• Vocational Education Opportunities
• Vocational Education Access and Use
• Choosing Gender-Nontraditional Careers
• Summary

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN TEEN PARENT PROGRAMS

School staff everywhere strongly support the goal of economic self-sufficiency for teen mothers. But consensus about how such self-sufficiency might be best achieved, and when, is less apparent. Many staff believe that the best route to economic self-sufficiency for most program enrollees is job-skills training at the secondary level and a high school diploma. By pursuing both at the secondary level, the amount of time mothers must remain in school is minimized, and the risk of dropping out and abruptly terminating training thereby reduced. If vocational education and training programs are carefully selected and sequenced, the acquisition of marketable skills upon completion of high school is believed likely.

But staff are often reluctant to actively advocate this mix. Two concerns get in the way. First, staff in every program we visited expressed fears that their active support for vocational education would convey to program enrollees, their parents, and district staff that teen mothers are incapable of higher education--a concern that reflects widespread perceptions of vocational education as the province of low ability students (e.g., Oakes, 1983). For teen parent program staff, this issue is particularly touchy because teen mothers are involved. Professionally committed to helping young mothers, they do not wish to convey to them the sense that they are incapable of school success or of fulfilling their dreams.

Second, staff hesitate to advocate vocational education because of concerns that active career preparation may overload young mothers for whom simply remaining in school is a considerable achievement. Staff in many sites noted that the increasingly technical and rigorous nature of many vocational education programs, designed to impart skills more relevant to the workforce, makes involvement by teen mothers problematic. Longer hours in some programs, strict attendance requirements in others, and the need to travel to the off-site locations where the most advanced programs are available make it difficult for young mothers to attend and succeed in these programs. If teen mothers find themselves in such situations, staff fear that they will just give up and leave school, forgoing the specific vocational education opportunity, a high school diploma, and the many supportive services the teen parent program offers.

These concerns contribute to widespread reluctance to actively promote vocational education, even in programs where it is a major program feature. They combine with other concerns, discussed below, to make active staff support for gender-nontraditional careers even less likely. In this attitudinal context, we explore vocational education opportunities, access, and use in the programs that we visited.

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES

There existed no formal barriers in any of our districts to vocational education for pregnant and parenting students, whether they attended regular school or special programs. Respondents believed that vocational education and skills training were as available to pregnant and parenting students as they were to nonparenting students. To many, however, availability simply indicated that pregnant and parenting students were not formally blocked from participating in vocational education. However, a lack of formal barriers may not imply equal access to these opportunities. Lack of child care, transportation, and minimal academic skills may limit access in fact.

The array of formal vocational education opportunities available to enrollees in the special programs in which we interviewed is impressive. Most provide enrollees with opportunities for job readiness training, vocational skills assessment, employment counseling and planning, job-specific training, work experience, and job placement assistance, as shown in Table 3.1. Many of these opportunities are available on-site, without the need to travel. More than half of the programs that we queried offer vocational skills assessment and employment counseling services on-site.[39] These findings are consistent with those in our fieldwork programs, as shown in Table 3.2.

Vocational Guidance

All programs in our fieldwork sample provide career guidance of some sort, although the intensity and formality of this guidance varies substantially from program to program. Four programs offer career guidance through formal coursework; the remaining seven provide career guidance through counseling. Coursework is limited to generalized introductions to various vocational fields and work on employability skills such as preparing resumes, being interviewed, and dressing appropriately. Most students enter the guidance classes with unclear or unrealistic assumptions about the jobs that they will pursue, and staff appear to do little to sharpen or alter these career notions, an issue discussed in more detail below.

Only two of the programs in our sample had made a major resource commitment to career guidance. Staff in these programs had obtained Perkins Sex Equity funding (Title II) to hire a guidance counselor whose job responsibilities include aptitude testing, career exploration, and review of employability skills. Both of these programs offer field trips, provide guest speakers, and furnish posters and other support materials encouraging vocational education and career planning, particularly in gender-nontraditional fields.

Other programs had made more limited attempts to connect enrollees to the world of work and increase their sense of themselves as future workers. In one program, for example, employers come to the program one day a year and, after interviewing enrollees, provide each with an "employability profile."

Vocational Skills Training

Skills training, through vocational coursework or on-the-job training, is available to enrollees in all but three of the visited programs. In most programs, these opportunities are available outside the program, in classes that mix parenting students with their nonparenting peers.

On-site opportunities are limited. As shown in Table 3.2, just four programs provide vocational skills training on-site for teen mothers only. Three of these programs limit the training offered to one course: business, typetronics, and computers. In the fourth program, a school for teen mothers with substantial enrollment located in a large district, size permits it to offer vocational education classes similar to those at a comprehensive high school. This program has developed a dynamic and popular entrepreneurial program in industrial sewing. None of this on-site training leads to state certification. Advanced skills training and programs leading to state certification are found only in co-site or off-site locations.

Four programs offer vocational training through the schools with which they are collocated; in these cases, program enrollees may cross-enroll in vocational education as long as they are willing to mix with nonparenting students. Five programs offer vocational skills training to program enrollees at remote locations, so that teen mothers must travel each day to use them. Two of these programs also offer on-site vocational education (one course each, described above). A third program, unique in our sample, requires that enrollees participate in vocational education. Students must either take courses at the regional voc-tech school or engage in a supervised work-study job at the program site.

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION ACCESS AND USE

Vocational Education Access^[40]

On the basis of interviews with program staff, each telephone interviewer made a global assessment of the access that program enrollees had to workforce-oriented vocational education as compared to nonparenting students.[41] These ratings included the number of opportunities that focused on nontraditional jobs,[42] strong sex equity efforts, and physical access, assessed both in terms of program location and by the percentage of enrollees currently involved in vocational education. If the opportunities were exclusively off-site for pregnant and parenting students but on-site for the nonparenting, access for teen parents was considered to be less than equal.

Estimates of the percentage of enrollees who typically used or were currently taking advantage of vocational education opportunities often were the most difficult to obtain. In programs that did not stress vocational education, program staff generally had no idea of the numbers of enrollees involved with vocational education. Usually, vocational educators were also unable to guess at these numbers. In one case, our questions about vocational education use sparked discussion of this issue for the first time. More commonly, staff were able to concur on an estimate but reached it without benefit of any recorded information.

Interviewer ratings of teen parent access reveal a wide range, with some effects of program type. One-quarter of the programs included in our sample were rated as providing teen parent program enrollees better access to workforce-related vocational education than was available to nonparenting students. Generally, these were mainstream programs located on the site of a voc-tech center, which meant that teen parents did not need to travel but nonparenting students did. Other pregnant and parenting programs with "better" access provide enrollees in-depth vocational counseling and pre-employment skills training on-site as a core program component. Parenting teens who receive this special attention are described by school and program staff as knowing more about available vocational education training opportunities and as more likely to participate in them than nonparenting students, who do not receive this special attention. Some programs reported a fairly high proportion of pregnant and parenting students involved in vocational education and better retention rates for those pregnant and parenting students who are involved than for nonparenting students.

One-third of programs were rated as providing the same "true" access to vocational education opportunities for program enrollees as was provided to nonparenting students. These programs tended to be mainstream programs in which parenting and nonparenting students attended most classes together, often on the site of a specialized voc-tech center.

Another third of teen parent programs were rated as providing pregnant and parenting students unequal and inferior access.[43] Most informal programs fell into this category. Separate site, comprehensive programs in which many vocational opportunities require travel also appear in this category.

In some programs, vocational education access was intentionally limited; often it was sacrificed to meet other goals. Since many comprehensive programs are available to enrollees for a limited time and focus during that time on the pregnancy, vocational education opportunities are constrained, and few enrollees choose to take advantage of those available. Staff in these programs often consider vocational education a distant second or third to simply keeping enrollees in school during this period and providing support for parenting. For example, in one program located at a separate site, classes are compressed into a half-day schedule to accommodate medical and other appointments. Although some vocational education is available in the program, no enrollees had room in their schedules for it.

More often, logistical problems reduce teen parent access to vocational education. In one district, the teen parent program is not available at the voc-tech center, and transportation to it from the teen parent program is not available either. Consequently, pregnant and parenting students who choose to enroll in the teen parent program are forced to forgo the specialized vocational education opportunities available at the voc-tech center. In several other districts, extended day vocational education programs make them inaccessible to students who use child care centers that close at the end of the regular school day. In other districts, strict policies with regard to absences in some vocational education programs make it impossible for pregnant and parenting students to sustain participation. One vocational educator to whom we spoke delineated the issues surrounding pregnant and parenting students' access to vocational education. "In theory," he said, "they have the same opportunity as any other student." But he then went on to explain that in his district, vocational training programs often involved a "commitment" of time and effort not required by other school programs. Some offerings begin very early in the morning, and others tend to run late in the day. Pregnant and parenting students, he said, are unlikely to want to make that commitment, or may be unable to do so.

In nearly all programs, staff were far more eager and able to discuss vocational education opportunities than they were to discuss issues of access and use. We were surprised by how rarely vocational education participation was tracked, even in programs purporting to place considerable emphasis upon it. The lack of information reflects the general dearth of evaluation data in these programs, as discussed above, but also reflects the programs' often ambivalent stance on vocational education. Seen as desirable and perhaps even essential at some point, many staff were unsure of the importance of vocational education during the often brief period of program enrollment.

Our data suggest that access and use are facilitated when a member of the teen parent program staff is formally responsible for vocational education. The absence of such an individual in nearly every program, and also the lack of a person within the vocational education system with responsibility for teen parents, contribute to the low vocational education profile in most teen parent programs. These factors in turn limit the amount of attention and resources devoted to improving vocational education access and use, as discussed below.

Use Patterns^[44]

In general, use of skills training is fairly low in the 11 programs that we visited, as shown in Table 3.3. In only two programs do all or most enrollees take advantage of available vocational education opportunities; one of these programs requires vocational education enrollment. According to respondents, only a handful of young mothers from each program enroll in any vocational education each year; they are much more likely to enroll in vocational education when it is offered on-site through the program. When on-site vocational education courses satisfy multiple needs, enrollment is very high. The industrial sewing course mentioned above, for example, enrolls two-thirds of the program's teen mothers each year and always has a waiting list. Staff believe this occurs because the class allows mothers to sew clothes their babies need, teaches them a marketable (if low-paying) skill, and helps enrollees earn money by providing a market for student projects.

Teen mothers are less likely to take advantage of co-site vocational education options even though transportation is not necessary. Staff explain that enrollees often do not use it because they are more comfortable remaining with other teen mothers in the teen parent program. Indeed, several staff noted that the reason many young mothers come to comprehensive programs is to avoid interaction with nonparenting peers. Nevertheless, in some programs co-site vocational education is used by many enrollees. In these programs, vocational education is "programmed in." For example, all enrollees are walked over together, they participate in prescheduled shadowing programs, or they receive all of their education at the co-site, and they obtain only ancillary services through the teen parent program.

Rarely do teen mothers choose to participate in vocational education when it requires travel off-site. Even with transportation, cross-enrollments are low; of three programs offering travel, only one has enrollees regularly availing themselves of this option; in this program, vocational education is required. Administrators at the vocational education centers serving the other two programs explained that teen mothers do not come because they are not sent by teen parent program staff; other interviews in this and other districts revealed that teen mothers may not be invited. According to teen parent program staff, some staff at the vocational education centers prefer to fill available spots with other, more "deserving" students on their long waiting lists.

In the three programs with only off-site vocational education and no transportation, there is no cross-enrollment whatsoever. Although one of these programs claims that it will accommodate any enrollee who would like to participate in vocational education, the arrangements that would be necessary are complex and depend upon the teen mother to take the initiative. The other two programs openly acknowledge the absence of vocational education but believe that such a tradeoff has to be made if they are to provide other services. In these districts, teen mothers must choose between the teen parent program, which offers child care, and the local vocational center or comprehensive high school, which offer vocational education but do not provide child care. Lack of transportation does not permit both.

Program goals appear to affect the use of vocational education opportunities, as shown in Table 3.4. Programs with clear self-sufficiency or employment development goals are more likely to enroll teen mothers in vocational education. Four out of five programs in our sample with such goals enrolled at least some teen mothers in vocational education. In two, most or all were enrolled; in two others, use was lower. The fifth program put its economic self-sufficiency goal into operation by focusing on acquisition of a high school diploma, and assumed that young mothers would get post-secondary education and job-skills training after program completion. In this program, there were no vocational enrollments at all.

Two out of six programs without employment-related goals had no vocational education enrollments, whereas two enrolled some teen mothers in vocational education. The remaining two programs in our sample provided ancillary services only; since teen mothers involved in these programs attend regular school programs, some who use these services enroll in vocational education but do so without any special support from the teen parent program.

These enrollment patterns suggest limited teen mother commitment to vocational education; when the costs are high they tend to forgo these opportunities. Staff, too, are ambivalent about vocational education for teen mothers; this ambivalence is translated into a lack of encouragement to take vocational education and the absence of meaningful access in some cases. Schedule overloads, the dominance of other goals, and self-selection into teen parent programs and away from vocational education influence use. These and other barriers to vocational education are discussed in more detail below.

Barriers to Use

Child care and transportation. It is not enough that teen mothers receive child care and transportation; these services must be coordinated with vocational education opportunities if they are not to pose a barrier to them. In only one of the seven sites in which the teen parent program and vocational education exist in separate locations does transportation exist that takes child care location into consideration. Even in this site, where buses are available between the program, voc-tech center, child care, and home, the timing of the buses is variable enough to make connections difficult. Although nonparenting students in this district are able to leave directly for home from the voc-tech center at the end of the day, mothers have to go from the voc-tech site back to the teen parent program to collect their children from child care before catching a bus home. Sometimes the bus home from the teen parent program, geared to students on-site, has already left by the time parents arrive from the voc-tech center. These problems illustrate the complex logistical issues involved in making vocational education accessible to teen mothers. Most of the programs in our sample that offered off-site vocational education had not even begun to think through the effect of these issues on use of vocational education.

Goal conflicts. Most of the programs that we visited impose course requirements on their participants designed to further key program goals, particularly parenting goals. Often, these requirements conflict with vocational education participation. As described in Sec. 2, programs tend to focus on academic and parenting skills; consequently, enrollees' schedules are often filled with academic and parenting classes. Indeed, in six of the 11 programs that we visited, the goal of improved parenting skills was implemented through required time each day in prenatal, parenting, or child development coursework. Some of these programs required such involvement of mothers for as long as they were enrolled in the teen parent program, even when that involvement continued for years. Although these programs also recognized the importance of vocational preparation for mothers, required parenting components frequently made participation in vocational coursework impossible. Staff typically were proud of the parenting requirements and the progress they were making in teaching enrollees how to be good mothers. Often, no one had considered that the intensive commitment to parenting interfered with participation in other coursework, particularly vocational education. When our interviewer noted this barrier, staff appeared to accept it, bowing to what they perceived as the greater urgency of parenting education.

Strengthened academic requirements. School district officials in all our sample sites reported districtwide declines in vocational enrollments as a result of increased academic requirements. These increased academic requirements reduce access to vocational education for all students by limiting the time available for vocational education classes in their schedules. The effect of reinforced academics was even greater for teen mothers. Many teen mothers are behind in their academic work because of absences or inadequate skill levels. Often, they cannot meet entry requirements for vocational training programs without considerable remedial work. Only one teen parent program in our sample had intervened to help enrollees meet these requirements while beginning vocational education program participation. Yet staff in several programs noted that such simultaneous preparation would encourage more teen mothers to become involved in vocational education opportunities.

Program hours. Schedules often leave little room for vocational education, particularly when programs operate on reduced hours to accommodate clinic appointments and well baby visits. Vocational education program hours can also limit access. When vocational education extends beyond the teen parent program's school day, transportation and child care problems multiply. In most districts, there is no late afternoon school transportation. Since teen parent program nurseries are timed to coincide with the school day, mothers usually cannot leave their children at the center for the additional time needed to participate in extended day vocational education. One alternative school had to make special arrangements for teen parents to meet a schoolwide requirement for work-study participation because of these logistical difficulties. Teen parents were allowed to be teachers' aides on-site rather than participating in off-site on-the-job training. Teachers' aides cleaned blackboards and ran the copiers, providing them little or no job-skills training. These adjustments were made because vocational education was required; had it not been, no doubt teen mothers would simply have forgone it.

Teen mothers as decisionmakers. Most programs leave decisions about vocational education to teen mothers. Although programs usually require parenting coursework without regard to the student's background or interests, they shy away from making any equivalent demands for vocational education. Program staff say they leave the decision to take vocational education or college-prep courses to the individual, neither promoting nor discouraging the pursuit of work-relevant courses. They adopt this hands-off approach, staff say, in the interest of meeting individual needs and preferences. Program staff failed to see any inconsistency between required and often intensive parenting coursework and a hands-off approach to vocational education or intensive, individualized career planning.

Virtually all the teen mothers whom we interviewed indicated that becoming pregnant had made them more concerned about a career than they had been before. Typical was a 15-year-old with a two-year-old child. When asked if parenthood had made her more concerned about a career, she said, "Yes, definitely. I never even thought about it before." A 16-year-old mimicked this response: "Before (I got pregnant)," she said, "I wouldn't care about working, I just thought about going out with my friends." Now, she indicated she is much more focused on school, because "I want a future for myself and my daughter." A 17-year-old who is graduating early indicated that her pregnancy had led her to want to finish school as quickly as possible so that she could begin to earn money. A teen parent program staff member suggested and helped her plan an accelerated program.

In a few cases, the return to school represented the acceptance of a personal challenge. A 19-year-old senior with a three-month-old son told us that becoming pregnant had made her much more serious about school. She had run away from home the previous year and had not attended school, missing the chance to graduate with her class. When she became pregnant, her father said that now she had really messed up her life. Returning to school, she told us, represented "my opportunity to show them (my family) that I could get my life together."

The few teen mothers whose career concerns had not increased since pregnancy were almost all married or engaged. One respondent who planned to marry before the impending birth told us that her pregnancy had decreased her career motivation, as she intended to marry and stay home with her baby. The baby's father, who was also a senior, had abandoned his college plans to support the family. At the time of the interview, he was exploring enlistment in the Air Force, as he had heard that they might pay for college. A second teen parent told us that she was less concerned about her own career, but "more concerned about my husband's career." Her husband, aged 24, had a good job that had enabled them to purchase a house. One unmarried mother told us that her career ambition had declined since her baby's birth. "You have to think about your child too (in addition to your career)--if the baby's sick, forget your career."

Most of our respondents were taking at least some steps to prepare for a career. For our interviewees, virtually all of whom were in school, staying in school was currently the key component of career preparation. Indeed, several young mothers who had dropped out of school before pregnancy were motivated by the pregnancy, and by the availability of a special teen parent program, to return to school and prepare for a career. One of these young mothers, 15 years old, indicated that "having the baby made me change my life a lot. I wanted to come back (to school); I'm glad that I came back."

Those who returned to school tended to do so because of having learned about the teen parent program from a friend or relative, or from an ad on television. Similarly, most of the teen parents who were attending school when their pregnancy became known did not learn of the teen parent program from school staff. The failure to obtain such information from school staff occurred in some part because teens rarely confided in school staff about their pregnancy. In other cases, however, school staff who did know about a pregnancy failed to use the opportunity to inform the teen parent of her options. Typical of this latter situation was a report from an 18-year-old with two children. When she was pregnant with her first child, the principal approached her and asked her if she was pregnant, "but he gave me no advice, support, or referrals."

A few teen mothers who did consult with school staff about their options indicated to us that they had received incomplete information. In one district that we visited, for example, the only option was a weekly support group. Those who wanted more support could transfer to a larger neighboring district, to enroll in their comprehensive teen parent program under an interdistrict agreement. None of the teen parents to whom we spoke, all of whom were enrolled in the more limited local program, had known or been informed of the latter opportunity. Although most of those with whom we discussed the neighboring program indicated that they would not have wanted to leave their friends to attend, one teen parent said that knowing about that option would have made a big difference to her. Her parents had reacted very negatively to her pregnancy and had put pressure on her to leave school because of the embarrassment it might cause a younger sister enrolled in the same school. She did remain in school, but being able to go to another district would have substantially reduced family tensions.

Most respondents indicated that they had never spoken with anyone at school about vocational education or careers more generally. Those few who had spoken with someone told us that they were encouraged to pursue vocational education. In some cases, these encounters were limited to speakers coming into the teen parent program to talk about careers; more often, the discussion was personal. The content often focused on the value of vocational education to an already-chosen career. Typical was a pregnant sophomore who wanted to be a nurse. A discussion with her guidance teacher focused on the value of the skills that she would acquire in vocational education to her future career as a nurse. In her case, a health occupations class in the 11th grade and health-related on-the-job training in her senior year were suggested. A pregnant 16-year-old with the same career goal was similarly advised. One teen mother told a very different story. Her academic advisor had warned her against vocational education, which, she said, teen mothers are often advised to take. The advisor encouraged her to continue to plan for college. However, her impending marriage and the responsibilities of motherhood had led her to decide that a high school diploma was sufficient aspiration for the time being. She had graduated from high school and was now awaiting the birth.

We saw considerable evidence of reticence on the part of teen parents to go out of their way to get vocational training. They typically do not approach program personnel and ask to have their schedules revised or arrangements made to accommodate off-site or co-site vocational education. Indeed, teen parents typically deal with the many pressures they face by taking the easiest path through school. If vocational education is expected of all participants and the arrangements to take it are institutionalized, teen mothers will comply. If obstacles exist, the commitment to taking vocational education is often too tenuous to see the obstacles through. Leaving the responsibility for vocational education to teen mothers creates an additional barrier to its use.

In the programs that we visited, we saw that provision of strong career guidance and active vocational education recruitment gives teen mothers employment direction and facilitates vocational education enrollments. For example, in one GED program that we visited, 100 percent of last year's graduates were involved in post-secondary training as a result of active guidance and directiveness on the part of program staff. Such guidance can also reduce barriers to vocational education while enrolled in the program. In one district that we visited, active guidance led to demands by most enrollees for vocational education. In this district, entry into voc-tech programs requires passage of eligibility exams. Demands by teen mothers for immediate entry, with support from program staff, led the district to coordinate the remedial education and voc-tech programs, so that teen mothers could begin job-skills training while they studied to pass the eligibility exams. This example illustrates that the more teen mothers know about what is available in the job market and in their own school system, and the more support and direction they receive, the better able they are to recognize and advocate for access to vocational education.

CHOOSING GENDER-NONTRADITIONAL CAREERS

Adult respondents in all 11 programs we visited recognized that work in traditionally female professions is not well paid. Consequently, they are virtually unanimous in endorsing the concept of gender-nontraditional careers for teen parents. Most, staff noted, would be the sole support of their coming baby and of any subsequent babies as well. Gender-traditional work was virtually guaranteed, they believed, to provide at best a life style characterized by limited economic opportunity. At worst, with additional children, gender-traditional work would consign a family to working poverty and the problems of the working poor, e.g., limited or no employer-provided health coverage.

Two of the 11 school districts that we visited had applied for and received Perkins funds to support efforts to encourage the choice of gender-nontraditional careers. In these districts, Perkins funds were combined with other funds to support a teen parent program counselor whose job it is to promote gender-nontraditional careers. These counselors arrange for speakers and field trips and design shadowing programs, often providing these services for nonparenting students as well.

In several other programs, a conscious decision had been made not to apply for Perkins funds because the cost of applying for and administering the limited funds available was perceived to outweigh any possible benefits. In these programs, no other efforts are made to support nontraditional choices.

Whether or not their program attempted to encourage gender-nontraditional career choices, adult respondents everywhere perceived such efforts as likely to be limited at best in their effect. Program staff told us that when teen mothers made any career choices, they tended to choose gender-traditional ones; most commonly clerical, cosmetology, and industrial sewing. Some slight increase in the numbers of female students enrolling in male-traditional classes was noted in some districts, but these increases were not attributed to any special efforts to encourage such enrollments. In other districts, no one had bothered to track the numbers of young women making gender-nontraditional career choices. In still others, most respondents believed that the popularity of gender-nontraditional careers had not increased at all. This was not a surprise to staff, who often felt they were up against the collective strength of generations of sex-role prescriptions in attempting to alter students' career choices.

Staff perceptions were largely borne out in our discussions with teen parents. With few exceptions, the career goals of the young mothers to whom we spoke were gender-traditional. The majority were interested in cosmetology, nursing, office work, and medical assistance. A few were interested in elementary school teaching.

These career goals tracked closely with the vocational experiences that our respondents had had or were currently having. Typing, secretarial, and cosmetology topped the list of vocational education courses they had taken; indeed, there were few others on the list.

The strong commitment to the principle of nontraditional careers and the widespread perception that programmatic efforts to promote these choices were only minimally effective led to frustration for many teen parent program and vocational education staff. However, this frustration did not impel staff to work informally and individually to promote these outcomes. Most commonly, we found the opposite. Staff in several teen parent programs indicated that although they were aware that the pattern of career choices among program enrollees was quite traditional, they felt there was little they could do and there were numerous costs associated with trying.

Only a very few of the teens to whom we spoke had talked with any school staff about gender-nontraditional work or career preparation. Those few who had done so indicated that the discussion had focused on nontraditional career options and on the higher salaries that could be made in these sorts of jobs. But these discussions did not appear to influence career decisions.

Our interviews indicate that teen mothers, whether or not they consult with any school staff, make career decisions on their own or in consultation with parents and partners. In a few instances, parents had obviously had a big role in career decisionmaking. One teen mother who had always wanted to be a teacher had planned to enroll in a business data class to be able to support her child in the short term. Her parents, with whom she lived, forbade her to enroll in the business data class, or in any other vocational education course, on grounds that she might then forsake her ambition to attend college and teach school.

Nearly all interviewees professed to having a career goal (only the youngest seemed uncertain); most told us that they had had it for a long time. Although about half indicated that they had been exposed to some discussion of career options or vocational education, either from regular school staff (usually counselors) or teen parent program staff, they tended not to follow any advice offered, choosing courses on the basis of long-standing career goals, which, as noted above, were overwhelmingly gender-traditional. One 16-year-old with a one-year-old child told us that she had been encouraged to pursue the health occupations and to consider the higher-paying ones. She had long wanted to be a medical assistant, she said, so she basically ignored the advice to prepare for higher-paying health-related work. An 18-year-old with two children had talked with the employability teacher who worked with the teen parent program about gender-nontraditional options. Although she learned that these options often paid much better than gender-traditional ones, she was continuing to pursue her goal of becoming an LVN or RN, because "I don't like mechanics or road work."

Staff efforts to encourage more ambitious choices within a given career met with similar resistance. Several teen mothers described discussions that they had had with school staff in which the staff member pressed them to pursue a more ambitious track. In one case, for example, the staff member encouraged a teen mother who was enrolling in a clerical course to pursue accounting instead. The young mother decided against it, because she thought that it would be too hard. At the time of our visit, this young mother had graduated from high school and was enrolled in a nursing program at the local community college. In another case, a counselor urged a teen mother to move from the clerical to the secretarial sequence. She decided against it, choosing to remain in the clerical course she had chosen earlier because she had heard it was easier.

Even when problems emerged in pursuing their career preparation, teen parents rarely sought out the help of school staff. For example, one young mother wanted to study photography, but was unable to enroll in the already full class. She chose cosmetology instead. She had never thought to ask for help in getting into the photography class, or in thinking about other options.

One program we visited was located in an agricultural area. Here, staff had put aside their wish to promote gender-nontraditional careers and had adopted an approach to career choice that accommodated the conservative views of program enrollees. Most teen parents in this program had limited awareness of career options; staff attempted to increase their awareness within the context of this comprehensive program. But although teen parents had little knowledge about specific careers, it was a rare enrollee who came to the program without a clear sense of which kinds of work were acceptable and which were not. Not surprisingly, the "acceptable" jobs tended to be gender-traditional ones.

Staff in this program felt highly constrained in their efforts to promote gender-nontraditional options. In this farming community, families also had very traditional notions about what kinds of work their daughters might do. White or pink collar jobs were regarded by many of these families as a step up in social status. They strongly resisted efforts to promote any sort of "dirty" work. Staff worried that a student's decision to pursue a gender-nontraditional career might alienate her from her family. This, in turn, might result in the family withdrawing the student from the teen parent program.

This had, in fact, occurred in the course of the summer program, where students have opportunities to work in a variety of settings, many gender-nontraditional, and earn at the minimum wage. Program staff strongly encourage summer program enrollment, believing that actual work experience teaches young mothers important lessons about holding jobs and provides them experiences that can only be approximated in the classroom. Staff had resigned themselves over time to placing virtually all teen mothers in gender-traditional summer jobs. They continued to provide students gender-nontraditional work opportunities but had come to terms with the reality that few if any would avail themselves of them.

In another program with gender-nontraditional training options, virtually every enrollee wanted to be a nurse and had acted on this preference by enrolling in nursing training. Staff in this program attributed this pattern to the inexorable workings of sex-role prescriptions, plus the powerful effects of peer pressure conveyed in the form of critical mass. The program's new guidance counselor bemoaned this pattern but felt highly constrained in her own actions. Her predecessor had been extremely forceful in pushing nontraditional careers, and sometimes expressed exasperation to the teen mothers who insisted on pursuing "female" interests in the face of her rational arguments to the contrary. Staff in the program believe that her missionary zeal did not turn teen mothers toward nontraditional careers but succeeded only in alienating them. The new guidance counselor had learned from this experience--perhaps too well. At the time of our visit, when she had been in her position for less than a year, she had adopted a clear hands-off attitude, at least until she found her own path.

The accommodations that the staff in these two programs had made to the conservative views and preferences of young mothers and their families was one that we observed in other programs as well. Often, staff commented that they were afraid to push too hard for gender-nontraditional careers out of fear that they might alienate students and perhaps drive them away from career training entirely. The risk of alienating students was viewed as particularly high among teen mothers, because many students still needed to be convinced of the need to prepare for any work at all, despite their willingness to talk about careers. In some programs, many enrollees come from families in which there are no role models for full-time work. In other cases, enrollees are too young to make such choices, staff argued.

Underlying staff concerns was a sense that the choice of a gender-nontraditional career was not an easy one for most teen mothers. Such a choice first depends upon acceptance of work as a major part of life. Such acceptance often requires that she put aside fantasies that a high-earning "Mr. Right" will come along and obviate any need for employment. A young woman also has to understand the importance of income, and how inadequate a salary from a gender-traditional job is in providing for herself, her child, and any subsequent children. Finally, a young mother has to be strong enough emotionally to withstand likely opposition from family and friends. Few teen mothers meet these conditions. Given the potential costs, staff offer gender-nontraditional options and generally let enrollees choose for themselves.

In a few programs, gender-traditional career preferences were reinforced by logistics: The traditional choice was also the easy, or only, one. In one comprehensive program, for example, typetronics was the only job-skills training offered on-site. It had been chosen, according to staff, because students found it a useful skill, and because the program had the resources to purchase the necessary equipment. Although other less traditional career training opportunities were available to program enrollees, these were located at the centralized vocational education facility, access to which necessitated a bus trip. Transportation was available to program enrollees, but no one was enrolled in any of these off-site training opportunities at the time of our visit, and staff reported that this pattern of nonattendance was one of long standing. Staff were very understanding of the young mothers' reluctance to board the bus to the off-site program. They indicated that the girls did not like to leave their babies during the day and that the bus trip might be unpleasant for pregnant students. The effect, however, was that in this comprehensive, isolated program where parenting students could finish high school, logistical barriers combined with sex-role expectations to direct virtually every enrollee into gender-traditional vocational coursework.

Teen mothers in several teen parent programs confirmed what staff had told us about gender-nontraditional training. Many had enrolled in typing because it was the only vocational education course that was offered in their comprehensive teen parent program, or because they had an open period. In one of these programs there were options outside the program, but they did not wish to board a bus to go elsewhere. Several of these young mothers hated typing, but there were no other course options of any kind within the teen parent program. A lack of course options was even more problematic for a few: One 16-year-old teen parent with unusually high aspirations (she wanted to be an attorney) was spending one period per day in typing, and two in on-the-job training, which consisted of handling the teen parent program's front desk.

The realities described by program staff--traditional attitudes and goals on the part of students and their families, reluctance to add additional travel to their daily schedules, and staff concerns about losing students entirely if they are perceived as pushing certain choices too hard--appeared to have bred substantial resignation among staff on the issue of nontraditional careers. This sense of resignation led staff to back off when they might have jumped in to reinforce or facilitate the kind of career choice they wished students to make. In interviews with teen mothers, it became clear that staff basically drew the line on this issue at providing film strips, speakers, and abstract support for the concept of gender-nontraditional careers. Few were willing to provide personal support or advocacy at the point that an individual teen parent had to make a career decision.

A good case in point concerned a young woman who had long been considering a career in auto mechanics. She talked to the vocational counselor late one school year about whether to enroll in the auto body program or the cosmetology program the following fall. He told her to take whatever she preferred, forgoing an unusual opportunity to reinforce an expressed interest in a gender-nontraditional career. She took the forms home with her at the end of the school year, and before the deadline for signing up for the shop class had passed, the young woman discovered that she was pregnant. She decided, independently, that it would be too difficult for her to participate in the auto body course while she was pregnant, so she signed up for cosmetology. This young lady told our interviewer that while she was enjoying the cosmetology sequence, she was sad about her lost opportunity to pursue auto body work.

Another young mother to whom we spoke had enrolled in a clerical program despite a strong interest in accounting and encouragement from program staff to pursue her interest. They told her that she would be in a position to get a much better, higher-paying job if she took the accounting sequence. Although she agreed with their argument, this sophomore decided against accounting because it was "just too much to deal with while thinking about the baby." The clerical course seemed easier, and because it was gender-traditional, she could avoid the academic and social stress the accounting course might pose.

This young mother's decision points to important and largely unresolved issues in encouraging the acquisition of job training and job skills by young mothers: When is the appropriate time to acquire them? And how much can be expected of young mothers? From its beginning in secondary schools, vocational education was seen by many as a carrot for retaining and engaging less able or academically oriented students. Vocational education would keep students in school; skills training would improve the chances that poor youth would gain the ability to earn a decent living. But for students with children, vocational education may instead represent a stick. For at least some of these students, school retention and completion, without a rigorous vocational education program, may be sufficient accomplishment.

These unresolved issues often cause staff, who generally support vocational education and gender-nontraditional careers in particular, to refrain in specific cases from pushing teen mothers too insistently toward it. They tend to be most comfortable in the "professional" role common in health care settings such as family planning clinics, in which clients are expected to make their own decisions, even "wrong" ones, without interference from the values of the professional (Nathanson and Becker, 1983). Consistent with this role, most take the position that film strips and related efforts allow teen parents to recognize gender-nontraditional options, and then it is up to them to make career decisions in consultation with their families, who often have strong opinions on this matter. But this stance ignores the passivity of many teen mothers and their lack of decisionmaking experience. As Nathanson and Becker (1983) suggest, young teenagers may do better with a "parental" model, in which professionals are more active and directive. If staff members refrain from being "parental," teen mothers are likely to choose traditional, easier options, or to make no choice at all.

Our data suggest that a judicious combination of pushing, support, and facilitation can accomplish a great deal. We encountered several instances where program staff had intervened to make vocational education possible when a teen mother had believed it was not. In a few cases, this involved making special child care arrangements; in others, it involved working with vocational instructors to allow teen parents to make up work that was missed when babies were sick even though the formal rules severely limited absences. In each case, the young mother was surprised and pleased that a program she had believed she could not attend had become available to her.

SUMMARY

In all the districts in our sample, pregnant and parenting students are accorded the same formal vocational education opportunities as nonparenting students. But our data reveal a far more complicated picture. A number of barriers unique to pregnant and parenting students, such as the need to travel between programs, or the location of child care, may in practice constrain formally equal opportunity. Although meaningful access to opportunities appears equal in about one-third of programs, in another third, such access is less in practice for pregnant and parenting students. And in one-quarter of programs a number of conditions, e.g., shared site programs, required guidance, required vocational education, on-site child care, and a focus on long-term employability, serve to make vocational education more accessible to pregnant and parenting students than to nonparenting students.

Use of vocational education is limited in most programs. Our analyses reveal that staff rarely monitor use, or actively advocate for it. They cite concerns about overload and family alienation as major reasons for taking a hands-off approach. Nathanson and Becker (1983) suggest that such a "professional" approach may not be helpful for young teens, who expect and need a more directive, "parental" model of interaction.

In choosing vocational education, teen mothers often assume that attendance rules and other policies that create barriers to vocational education enrollment cannot be modified, and consequently give up their aspirations before they are even expressed. A more active, "parental," problem-solving approach by staff might encourage teen mothers to identify and pursue their preferences. Increasing awareness of career options is important, but such awareness will not in itself overcome barriers to vocational education enrollments. When personal decisions must be made, individual involvement and commitment on the part of staff may be essential to promote vocational education and gender-nontraditional choices in particular.

[38]Data presented in this section are drawn from both the telephone survey and fieldwork visits.

[39]This impressive array of formal vocational education opportunities reflects to an unknown degree the fact that programs were selected within districts because they offered vocational education programming. For this reason, the more meaningful finding is the preponderance of such opportunities on-site.

[40]This subsection draws from data collected in telephone interviews.

[41]As discussed above, teen parents were not formally excluded from any of these opportunities. This subsection focuses on logistical and other barriers that may mitigate access in practice.

[42]This assessment excluded coursework available to program enrollees that focused exclusively on parenting or pregnancy.

[43]For the remaining program, interviewers were unable to make an assessment because program staff lacked information.

[44]This subsection uses data collected during site visits.