Abstract
The title of this paper is a question, and the text of the paper presents some issues and ideas which are the sources of the question. Included are notions from the literature on adolescent cognitive development and their relation with the notion of “prevention”. It is argued that the notion of prevention is taken for granted in professional thinking about adolescent pregnancy and that a fuller understanding of this idea in the context of adolescent cognitive development could have clear consequences for research action.
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The ideas in this paper were developed while the author was designing an adolescent pregnancy research project financed by a planning grant from the Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Minnesota.
This article is an expanded version of a paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the National Alliance Concerned with School-Age Parents, Dallas, Texas, November 1976.
Received his Ph.D. from University of Pittsburgh. Current research interests include adolescent health, prostitution, and car accidents.
This idea was presented in an outline in Baizerman (1976a).
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Baizerman, M. Can the first pregnancy of a young adolescent be prevented? A question which must be answered. J Youth Adolescence 6, 343–351 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02139238
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02139238