by Emory Thomas Jr.

About the author: Emory Thomas Jr. is a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

A high-school reunion turned economist Cecilia A. Conrad into a contrarian, at least on the issue of teenage pregnancy.

Teen Mothers Fare Well

She was an assistant professor at Barnard College in 1987 when she returned to the mostly black Dallas high school where she’d been valedictorian 15 years before. As part of a class that included a throng of girls who’d had babies as teenagers, Dr. Conrad wasn’t surprised to find herself, at age 33, the only new mother at the reunion.

Yet Dr. Conrad was struck by how well many of her classmates had fared despite early and often out-of-wedlock motherhood. Almost none had sunk into prolonged poverty or welfare dependence, as conventional...