Synonyms
Definition
Producing and caring for an offspring by a parent who is under the age of 20 years-old.
Introduction
Adolescent parenthood has been associated with many negative outcomes, such as decreased physical and mental health of the offspring (Pinzon and Jones 2012). Although there have been fluctuations in the rate of teenage pregnancies in the United States, there has been a relatively steady decline in the number of children born to adolescents through the 1990s and 2000s (Pinzon and Jones 2012). This entry will discuss some of the negative outcomes associated with adolescent parenting as well as some of the evolutionary psychological theories behind human mating and parenting. A large portion of evolutionary research on parenting focuses on the paternity uncertainty hypothesis, the mating opportunity cost hypothesis, and parent-offspring conflict theory.
Paternity Uncertainty Hypothesis
Because males can never be certain about...
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References
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Williams, J. (2017). Adolescent Parenthood. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2489-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2489-1
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