Their Mothers Were Teenagers. They Didn’t Want That for Themselves.

JENNINGS, Mo. — Brittnee Marsaw was born to a 15-year-old mother in St. Louis and raised by a grandmother who had given birth even younger. Half grown by the time her mother could support her, Ms. Marsaw joined her three states away but never found the bond she sought and calls the teen births of preceding generations “the family curse.”

Ana Alvarez, a Guatemalan teenager, was born to a mother who was so poor and besieged she gave her daughter to a stranger. But then she took her back. Soon, her mother fled to the United States to look for work. Years later, Ana Alvarez, a teenager undocumented in Washington, D.C., reunited with her mother whom she had never met.

Although their stories are different, Ms. Marsaw shares a common trait with Ms. Alvarez. Both were inspired by the struggles of their teenage mothers and made an unusually self-conscious vow not to be teen mothers. And both say that delaying motherhood gave them — and now their children — a greater chance of success.

They highlight two important changes in the way opportunity is transferred from one generation of society to the next. The number of teen births has fallen by more that three quarters over the last 30 years, an astonishing change that experts are still trying to understand. Child poverty plunged as well, raising the complex question: Does reducing teen pregnancy reduce child poverty?

Both may be true but it isn’t clear which one. One theory states that reducing teenage pregnancy rates lowers child poverty because it allows women to finish college, get jobs, and build mature relationships. This increases their income before they have children. Another argument is that progress works in the opposite direction: Reduced child poverty lowers teenage births because teens who see potential have reasons to avoid becoming pregnant.

Ms. Marsaw, who waited until 24 to have a child — a daughter, Zaharii — has considered the issue at length and embraces both views.

“This is a very, very, very good topic — it touches home with me in so many ways!” she said, adding that teen pregnancy and child poverty reinforce each other. “If you escape one, you have a better chance of escaping the other.”

Teen births have fallen by 77 percent since 1991, and among young teens the decline is even greater, 85 percent, according to an analysis by Child Trends, a research group that studies children’s well-being. Black teenagers, Hispanic teens, and white teenagers have had their birth rates fall at about the same pace. They have also fallen more than half in every state.

The decline is rapidly increasing: Teen births fell 20% In the 1990s, it was 28 percent. It was 55 percent in 2010. Child Trends estimates that 25% of 15-year old girls became mothers by the time they turned 20, including almost half of those who were Black and Hispanic. Only 6 percent of 15 year-old girls today become teen moms.

“These are dramatic declines — impressive, surprising, and good for both teenagers and the children they eventually have,” said Elizabeth Wildsmith, a Child Trends researcher who did the analysis with a colleague, Jennifer Manlove.

However, not all teenage mothers experience poverty.

We are only partially understanding the reasons teens have had fewer births. The reasons for declining teen births are not fully understood. Contraceptive use has increased and has shifted to safer methods. Civic campaigns, welfare restrictions, messaging from popular culture could have played roles.

However, researchers claim that this change is due to a greater sense of possibility among disadvantaged young females, whose education and earnings have grown more quickly than their male counterparts.

“They’re going to school and seeing new career paths open,” said Melissa S. Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland. “Whether they are excited about their own opportunities or feel that unreliable male partners leave them no choice, it leads them in the same direction — not becoming a young mother.”

Mindful of their mothers’ struggles, Ms. Marsaw, 29, and Ms. Alvarez, 34, each offer a study of why teen births are falling and how the decline might affect upward mobility. It brought her the wealth she desired, according to one woman. One hopes that it continues to do so.

The Path to College

Ms. Alvarez felt abandoned even before her mother fled Guatemala. Her mother was 19 years old and she was single when she had her second baby. Their contact grew to monthly visits after that.

After her mother had more children, Ms. Alvarez met a woman in a waiting room at a clinic and offered to adopt one. Ms. Alvarez was also surprised to see the child given away, and then to have it returned months later. Then her mother departed for Washington, and Ms. Alvarez came to think of a mother as “something I hoped that someday I will have.”

After fourth grade, she left school to care for her grandfather. She asked her mother for help in finding a smuggler who would take her north on her 15th birthday.

The reunion was disappointing. To Ms. Alvarez’s surprise, her mother was married and had another child. She appeared distant, stern, and impatient with her questions about why she left. “I had more resentment than I understood,” Ms. Alvarez said.

Ms. Alvarez didn’t find reconciliation but she did find opportunities. Ms. Alvarez started high school as a Spanish-speaking, undocumented migrant. She had a fourth-grade education and was a better student than her parents. A counselor at a Washington clinic, Mary’s Center, said she could earn a college scholarship.

Looking no further than her mother’s life, she saw a threat. “I realized if I get pregnant, I’m not going to college,” she said.

It was one thing to have a goal and another to maintain it throughout her precarious teenage years. Ms. Alvarez deemed abstinence more likely than contraception to prevent pregnancy and dismissed girls who mocked her for not having sex.

Fredy, a man she was interested in becoming a cook, approached her during her junior year. He was seven years older, fun and supportive, and she needed a place to stay, having left her mother’s apartment for a rented room. He called her every day, but she refused to take his calls. She graduated from high school at 20 with the college scholarship — neither a teen nor a parent.

“Wow, I made it all the way to college!” she told herself.

Ms. Marsaw may be more inclined than others to see her life through the lense of adolescent birth. Her grandmother raised her in a house shared with twelve aunts, uncles, cousins, on a food stamp basis, while her mother, a 15-year-old mother, left to finish her teens with a second baby.

In third grade, Ms. Marsaw made the mistake of revealing that her mother was at another address. She was transferred to a distant school. Care fell to a rotating set of relatives. She came to think of her mother as “a person I needed that I couldn’t reach.”

Her mother moved to Atlanta as a medical technie. Ms. Marsaw followed but felt frustrated by her mother’s long hours and emotional remove. Ms. Marsaw saw a parent trying to make it big, but she felt like she was being left behind. “The reason I’m a fast talker is because I wanted to get my point across before she walked out for her 16-hour shift,” she said.

She identified the cause of her mother’s struggles — teen motherhood — and pledged to avoid it. In 10th grade she demanded that her boyfriend use condoms. She stopped dating in 11th grade. Although she was ridiculed by her classmates, she decided that being a loner was worth the price. “I did what it took not to have children,” she said.

She returned to Missouri for her senior year and wrote herself a letter years later, celebrating what she achieved: “U finished high school w/no children so pat yourself on the back.”

‘Greater Confidence’

It is obvious that the decline in teenage births could be explained by contraception rising and sex falling.

According to the Guttmacher Institute’s analysis of government surveys, the percentage of teenage girls who have not used birth control since their last sex has dropped by more that a third in the past decade. Long-acting reversible contraception is the most effective. It can be administered through an implant or intrauterine device. The percentage of those who use it rose fivefold, to 15 percent. It also saw an increase in emergency contraception.

Because contraception is now easier to obtain, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 required that all insurance plans including Medicaid provide it free.

Child Trends discovered that the percentage of high school seniors who have admitted to having had sexual relations has dropped 29 percent from 1991. Brad Wilcox, University of Virginia socioologist, believes that teens are more likely to avoid sex because they spend so much time in front of their screens.

Teen births have declined in part because of abortion. As a share of teenage pregnancy, it has remained steady over the past decade, although the data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, omits medication abortions, and analysts say the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, could cause teen births to rise.

What explains why adolescent girls are less cautious about sex and contraception? Common explanations are that girls feel less at risk. “There is just a greater confidence among young women that they have educational and professional opportunities,” Mr. Wilcox said.

The economists Melanie Wasserman and David Autor found that women in their 30s were almost 25 percent more likely to earn a four-year degree than men. Also, earnings at all levels had increased faster for women than for men.

As teen births and poverty fall in tandem, the chicken egg question that follows is: Which caused which?

While it might seem intuitive, postponing motherhood can help teens escape poverty. Researchers believe that the reverse is true. Teen births are reduced if child poverty is reduced. According to them, studies have shown that teenager mothers who are poor in childbirth outcomes would still be at risk of having children.

The study compared teens who gave birth to babies with women from similar backgrounds (in some cases, sisters) and found that the two groups performed similarly as adults.

“Research has shown that among those who grow up in disadvantaged circumstances teen childbearing has little independent effect on economic outcomes,” said Ms. Wildsmith, the Child Trends analyst.

Skeptics point out the limitations of the data, but note the growing payoff for education.

“I strongly disagree with the argument that teen births have no effect on social mobility,” said Isabel V. Sawhill of the Brookings Institution. “It’s a lot easier to move out of poverty if you’re not responsible for a child in your teenage years.”

The debate is not just academic. Some progressives fear that a narrow focus on prevention of teen births could undermine wider anti-poverty programs and lead to adolescents being blamed for their poverty. Others see teen births and poverty as complementary causes that should not be blamed but empowered young women.

Your Dreams Come True

As a test of whether postponing birth reduces poverty, Ms. Marsaw’s life yields ambiguous conclusions. Her transition from childbearing to adulthood was difficult even without a child. An immobilizing bout depression that she experienced made her slow down, which she attributed in part to her childhood separations with her mother.

“Forgive ur mom,” she later wrote to herself. “She was so young.”

In her 20s, she traveled with her mother to Texas and got a job as an indoor rider. She also dated a car-parker. For all her teenage vigilance, she stopped using contraception, figuring “if happens, it won’t be a crisis.”

She was almost nine years older than her mother when she gave birth to her child at 24.

But hardship was not far behind. Her depression returned and her relationship ended. Incapable of paying the rent by herself, she returned home to St. Louis. She and Zaharii, 5, have lived in at least seven places — eight, counting times when they slept in a car — though Ms. Marsaw is proud that unlike her mother she never left her daughter in someone else’s care. Postponing motherhood as an anti-poverty strategy was not foolproof.

Ms. Marsaw still sees the benefits of waiting. She is more “emotionally intelligent” as a parent, she said, more savvy about jobs, and more resilient. She suggested that she could have been more ready for a second child had she started earlier.

In 2021, she got a commercial driver’s license and spent months as a cross-country trucker, with Zaharii sharing the cab. With a monthly income of $40,000, she is driving a van to care for children during winter. She also managed to purchase a small home. Sometimes her mother helps and their relationship has improved. Ms. Marsaw is more understanding of the sacrifices she made in order to move up.

“I don’t feel as though I have completely accomplished who I am or where I want to be,” she said. “But I’m no longer in poverty.”

Ms. Alvarez has a simpler story: Her future turned out as she planned. Despite still learning English, she was able to make the transition to the University of the District of Columbia. Fortune smiled upon her in her second year. She boarded an urban bus and ran into Fredy who had followed her through high school.

She was no longer afraid of pregnancy, as she was in her teens. A lapse in contraceptive usage had a predictable impact, so the news strengthened her plans more that it disrupted them. Shortly after giving birth, she was 23 and married. “You’ve never ready to become a mother, but I felt like I can do this,” she said.

Her educational progress was slowed by having a baby. Working two jobs, she took six years to earn a bachelor’s degree, then started a job at Mary’s Center, the clinic that had encouraged her to seek scholarships.

She coordinates the care of cancer patients and is protected under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This program provides legal protection for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. She and her husband bought their first home recently with a household income that was higher than the national average.

“If I die tomorrow, I can say I achieved the American dream,” Ms. Alvarez said. “But if I had gotten pregnant as a teenager? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.”