Dubious Conceptions

As her little boy plays at a day care center across the street, Michelle, an unmarried teenager, is in algebra class, hoping to be the first member of her family to graduate from high school. Will motherhood make this young woman poorer? Will it make the United States poorer as a nation? Would it surprise you to learn that Michelle is more likely to be white than African American? That she is most likely eighteen or nineteen - a legal adult? That teenage mothers are no more common today than in 1900? That two-thirds of them have been impregnated by men older than twenty? Kristin Luker, author…