Today, among adolescents, childbearing may precede rather than follow marriage. Evidence suggests that adolescent childbearers now rely heavily on their families to provide needed support. Among a sample of 320 adolescent, mostly black mothers from low-income families, most spent a majority of their early years of parenthood in an extended family arrangement, and nearly half were living with kin after 5 years. Research has shown that marriage, whether it occurs before or after the child is born, offers very little protection to teenage mothers; young mothers who remained single were better off than those who married, receiving more financial and emotional support from their kin. There is some evidence that family support buffers the impact of single parenthood for the offspring as well. Non-conclusive findings of case studies of families with pregnant adolescents suggest that the pregnant adolescent's status in her family improves after the child is born, that paternal involvement in child rearing is often precluded by the mother's family, and that parenting duties are shared by members of the mother's household. However, these conditions in the family may be neither consistent nor continuous. (In conclusion, tentative recommendations for policy makers are advanced.) (Author/RH)