Home⇛Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal⇛vol. 22 no. 1 (2024)

The Unprepared: A Case Study of Teenage Mothers' Experiences and Child Rearing Practices

Melanie Kyle Baluyot | Jonadel  Gatchalian | Caryl Joy  Barandino | Patrisha Guinoo | Rey Ann Fem Plaza | Ken Andrei Torrero | Micaiah Andrea Lopez | Franz Cedrick Yapo | Charles Brixter Evangelista | Jhoselle Tus

Discipline: others in psychology

 

Abstract:

Pregnancy complications are far more common in young women. This could inhibit their personal growth and development, take away them of their youth and education, and decline the general health of the country in the process. Focusing on this problem is an ideal matter. Education, family planning, raising community awareness, and teaching adolescents the importance of delaying marriage, reproductive health, and involvement of parents will surely help transform today's teenage girls into healthy, responsible adults who will bear a healthy future generation. The study emphasizes the lived experiences, challenges, coping mechanisms, and parent’s role. Moreover, the study’s findings which were based on the Thematic Analysis, were as follows: (1) Teenage Mothers have maternal adjustment difficulties, adolescent reproductive health knowledge gaps, and fear of negative evaluation. (2) Teenage Mothers struggles to discrimination, social rejection anxiety, parenting efficacy, academic disengagement, and financial stress. (3) Lastly, when talking about their coping techniques, Teenage Mothers found support system such as family functioning, where they feel positive, peer influence that uplifts them, maternal identity development through fellow teenage mothers, parent-infant attachment as a source of their motivation, and spiritual well-being where they offer, they overall life to God.



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