Prevention and Intervention for Teen Pregnancy and Parenthood

DRAFT August, 2003

The Sexually Mature Teen as Whole Person:
New Directions in Prevention and Intervention for Teen Pregnancy and Parenthood

Joseph P. Allen
University of Virginia

Victoria Seitz

Nancy H. Apfel
Yale University

To appear in D. Phillips, J. L. Aber & S. M. Jones (Eds.), Child Development and Social Policy: Knowledge for Action. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

More than three decades ago, Edward Zigler, to whom this chapter is dedicated, noted the dangers of getting so swept up by a single behavior or phenomenon that we begin to consider that behavior or phenomenon as existing outside the context of the “whole person.” In an article on mental retardation entitled, “The Retarded Child as a Whole Person,” Zigler (1971) argued persuasively that both theory and intervention that treat fundamental social behaviors as existing in a social and developmental vacuum are bound to be intrinsically flawed. Although Ed’s argument was made at another time and in another context, we believe that this chapter will demonstrate that it is highly applicable even to fields in which Ed has never worked, including adolescent pregnancy prevention.
I. Overview
Adolescent sexuality and its consequences have been a concern of numerous societies across many generations--and for good reason. Teenage pregnancy, teenage childbearing and teenage acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases bring a unique set of costs not only to the adolescents involved, but also to the larger society. In the United States each year, more than 450,000 adolescents age 19 or younger become pregnant (Martin, Park, & Sutton, 2002). These rates have declined somewhat from their recent peak around 1990, with declines attributed primarily to increased adolescent contraceptive use (accounting for 75% of the decline) and secondarily to decreased adolescent sexual activity (accounting for 25% of the decline) (Darroch, 2001; National

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