Why Do We Shame Teen Moms? |

A response to teen pregnancy that focuses narrowly on shaming and scaring young women ignores the fact that poverty, lack of access to health care (including contraception and abortion) and other socioeconomic factors may have a bigger influence on whether they are successful parents than the age of their first birth. Looking at what keeps a young mom from having a second child as a teen might be a better indicator of what teen pregnancy prevention could look like, without the focus on stigma.

“When we do connect [teen moms] with opportunities, we don’t have a repeat pregnancy rate the way that attitudinal programs do,” Miller explains. “We have less than 2 percent repeat births, because when we give them the opportunity these young women thrive.”