AGE OF MOTHER AND THE EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF HER CHILDREN
Abstract
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, teenage pregnancy became recognized as a serious medical and social problem. While the literature discussed the problem in terms of teenage motherhood, the variable of interest in this study was age of mother. This study examined the relationship between the age of mother and the educational performance of her children: academic achievement, classroom behavior, and school attendance. A sample of 297 fourth grade students from a low socio-economic population was used in this study. The data analysis involved two separate tests. The first examined the relationship between age of mother and reading and mathematics achievement, classroom behavior and number of days absent using linear regression and correlation analysis. The second test examined classroom behavior as measured by the Hahnemann Elementary School Behavior Rating Scale (HESB). A Z Test was used to examine the scores of a subsample of students whose mothers were teenagers at the time of their births and the normed population of the HESB. Essentially, the linear regression and correlation analyses indicated few significant findings; a significant negative correlation found between age of mother and student absences was an exception. In contrast, the results of the HESB were found to be significant on five of the seven selected factors. The results indicated that children of teenage mothers are more prone to behavior problems and seem to have less control over their actions in the classroom. In summary, the findings in this study did not indicate that large differences exist in academic achievement and average attendance. However, the behavior findings revealed that children of teenage mothers are more prone to have classroom behavior problems. It was therefore recommended that mothers' age be identified when her child enters the school and that special programs be developed to assist both the children and their parents in dealing with the potential problem behavior traits which were found in this study.
Subject Area
Elementary education
Recommended Citation
BREWER, JEANETTE WILLIAMS, "AGE OF MOTHER AND THE EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF HER CHILDREN" (1981). Dissertations available from ProQuest. AAI8117665.
https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI8117665