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Indeed, postwar opposition to working women and out-of-home child care focused on the dangers of disrupting mother-child bonds for children’s later social, emotional, and intellectual development. Simultaneously, fathers came to be seen as less relevant to the emotional health of their children. Throughout the 1970s, research on girls’ identity development found that career choice was not a discriminating concern (Schenkel & Marcia, 1972). Girls’ attitudes toward premarital sex and concerns about intimacy were considered more significant domains for girls’ conflicts about who they would become.

Adolescent pregnancy” could readily be accepted as a public problem because it fed on as well as fueled preexisting moral concerns. (p. 58) In her book Dangerous Passage, Nathanson (1991) charted the rapid evolution in policy debates on out-of-wedlock births. In 1960, use of the birth control pill was approved for adult women in the United States under the supervision of a doctor. Throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s, controversies about access to birth control remained focused on adult women.

We argue that adolescent mothers who enter young adulthood with the skills and desires to care for themselves and their children are not the resilient few. Rather, we examine the multidimensional processes that characterize the resilience in some areas of their lives of the majority of these young women. Page 3 Our progress in dealing with the problems of teenage parents has been blocked by sharp divisions over the causes of teenage parenting (poverty, sexual promiscuity, limited access to contraception or abortions, poor educational opportunities).