Baltimore Study of Unplanned Teen Parenthood, 1966-1972

<p>This dataset includes information from four waves of interviews with 404 women who, in 1966, registered at the Sinai Hospital prenatal clinic. All were pregnant and under 18 at the time. The study, directed by Dr. Frank Furstenberg, began as an evaluation of a program designed to help teenage mothers. It was designed to be longitudinal in order to assess the lasting impact of the program. An adolescent's interview focused on occupational and marital career plans, impacts of the pregnancy, sexual patterns, birth control knowledge and experience, attitudes toward medical care, and information on family relations. A separate interview with the adolescent's mother also solicited personal background material about the family and the occupational careers of the parents. As the study continued, its goals expanded and eventually formally became "explore the process of adjustment to unplanned parenthood and to explain the divergent life patterns that occur as a consequence of an unscheduled birth." This is a rich and detailed dataset with 1,413 variables collected over five years. The longitudinal nature of the investigation makes this data set a unique source of information on what happens over time to teenage mothers and their families. The study is continuing to the present time, and data from later waves will be added to the archive as they become available.</p>