Abused Boys, Battered Mothers, and Male Involvement in Teen Pregnancy

ABSTRACT. Background. The relationship between boyhood exposure to physical abuse, sexual abuse, or to a battered mother and subsequent risk of impregnating a teenage girl has not previously been examined. Methods. In a retrospective cohort study set in a pri-mary care clinic for adult members of a large health maintenance organization, questionnaire responses from 4127 men were analyzed. Respondents provided the age of the youngest female whom they had impregnated, their own ages at the time, and information regarding childhood exposure to physical or sexual abuse and bat-tered mothers. We calculated the prevalence and adjusted odds ratio (OR) for having impregnated a teenage girl according to these 3 adverse childhood experiences, re-gardless of the male’s age at the time of impregnation