Like father, like son: the intergenerational cycle of adolescent fatherhood.
OBJECTIVE
Strong evidence exists to support an intergenerational cycle of adolescent fatherhood, yet such a cycle has not been studied. We examined whether paternal adolescent fatherhood (i.e., father of study participant was age 19 years or younger when his first child was born) and other factors derived from the ecological systems theory predicted participant adolescent fatherhood.


METHODS
Data included 1496 young males who were interviewed annually from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Cox regression survival analysis was used to determine the effect of paternal adolescent fatherhood on participant adolescent fatherhood.


RESULTS
Sons of adolescent fathers were 1.8 times more likely to become adolescent fathers than were sons of older fathers, after other risk factors were accounted for. Additionally, factors from each ecological domain-individual (delinquency), family (maternal education), peer (early adolescent dating), and environment (race/ethnicity, physical risk environment)-were independent predictors of adolescent fatherhood.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings support the need for pregnancy prevention interventions specifically designed for young males who may be at high risk for continuing this cycle. Interventions that address multiple levels of risk will likely be most successful at reducing pregnancies among partners of young men.
Sipsma
Heather
H
Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT 06520-8034, USA.
Biello
Katie Brooks
KB
Cole-Lewis
Heather
H
Kershaw
Trace
T
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D004463:Ecology; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D005220:Fathers / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010331:Paternal Age; D011247:Pregnancy; D011253:Pregnancy in Adolescence / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011582:Psychological Theory; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012307:Risk Factors; D013598:Systems Theory; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology