Data were collected on a total of 269 pregnant adolescents--146 who chose to parent their children and 123 who chose to relinquish their children for adoption. This sample represents adolescent mothers served by a pregnancy counseling program affiliated with a large adoption agency in the Pacific Northwest. The major objective of the study was to compare the two groups with respect to subsequent educational attainment, marriage and fertility, labor force participation, income, and various social/psychological measures, such as satisfaction with their decision to parent or relinquish, life satisfaction, and self-esteem.

The research was designed to serve two separate objectives. The first was to provide basic descriptive information necessary to answer the questions, "Do adolescent mothers who place their children for adoption experience more or less favorable outcomes than adolescent mothers who elect to parent their children?" and "In what respects do relinquishing adolescents fare better or worse than parenting adolescents?" To date, there is very little information regarding the subsequent experiences of adolescent mothers who elect to relinquish children for adoption. There are two primary reasons for this lack of information. First, relinquishment is an increasingly rare event; second, adoption has been traditionally a highly confidential process making it difficult or impossible to collect data from relinquishing mothers.

The second objective of this research was to contribute to the literature on the consequences of adolescent fertility by drawing on the unique opportunity offered by this study to compare outcomes among adolescent mothers who share the experience of a live birth, but who differ in the relinquish versus parent decision. Since both groups of adolescents had a live birth but only one group parented the child, observed differences between the two groups can more confidently be attributed to the experience of caring for a child as an adolescent mother.