Demographic characteristics in adult paternity for first births to adolescents under 15 years of age

Purpose: To examine parental demographic characteristics by adult (greater than or equal to 20 years at baby's conception) and teenage (< 20 years at baby's conception) paternity in births to very young adolescents ( < 15 yea rs at baby's conception). Methods: This was a population-based, retrospective cohort analysis of all 12,317 very young adolescent mothers residing in California with a first si ngleton live birth during 1993-1995. Risks for adult, compared to teenage, paternity were evaluated using multivariate logistic regression. Results: Adult fathers, responsible for 26.7% of births to very young adole scents, were a mean of 8.8 years older than the mother. The risk factors fo r adult compared to adolescent paternity were as follows: father's educatio nal attainment of at least 3 years below that considered adequate for his a ge [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 8.34], father's (AOR = 2.46) or mother's (A OR = 1.36) educational attainment 1-2 years below that considered adequate for their age, mother's birthplace outside the United States (AOR = 3.12), and father's Hispanic ethnicity (AOR = 1.60) or African-American race (AOR = 1.50). Conclusions: Adult fathers were responsible for over one quarter of the bir ths in our study. Adolescent pregnancy prevention focusing on younger adole scents must programmatically address adult paternity. Variations in adult p aternity patterns across cultural groups suggest that we need further study of the role that cultural beliefs and practices play in very young adolesc ent pregnancy. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 1999.