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Teenage Parenthood

Teenage parenthood described pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting before age twenty. During the 1990s and early 2000s, public-health statistics, schools, healthcare systems, social programs, families, and young parents used overlapping age ranges and terms. Pregnancy rates, birth rates, and the number of teenagers raising children measured different things and could not be substituted for one another.

This article covers the mainland United States and Puerto Rico during the periods surrounding Patricia Matsuda and Evan Hayes becoming parents in California in 1998 and Marisol Cruz and Rafael Cruz becoming parents in Puerto Rico in 2006. The two families lived in different jurisdictions and received different forms of support.

Measures and Terminology

A pregnancy rate counted pregnancies per 1,000 females in a defined age group and included live births, induced abortions, and estimated fetal losses. A birth rate counted only live births. A count of births or pregnancies did not become a rate until divided by the corresponding population. Studies also varied in whether they covered ages 15–19, narrower age bands, all people under twenty, or age at conception rather than age at delivery.

Federal reports commonly used ‘’teenage’‘, ‘’adolescent’‘, or ‘’school-age’’ parents. Policy sources also used terms such as ‘’unmarried’’ or ‘’out-of-wedlock’’ births. Those marital-status terms described a legal relationship and often carried moral judgment; they did not establish whether a partner, co-parent, or extended family was present.

National Vital Statistics System reports listed Puerto Rico and other United States territories separately from the fifty states and the District of Columbia. A national United States total that excluded the territories could not be used as Puerto Rico’s rate, and Puerto Rico figures could not be folded into a mainland statistic without matching the year, age range, outcome, and denominator.

The national pregnancy rate among females ages 15–19 reached 116.8 per 1,000 in 1990. By 2002, it had fallen to 76.4 per 1,000, a decline of thirty-five percent. The estimated 757,000 pregnancies in 2002 included 425,000 live births, 215,000 induced abortions, and 117,000 fetal losses.

The later three-percent increase widely reported for 2006 concerned the national birth rate, not the pregnancy rate. The birth rate among females ages 15–19 rose from 40.5 per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 in 2006. It was the first annual increase in that measure since 1991.

These national measures described population trends rather than the circumstances or likely outcome of any individual pregnancy. They did not show whether a young parent had stable housing, family help, safe medical care, school accommodations, childcare, employment, a participating partner, or control over reproductive decisions.

Puerto Rico in 2006

Puerto Rico maintained its own vital-statistics records, and federal reports presented its births separately from the United States total. For 2006, the National Vital Statistics System reported 3,460 live births to Puerto Rico residents ages 15–17, a rate of 39.3 per 1,000, and 5,302 live births to residents ages 18–19, a rate of 91.7 per 1,000.

Those age-specific birth rates did not measure pregnancies ending in abortion or fetal loss, did not describe every teenager’s access to care, and did not establish a shared Puerto Rican attitude toward early parenthood. Family response, religion, income, municipality, school, healthcare access, and partner involvement varied. The circumstances documented for the Cruz family therefore belonged to that family rather than to Puerto Rican families as a group.

Education, Work, Healthcare, and Family Support

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded education. Regulations effective in 1975 specifically protected students from discrimination related to pregnancy and childbirth, required medically necessary leave, and required pregnancy to be treated comparably to other temporary medical conditions. A school could offer a separate program only on a voluntary and comparable basis. Legal protection did not eliminate uneven implementation, scheduling problems, childcare needs, transportation barriers, stigma, or conflict with local staff.

Young parents often had to coordinate school attendance, prenatal and postpartum care, infant care, paid work, housing, transportation, and sleep with limited control over any of them. Support could come from a partner, parents, siblings, extended family, friends, schools, healthcare workers, childcare programs, or public benefits, but its availability and quality varied. A relative’s presence did not automatically provide money, childcare, medical advocacy, or emotional safety.

Teenage childbearing was associated in population studies with lower average educational attainment and other forms of disadvantage, but the size and cause of those differences depended heavily on comparison group and method. Poverty, prior school experience, family instability, neighborhood conditions, healthcare access, and other circumstances could precede both a teenage birth and later educational difficulty. Early parenthood could interrupt school without being the sole cause of every later outcome.

Federal prevention policy also changed across the period. The 1996 welfare law established the Title V Abstinence Education Grant program, with funding beginning in fiscal year 1998. The broader federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program did not begin until 2010. ‘’Baby Think It Over’‘, an electronic infant simulator introduced in 1995, appeared in some school health and parenting programs during the period; its presence documented a period teaching practice, not proof that the simulation prevented pregnancy.

Documented Families

Patricia Matsuda and Evan Hayes

Main article: Patricia Matsuda and Evan Hayes

Pattie and Evan conceived Lila in spring 1998, when both were fifteen. Pattie discovered the pregnancy that summer. Evan turned sixteen on June 14, while Pattie remained fifteen until November 3.

Pattie experienced severe nausea, pregnancy-related hypertension, severe preeclampsia, and pulmonary edema. Lila was born by emergency cesarean section at thirty-one weeks on October 28, 1998. At delivery, Pattie was fifteen and Evan was sixteen. Lila remained in the neonatal intensive care unit through early December.

The teenagers received unusually extensive support from the Moore-Matsuda and Hayes households. Ellen Matsuda and Greg Matsuda provided daily care, medical-system knowledge, advocacy, and household structure. Tommy Hayes provided financial, practical, and emotional help. Pattie’s siblings also participated in the family’s response. This support reflected the documented actions and resources of those households, including Pattie’s Japanese American and White Moore-Matsuda family history, rather than a general rule about Japanese American families.

Evan attended school, worked six days a week at Burger King, spent evenings helping Pattie, and tried to budget independently for the baby despite Tommy’s support. The schedule became physically unsustainable, and the adults intervened. After Lila’s discharge, the households continued to provide backup while Pattie and Evan shared her care.

Marisol Cruz and Rafael Cruz

Main article: Rafael Cruz and Marisol Cruz

Marisol became pregnant with Ezra at fifteen while she and Rafael lived in Puerto Rico. Rafael was seventeen. He took construction work that initially paid cash, remained with Marisol, and cared for her after his shifts. Marisol’s sister Rosa helped during the pregnancy, and Rafael’s close friend Hector Burgos supported the couple while others predicted that Rafael would leave.

Ezra was born in Puerto Rico on July 29, 2006. Rafael later went ahead to the Miami area to secure work, and Marisol followed with Ezra when Ezra was about two. The reunited family established its household in Hialeah, where Luna was born in 2011. Rafael remained Marisol’s partner and part of the household until his death in 2022.

The Cruz pregnancy and Ezra’s birth occurred in Puerto Rico. Bilingual schools, services, and community networks available to the family after its move to Hialeah were part of its later mainland life, not support received during the 2006 pregnancy.

Sources and Documentation

Cultural Context 1990s 2000s Parenthood