LISTENING WITH CARE--FOSTERING TEEN MOTHERS DEVELOPMENT

Saint Louis University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from the Investigator's Abstract): Our focus on the outcomes of early childbearing has led us to neglect the process, meanings, and content of becoming a teen mother in varied contexts. The ways in which teenage mothers define and redefine the self and what they experience as difficulties, constraints, and accomplishments in learning to become the mother they want to be remain unexamined. As a result, interventions which target teem mothers often overlook the practical learning and the family and cultural habits that shape the teen mother's experience of the self and caregiving. The study proposed here will therefore explore the concerns, challenges, and turning points that teens experience during the transition to mothering and the way these are shaped by family and social contexts, as a basis for developing an intervention which fosters young mothers development. In the first phase of the study, a convenience sample of 18 families (including the teen mother, her parents, and her male partner) will be followed from the third trimester of pregnancy until the infant reaches 9 months of age. This phase is to be carried out in Years 1 to 3 and is designed to: (a) describe variations, patterns, and transitions in teen mothers' narratives of development; (b) examine how mothering is experimentally learned; and delineate variations and patterns in the development of family caregiving routines over the first year of the infant's life. Knowledge of the experiential terms by which young mothers define the self and develop the skills, routines, and emotions of mothering is preliminary to developing an effective intervention. Findings from the first phase will therefore guide the development of an intervention that is to be piloted in years 4 and 5. The aim of the second phase is to test a family-centered, response-based community health nursing intervention that fosters the teen mother's development as a responsive self and parent also fostering the family's responsiveness to the teen. The effectiveness of the intervention will then be evaluated in a subsequent study with a larger sample.