Young Mothers and Their Children: An Examination of Risk Profiles and Service Decisions in a High Risk Child Welfare Sample

Purpose:

Early childbearing is associated with a number of risks for both parents and children, including the likelihood of child maltreatment and involvement in the child welfare system. The purpose of this paper is to compare the clinical child welfare investigation characteristics of mothers who give birth in adolescence and mothers who give birth in their twenties, thirties, and forties.

Method:

This analysis examines mothers involved in the child welfare system using data from the provincially representative Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2013 (OIS-2013). The OIS-2013 collected information about a representative sample of investigations selected from 17 child welfare agencies in Ontario in 2013. Mothers who were age 18 and under at the time of investigation were compared to mothers who were age 19 to 21, age 22 to 30, age 31 to 40, and age 41 and older. The sample was weighted with regionalization and annualization weights to reflect provincial annual estimates (weighted n=9,369). Descriptive, chi-square and logistic regression analyses were conducted.

Results:

Younger mothers and their children were commonly referred to child welfare services by police, hospitals, and relatives, often because of concerns about the risk of future maltreatment rather than a specific incident of abuse or neglect. The analysis revealed a clear pattern in which socioeconomic disadvantage was highest for the youngest mothers and lowest for the oldest mothers. A similar pattern emerged when examining social support, with the oldest mothers least likely to have few social supports. Younger mothers were also more likely than older mothers to live with family or friends rather than in their own home. Further, almost one-third of mothers age 18 and under were co-parenting with their child’s grandparent. For almost three-quarters of the youngest mothers (18 and under), the current investigation was their first contact with the child welfare system as a parent. However, younger mothers were significantly more likely than older mothers to have a history of foster care or group home placement during childhood.

Investigations involving younger mothers tended to result in more intensive child protective service responses. Compared to investigations involving older mothers, investigations involving younger mothers were significantly more likely to be transferred to ongoing services even when controlling for ethno-racial status, type of investigation, previous child welfare investigations, caregiver risks, and family structure.

Conclusions:

Young mothers are more likely than their older counterparts to live in high-risk contexts. Many live with family or friends and they tend to be socioeconomically disadvantaged and have few social supports. In the context of these complex issues, child welfare service providers tend to respond with more intrusive interventions for younger mothers. These interventions may be preventive given that the investigation is often focused on risk of future maltreatment rather than a past event of abuse or neglect. These findings suggest that child welfare services represent an important point of contact for younger mothers; however, the effectiveness of these services in preventing child maltreatment and addressing complex risk factors must be assessed.