The adaptation of adolescent mothers to challenges encountered by early chi
ldbearing is characterized by much diversity. The focus of the current rese
arch was to identify protective factors at the time of the initial pregnanc
y that predispose the young mother to resiliency. These factors were used a
s predictor variables in a stepwise discriminatory model to categorize 103
early childbearers as resilient or vulnerable 5 years after the birth of th
eir first child. Six variables accounted for 46% of the variance between th
e resilient and vulnerable mothers. Resilient adolescents had completed mor
e schooling at the time of the pregnancy, were relatively younger, had more
support from friends and siblings, more empathic parenting attitudes, and
somewhat lower verbal intelligence scores than their vulnerable counterpart
s. The linear discriminant function based on these six variables was then a
pplied to an independent sample of 26 adolescent mothers. The function corr
ectly classified 67% of the vulnerable mothers and 92% of the resilient mot
hers. Implications for more focused interventions with pregnant adolescents
are discussed.