influences found to see if they are genuine effects and to ensure that they are not picking
up the effect of a measure of disadvantage not included in the models.
Policy implications
The Millennium Cohort Study was designed to collect information on disadvantaged
areas, of interest to policy makers as concentrations of disadvantage, possibly
compounded by the fact that disadvantaged families live in proximity. Early motherhood
is an analogous state. It collects people whose initial prospects are poor, and tends to
compound those poor prospects. Policies may either attempt to discourage people from
entering the state, or treat its occupancy as an indicator of need. There is of course
concern that one strategy may cancel out the other, but we have little evidence that many
early mothers deliberately chose the timing of their first child. It looks as though many
may have failed to avoid it, and some have found it rather hard going, so we would
expect a policy aimed at the families of early mothers who already exist would not
necessarily induce more early motherhood, particularly if complemented with better
opportunities for education, training and employment as well as better information about
contraception and relationships.
The British Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy to halve the rate of childbearing,
under age 18 (SEU 1999), would, if feasible, help to avoid some adverse consequences
for the mothers and their families, but deferring motherhood would not eliminate the pre-
existing disadvantages which characterize these cases, some of which we have identified.
Our results also suggest there would be benefits to postponing motherhood by all those
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