Stereotypes Of Teenage Mothers

different than what society’s conventional thoughts were about teenage childbearing women. Furstenberg discovered that,
The vast majority of women had incomes above the poverty line and fewer than a fifth were still on public assistance. More than three out of four had entered the labor force and were regularly employed. Although just a fourth had reached middle class, half of all the women in the study held jobs with benefits and had some cash reserves in the bank or credit cards that could be drawn upon in times of need. In short, most were hardly living up to the public stereotype of teenage mothers. (Furstenberg, 2003)
Everything Furstenberg was learning during this follow up was contradicting what society thought about teenage mothers.
He stated that, “A high percentage had returned to high school and graduated or received a GED; one fifth had even taken some college courses over the past decade.” (Furstenberg, 2003) In a different study completed by Jason M. Fletcher and Barbara L. Wolfe, they found that, “Of the women in our sample (who have all experienced a teen pregnancy), 68 percent receive a high school diploma and 13 percent receive a GED.” (Fletcher and Wolfe, 2009) These statistics were looking to be quite promising. However, another study which followed teenage mothers and their education achievements showed a different side of the story when the teen mothers were compared to their non-teenage mother peers. An article written by David L. Levine and Gary Painter found that, “Teen out-of-wedlock mothers had a dropout rate of 44%, 5 times the rate of other young women (9%). Among high school graduates, the young mothers’ rate of entering college by age 20 was less than half that of their peers (3% versus 76%). (Levine & Painter, 2003) When compared to their peers who did not become teenage parents, the teenage mothers faired far worse than their peers, a disappointing
Furstenberg found in his Baltimore study that a majority of the woman did not end up having a large family at all. Furstenberg reveals that, “Just one fifth had three or more children; all others had only one or two.” (Furstenberg 2003) This follow up of the Baltimore study was proving to be producing results that were quite contrary to what society typically believed about teenage mothers in a variety of areas.
However, although the study was proving to be evolutional in a variety of areas, the area of marriage was still somewhat turbulent. Furstenberg found that very few of the teenage mothers were able to succeed in the area of marriage. Furstenberg found that, “Only a quarter of the women who had married the father of their first child were still married to him. Although nearly three quarters of the women had eventually wed, only slightly more than a third were currently married. Successful marriages were few and far between.” (Furstenberg,