Becoming a parent at a younger age tends to be linked with poorer long-term financial, educational, and physical health outcomes that only begin to level out if a person delays having a child until their late twenties or early thirties. A recent study published in the journal PLOS One provides evidence that having a child early in life disrupts standard life transitions, creating persistent disadvantages that follow parents well into adulthood. These findings suggest that public support programs aimed at young parents might be more effective if they included individuals up to age thirty.
Scientists Jordan MacDonald and David Speed designed this study to explore the specific age at which the negative impacts of early parenthood begin to stabilize. Previous research typically placed teenage parents into a single rigid category, which ignored the exact age a person had their first child.
For MacDonald, a psychology researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of New Brunswick, the motivation to pursue this topic was highly personal. “I became a father at 17, and across school, work, social groups, and many other areas of life, I noticed that people often held quite pessimistic views of teen parents,” MacDonald said. “At the time, I found myself wondering why societal attitudes toward teen parents were so negative.”
“As I found my way into academia and research, I was naturally drawn to questions about teen parenthood,” MacDonald explained. “When I began reading the existing literature, I realized that even the scientific research had important limitations.”
MacDonald noticed that the scientific literature favored the experiences of young mothers. “Much of it focused primarily on young mothers, often excluding teen fathers entirely, and many studies treated teen parents as a single, uniform group,” MacDonald said. “For example, someone who became a parent at 17 might be grouped together with someone who became a parent at 14, even though those experiences may be very different.”
“Recognizing these gaps led me to examine how the age at which someone becomes a parent, as well as gender, may be associated with different long-term outcomes,” MacDonald noted.
Early parenthood is often linked to various societal challenges, such as poverty, limited access to contraception, and lower quality education. Cultural and religious backgrounds can also influence a young person’s choices regarding family planning. While teenage pregnancy rates are trending downward in Canada, parents under the age of 25 still accounted for nearly ten percent of all new parents in the country in 2023.
To investigate these long-term patterns, the researchers analyzed data from the 2017 Statistics Canada General Social Survey. This nationwide survey collects self-reported information on family topics from people across Canada’s ten provinces. The final sample included 6,282 adults who had biological children. The scientists calculated the exact age each participant was when their first biological child was born.
The researchers excluded parents whose oldest children were adopted or stepchildren. This decision ensured they were accurately measuring the impact of entering parenthood at a specific biological age. Adopting a teenager at age thirty, for instance, would falsely categorize someone as a very young parent if the child’s age was simply subtracted from the parent’s current age.
The researchers examined several distinct life outcomes to build a broad profile of each participant. These measures included educational achievement, personal income, household income, self-rated physical health, self-rated mental health, and overall life satisfaction. Participants reported their highest level of education and their total income before taxes. They also rated their general physical and mental health on a scale ranging from poor to excellent.
To analyze the data, the scientists used a statistical technique called restricted cubic spline regression. This tool allows researchers to model curved relationships in data rather than assuming changes happen in a straight line. By doing this, they could pinpoint exactly when life outcomes started to improve or flatten out as the age of parenthood increased.
The scientists found that the age of parenthood is heavily linked to educational success. Only about 40 percent of people who became parents at age 16 achieved any education beyond high school. As the age of first-time parenthood increased, the likelihood of completing post-secondary education rose rapidly. This upward trend in educational success tended to plateau around age 31, after which the gains were much smaller.
A similar pattern emerged for financial stability. Individuals who had their first child at age 16 had the highest probability of falling into the lowest income bracket, earning less than 25,000 Canadian dollars a year. The probability of earning a higher personal and household income increased significantly as people delayed having children. The financial benefits of waiting to have a child leveled off between the ages of 26 and 31.
Household income showed highly pronounced patterns at the upper end of the earning scale. People who had a child at age 16 had the lowest probability of living in a household earning 125,000 Canadian dollars or more. The chance of reaching this top income bracket sloped upwards for those who delayed parenthood, peaking for individuals who had their first child around age 29. After age 29, the probability of reaching this highest income bracket slowly declined.
The researchers also discovered that having children at younger ages was associated with poorer self-rated physical health. People who became parents in their teens or early twenties reported worse physical health later in life. This negative association improved steadily for those who delayed parenthood, stabilizing around age 26. Mental health followed a straighter pattern, with older first-time parents reporting slightly better mental health overall without a specific plateau.
Interestingly, life satisfaction did not seem to change based on the age someone became a parent. People reported similar levels of overall happiness regardless of when they had their first child. The authors suggest this might be due to a clustering of high scores. The average response for life satisfaction was around eight on a ten-point scale across all groups, which might have masked subtle differences.
“The findings show that the younger someone is when they become a parent, the more likely they are to experience long-term challenges, including not finishing high school, reporting poorer health, and having lower income across the lifespan,” MacDonald said. “These patterns were similar for teen and young fathers and teen and young mothers.”
The authors caution that these results highlight systemic barriers rather than personal failures. “However, these findings do not mean that teen or young parents cannot succeed,” MacDonald explained. “They mean that success may become much more difficult without support.”
“Some people may interpret these findings as confirmation of pessimistic views about teen and young parents,” MacDonald continued. “I would encourage them to think about the issue more meaningfully. Teen and young parents, regardless of how they became parents or whether others approve of their situation, are not ‘doomed to fail.’ But they may face much greater barriers if the people and institutions around them do not offer support.”
Providing structural and community assistance appears to be a necessary step for these young families. “Teenagers and young adults are more likely to succeed when their communities support them,” MacDonald said. “Their futures, and the futures of their children, are shaped in part by how parents, teachers, adults, schools, and communities respond to them.”
“Contraception and sexual education are important tools for preventing unwanted or early pregnancies,” MacDonald emphasized. “But once a young person has become a parent, the response should not be judgment and abandonment. We would not say to a child with a broken foot, ‘I told you not to do that, good luck fixing it.’ In the same way, we should not say to a teen or young adult with a child, ‘I told you not to do that, good luck in life.’”
The findings provide evidence for a concept known as liminality theory. A liminal period is a transitional phase in life, such as moving from high school to adulthood or shifting from living with parents to living independently. When a person takes on the demands of parenthood during one of these sensitive transitions, their personal development can stall.
Because of this disruption, a young person might struggle to finish their education or establish a career. The researchers suggest that young parents often become stuck in the specific phase of life they were in when they had their child. This prolonged disruption leaves lasting impacts that follow the young parent for the rest of their life, well beyond their teenage years or early twenties.
The scientists also addressed potential misinterpretations of the study. “I want to be clear that this research is not encouraging teen parenthood or suggesting that teenagers should be having children,” MacDonald noted. “Becoming a parent as a teenager or young adult is clearly very challenging.”
“The purpose of this research is to better understand the challenges that teen and young parents face after they have become parents, and to highlight the importance of support rather than stigma,” MacDonald added.
There are a few limitations to the study to consider. The sample included a significantly higher number of women than men in the younger parent categories. The researchers suggest that some young fathers might not have reported children they are disconnected from or unaware of. Geographic data also recorded the participants’ current location rather than where they lived when they became parents, and health metrics relied on self-reported perception rather than official medical records.
Despite these limitations, the large sample size and robust statistical methods provide strong evidence for the long-term impacts of early parenthood. The researchers plan to expand on this foundational data in upcoming projects.
“This study is the first in a series of studies I am conducting as part of my PhD dissertation,” MacDonald said. “I am currently working on the next stage of this research, which will look more closely at potential differences between teen and young fathers and teen and young mothers.”
The study, “Congratulations, it’s a risk factor! Varied social determinants of health at different ages of becoming a parent in Canada,” was authored by Jordan MacDonald and David Speed.