financial skills of economic genius
required

14. What does extra
money mean ?
• ‘Having a bit of money means I can do
something extra with them (the children) – go to
a farm or go swimming – at the end of the week
when the money (from benefits) has run out.’
• ‘It’s only £20 but it’s a day out for myself and my
son. We don’t get treats otherwise.’

15. Poverty
2009-10:
• 2.6 million children living in poverty (BHC)
• 3.8 million (AHC)
• Significantly lower than when previous
government took office –most notably for
children in workless 1-parent families
• Mainly from increase in benefits(16%, £49 pw)
• But risk still remains higher for these children
• Parents’ employment / more education are ways
out

16. Relationships
Supportive family and partner lead to better
outcomes
But common for young parents are:
• Breakdown of partner relationship – no
financial support and no contact for child
‘Sometimes I think I’ll need two prams…’
• Stressful family relationships pre-and post-
pregnancy
• No support or parenting role models

17. Parenting
• ‘Good’ parenting according to Baumrind
= Authoritative parenting
Parents are demanding but also responsive
vs
a) Permissive: more responsive than demanding
b) Authoritarian: demanding, not responsive
• Parents with lower incomes tend to use
authoritarian
• Positive results from targeted individual and
group-based programmes for young parents
• But little rigorous evaluation

18. Horse or Cart?
• Growing realisation that disadvantage and social
exclusion are a cause and a consequence of
teenage pregnancy and parenthood
• Fatalistic acceptance of whatever …
• ‘I just look to the present and I just take the
future as it comes, cos I find you just don’t know
what to expect … What’s the point of planning
your future? Just take the future as it comes,
like.’ (Female)
• ‘If they get pregnant, they get pregnant – you
know what I mean.’ (Male)

19. Not all negative
• Early parenthood can be positive – purpose to
lives, catalyst for change, opportunity to defy
negative stereotypes:
‘When I was leaving to go to the special school I
said I would come back and she (teacher) said “I
bet you won’t – they all say that and they don’t
come back.” So I was determined, just to show
her. And I got seven GCSEs and she was ever
so nice to me after that.’

20. What helps
• Care to Learn and EMA
• Teenage pregnancy co-ordinators: in LAs to
provide information, advice and support
• Sure Start Plus: launched 2001 through Teenage
Pregnancy Strategy – targeted support for young
mothers in 35 LAs with high rates of pregnancy
– Positive links to health, well-being, money, housing,
relationships, engagement with young fathers
• Family Nurse Partnerships: borrowed from US.
Specialist nurses support young 1st-time mothers
– Research indicates a real difference to life chances
of most disadvantaged

21. New Government
Sarah Teather (Minister of State for Children and Families)
March 2012, in joint ministerial message to LA teenage
pregnancy co-ordinators:
It is encouraging that local areas continue to include
teenage parents in their efforts to improve support for
vulnerable families through maternity and expanded
health visitor services, children’s centres and Family
Nurse Partnership. We know you help teenage parents
re-engage with education or work-based learning, for
example through the new bursary scheme and Care to
Learn scheme of support with childcare costs.

22. What have they done?
Reduced public spending which affects:
• Sure Start Children’s Centres (some closing +
payment by results)
• 76 LAs losing teenage pregnancy co-ordinator
• Care to Learn (under review -‘to ensure that
support reaches those who most need it.’)
Focus now is on:
• Relationship support
• Improving parental skills – Pilot for free classes
for parents of under-fives
• More free child care/early education (15 hours)

23. Welfare
2010 June Budget & October Spending Review:
Freeze in Child Benefit, reductions in Housing
Benefit, changes to Working Tax Credit
Instead: Universal Credit – reduces rate at which
benefits withdrawn as earnings increase
Parents with youngest child aged 5 move from
income support to JSA.
Estimated 300,000 more children in poverty
by 2013-14

24. Child Poverty
Child Poverty Strategy 2011 aim:
To reduce the risk of transmitted deprivation
‘About far more than income’ → ancillary indicators
Large increases in benefits and tax credits gone
Focus on:
• promoting employment
• improving early childhood development
• reducing gap in educational attainment

25. What does poverty
(not) mean for children?
• 1 week’s holiday a year away from home with
the family
• Swimming at least once a month
• A hobby or leisure activity
• Friends round for tea or a snack once a fortnight
• Not sharing a bedroom with a sibling of the
opposite sex if 10+
• Leisure equipment (e.g. sports equipment or
bicycle)
• Celebrations on special occasions such as
birthdays, Christmas or other religious festivals

26. What does it (not)
mean for parents?
• Home adequately warm and in decent state of
repair
• Yearly 1-week holiday away, not with relatives
• Replacing worn out furniture & electrical goods
• A small amount of money to spend on self
• Regular savings (of £10 a month) for rainy days
or retirement
• Friends or family for a drink/meal once a month
• Home contents insurance
• A hobby or leisure activity

27. What does it mean
for parenting?
• Poor parents ≠ poor parenting but does = stress
• Materially disadvantaged parents face more
stress than affluent parents
• It causes them to be depressed and irritable
• This affects their parenting and they are more
likely to be harsh and inconsistent
• Typically has negative effect on outcomes for
children

28. Stress
• Waylen and Stewart Brown (2008): study of
parents of young children in different social and
cultural groups
• Cumulative ill-effect on parenting of poor health,
lack of social support and financial hardship
• Deterioration in finances led to reduction in
parenting score
• But more money alone was not the answer
• Most influential was improvement in mother’s
mental and physical health

29. Environment
• Moving to a near-poor/non-poor area improved
mothers’ mental health + children less
depressed and anxious (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn
2003: US)
• UK study in 4 neighbourhoods (3 deprived):
In deprived areas – mothers with stress, children
with behavioural problems
In affluent area – less stress, more progressive
parental views (Barnes 2007: UK)

30. Environment
• …parenting in poor environments is a more risky
business than parenting elsewhere. (Ghate and
Hazel 2002)
• But effect on outcomes is not significant:
parents’ background, child’s personality and
family dynamics are more important

31. Culture of Poverty
• Ermisch et al (2001): growing up in poor families
points to lower educational expectations, less
likelihood of employment and propensity for
early motherhood
• Yaqub (2002): people’s class, education and
health are similar to their parents’. But these can
be counteracted (e.g. by resilience)

32. Culture of Poverty
• Now a derogatory term – that poor people have
a different culture from the middle classes:
– low educational expectations for their children
– replication of their own (harsh) parenting experiences
– no regard for individual attainment
– no commitment to the labour force
• Thus inter-generational poverty creates barriers
to upward mobility
• Is changing attitudes/parenting styles the
answer?
• Or do affluent parents use their advantages to
ensure power and privilege for their children?

33. 1972
Sir Keith Joseph, then Secretary of State for
Social Services, drew attention to the fact that in
Britain since the Second World War there had
been a conspicuous persistence of deprivation
and maladjustment. It seemed to him that social
problems tended to recur in successive
generations of the same families – to form a
cycle of deprivation. Subsequently the DHSS,
through the SSRC, made available a sum of
money for a programme of research into the
whole problem. (Cover for book on transmitted
deprivation, publ 1983)

34. 1998
… there is huge scope for many, if not most,
individuals to escape from the patterns and
tendencies (of transmitted deprivation). An
important area for further research is to examine
more closely the characteristics of individuals
who escape… (Hobcraft)

35. And finally
Sarah Teather, March 2012
This Government remains committed to
reducing rates of teenage pregnancy still
further and improving outcomes for young
parents and their children. This is central to
our aim to reduce inter-generational poverty
and inequalities.

36. Contact
Judy Corlyon
Tavistock Insitute
j.corlyon@tavinstitute.org
www.tavinstitute.org