Sexual and reproductive health indicators for young people in the USA have improved in recent decades, but teenage pregnancies remain high, and large differences between Whites and non-Whites persist in teenage births, abortions, and the acquisition of sexually transmitted infections. Prior research shows that young people are receptive to…

Teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is a concern worldwide, but in socially-economically challenged environments it is a result of, and contributory factor to, a complex web of social injustice. In South Africa, most of the school-based prevention interventions to date have been adult-designed and imparted, with the voice of the target…

Fetal exposure to prenatal maternal stress can have lifelong consequences, with different types of maternal stress associated with different areas of child development. Fewer studies have focused on motor skills, even though they are strongly predictive of later development across a range of domains. Research on mechanisms of transmission has…

Educating girls is a universally accepted strategy for improving lives and advancing development. Girls' schooling is associated with many demographic outcomes, including later age at marriage or union formation, lower fertility, and better child health. However, the causal pathways between education and demographic outcomes are not well…

Objectives: The objectives of this study are to: (1) document prevalence of food insecurity among pregnant adolescents; (2) determine if food insecurity is associated with adverse birth outcomes (i.e., lower birth weight, earlier gestational age) among their newborns; and (3) examine whether depressive symptoms, anxiety, nutrition and/or weight…

We know that responsive relationships and language-rich experiences for young children help build a strong foundation for later success in school. The rapidly advancing frontiers of 21st-century biological sciences now provide compelling evidence that the foundations of lifelong health are also built early, with increasing evidence of the…

Home visiting programs recognize the importance of promoting women's mental health during and around the time of pregnancy. However, the process of planning and integrating mental health promotion and intervention into the home visiting setting can seem daunting. Using examples and lessons learned from research and practice, the authors provide a…

Using Hofstede's cultural dimension of masculinity/femininity, this quantitative content analysis investigated the coverage of virginity loss (i.e., occurrence, tone, and association with negative consequences) and pregnancy (i.e., occurrence, tone, and negative consequence of sex) in 2,496 feature stories from all issues of three U.S. and three…

The purpose of this study was to determine sources of malaria information among pregnant women in Ebonyi state and implications for malaria education. The cross sectional research design was adopted and stratified sampling technique was used to select a total of five hundred and four (504) pregnant women from 12 hospitals in the state. A self…

Foetus developmental vulnerability in pre-school children of traumatized antenatal mothers in Cheptais and Mount Elgon Sub-Counties, Bungoma County, Kenya is a study meant to establish the effects of trauma of the mother on the unborn child who was born and now is in pre-school level of education. Through observation by the mother through neonate,…

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a mood disorder which can adaptively alter maternal socialisation strategies. Our objective was to investigate differences in ethnotheories and childrearing practices of mothers with low (N = 46) and high (N = 45) intensity of PPD. The Brazilian version of Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale was applied at 3, 8 and…

Children of adolescent mothers are at risk for developmental delays. Less is known about the heterogeneity in these children's developmental trajectories, and factors associated with different patterns of development. This longitudinal study used latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to identify distinct trajectories in children of Mexican-origin…

The study of adolescent childbearing is a major public policy concern, and father involvement is a particular focus. Previous research with married couples has found that coparenting may be a better predictor of father involvement than relationship quality. The current study examined 94 primiparous African American and Latino parents to determine…

Latinx are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the country and their growth is visible in higher education. Using focus groups with student mothers, we examine the narratives of four Latina student mothers pursuing higher education at the community college. Using Chicana Feminist Theory as our theoretical framework, we apply…

Emotion regulation is essential to cognitive, social, and emotional development and difficulties with emotion regulation portend future socioemotional, academic, and behavioral difficulties. There is growing awareness that many developmental outcomes previously thought to begin their development in the postnatal period have their origins in the…