The Consequences of Placing versus Parenting Among Young Unmarried Women

This paper compares the consequences of placing versus parenting for young women who experienced a non-marital teenage pregnancy. We examined whether placers were faring better, worse or no differently from parenters four years after giving birth. The findings clearly indicate that relative to parenting, resolving a teenage pregnancy by relinquishing one's infant for adoption is a positive choice resulting in more favorable outcomes on a broad variety of sociodemographic and social psychological outcomes. At the bivariate level, on virtually every outcome except feelings about the pregnancy resolution decision, placers fared significantly better than parenters. When control was introduced for sociodemographic background factors and several post-birth mediators, the differences in sociodemographic outcomes and feelings about the pregnancy resolution decision remained unchanged. However, the differences between placers and parenters on virtually all of the remaining social psychological outcomes, were explained by their varying marital, fertility and welfare experiences since the birth of the index child.