A multi-level contextual approach to adolescent fertility among Mexican-origin women: Neighborhood socioeconomic and cultural contexts

One fourth of the over 500,000 babies born to U.S. adolescent mothers in 1995 were births to Hispanic teenagers, the majority of whom are of Mexican descent. Prior studies find that race conditions neighborhood socioeconomic context effects on adolescent fertility, but the applicability of this finding to Mexican-origin teens has been unclear. This study compares neighborhood socioeconomic context effects on transitions to sexual activity, pregnancy, and parenthood among Mexican-origin, other Hispanic, African American, and non-Hispanic white adolescents and examines the mechanisms through which contexts operate. It builds upon theoretical perspectives used in previous studies of adolescent fertility to confirm a contextual theoretical framework in which social capital held by adolescents and their parents cultivates social control.;The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) provides detailed multi-source, multi-level information from two time points for 6,873 U.S.-resident female secondary school students, including 589 Mexican Americans, who were not parenting at the first interview in 1994--1995. Among these, 6,543 were not pregnant, and 4,779 were not sexually active. Equivalent adolescent and parent behavior and attitude information, collected in 1999 in Oaxaca, Mexico, provides baseline culture-of-origin data.;Generalized estimating equation models controlling for neighborhood clustering show that, unadjusted for an adolescent's family background, neighborhood poverty increases the likelihood of all three outcomes; middle class residence decreases it. Multivariate models find that (1) the transition to pregnancy results from family selection to particular residential areas and (2) neighborhoods affect sexual activity and parenthood differently across ethnic groups and family backgrounds. Unlike for other ethnic groups, Mexican Americans from low-resource families are unaffected by low neighborhood SES and are significantly disadvantaged when living in a middle class neighborhood. Findings indicate that social capital and parent support mediate neighborhood contextual effects. The role of cultural assimilation illuminates the unique case of Mexican immigrant families. Comparison of the U.S. Mexican and Oaxacan families shows that exposure to U.S. contexts changes parenting strategies and children's sources for supportive relationships. These findings demonstrate how cultural change applies to neighborhood social context and social control occurs through collective socialization to influence adolescent fertility.