Maternal education has been found to be an important predictor of children's cognitive development. Teenage childbearing and maternal education have also been found to be strongly associated; but studies have not resolved whether or when and why the effects of early childbearing on maternal education are transmitted to reduce the cognitive development of children born to adolescent parents. One of the reasons such research has been the lack of detailed and appropriate data. The existence of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Child Supplement provides an opportunity to address these important issues. A large, nationally representative sample of youth aged 14-21 in 1979 has been interviewed annually through the present. In 1986, the children born to females in the sample were assessed with a number of well-validated measures of cognitive, health, behavioral, and emotional functioning, and additional information about the family environment was obtained. This proposal outlines an effort to use these data to build on previous research which has explored the impact of maternal and family characteristics on child outcomes. In this recent study, completed by the proposed principal investigator, children whose mothers were behind grade and/or who had dropped out of school prior to their first pregnancy were found to score particularly low on measures of cognitive ability. On the other hand, maternal school attainment alone was found to predict the child's school progress and adjustment. The proposed project would replicate these associations with more recent and detailed data; contrast competing hypotheses regarding the reason maternal education affects child outcomes; and explore the processes by which such effects are transmitted. Hypotheses to explain an effect of maternal dropout on the child's cognitive development include differences in ability, motivation, family background and role preferences. Analyses would employ cross tabulation, regression, and path analytic procedures.
