Gradually, policies and programs to ensure that absent parents met their financial responsibilities to their offspring were added to the agenda. Recently, the policy focus increasingly has shifted to a concern with those individual choices and behaviors that have adverse longer-term consequences. In particular, policy attention has fixed a very critical eye upon teen and nonmarital births, from a concern that, if young women have children before they are emotionally and economically prepared to raise them, both society and the parties involved will suffer. Teenage childbearing means that young mothers face major difficulties in fulfilling goals for their children. It often results in a life of poverty for both mothers and children.
Teenage parents consume a large share of all welfare dollars.
Nearly half of all recipients are current or former teenage parents. If welfare were primarily responsible for these observed trends, the solution might well be found in altering that system. If, however, the relationship between welfare and basic fertility or family formation decisions is more complex, the results of reform efforts might be disappointing. In the meantime, other promising interventions might be ignored. It also explored some of the prospects and problems associated with altering these behaviors.