"I like it when people notice I'm having a baby. It gives me a good feeling inside and makes me feel important."--a teenage mother

Teenage mothers are often poor young girls who define themselves through motherhood and who see getting pregnant as less frightening than finishing school or getting a job. In this book an expert on adolescent pregnancy discusses how psychological pressures of adolescence interact with the problems of being poor to create a situation in which early sexuality, pregnancy, and childbearing--often repeated childbearing--seem almost inevitable. Drawing on her...