Teenaged childbearing is widely discussed as a powerful risk factor predicting poor developmental and social outcomes for both young mothers and their children, yet, recent work suggests important distinctions among specific subgroups of adolescent mothers and their children, some of whom experience negative outcomes while others do not. Further, the nature of the tandem risk to mother and child has not been examined using perspectives and methods now available from the rapidly growing and relevant field of developmental psychopathology. The proposed continuation study capitalizes on existing longitudinal data from a diverse sample of young women who gave birth as unmarried teenagers to examine intragroup heterogeneity in the life trajectories of young women who became premaritally pregnant when they were 17 or younger, and their children, using a developmental psychopathology perspective. With the addition of new data from the continuation proposed here, we will be able to examine the relationship between the various maternal profiles and the early adoption or avoidance of problem behavior among their children as they become adolescents. We propose to continue data collection for two cohorts of teen mothers, allowing us to follow them for 17 and 14 years, respectively. Data to be collected include substance use and abuse, mental health, achievement, executive function, and problem behaviors for both mothers and children, as well as family and environmental adversity and parenting from the mothers; and school, social and peer contexts from the children. We will conduct extensive pattern-centered analyses of intergenerational linkages in maternal and child outcomes through 16.5 years postpartum. We will examine the stability of identified profile groups that emerge, with particular attention to the effects of early and on-going substance use on outcomes for both mothers and children. The resulting research will contribute to new models of intergenerational transmission of both problematic outcomes and resilience in a sample presumed to be at high risk for negative social and developmental outcomes.
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