Improving teenage attitudes toward children, child handicaps, and hospital settings: a child development curriculum for potential parents.

The recent increase in teenage pregnancies increases the risk of of low-birth-weight premature infants born to young mothers. Facilitative child-rearing practices, aimed at overcoming effects of perinatal stress, are being taught to middle-grade students before they become parents. Students participating in the program score higher than controls on measures of positive attitudes toward and knowledge of normal and handicapped children, hospitals, and child development.