Psychological correlates of teenage motherhood

Structure and stability of maternal support among pregnant and parenting adolescents

“…This differs from nonadolescent mothers who more often rely on their partners as the main source of support (Garcia-Coll, Hoffman, VanHouten, & Oh, 1987). Maternal support reduces the overall stress and anxiety experienced by these teens (Barth, Schinke, & Maxwell, 1983;de Anda & Becerra, 1984). For example, the teens' mothers are most often the primary providers of childcare for their daughters' infants (Colletta, Hadler, & Gregg, 1981).…”

“…Although social support, in general, lowers distress in pregnant and parenting adolescents (Barth & Schinke, 1984;Barth, Schinke, & Maxwell, 1983;Boyce, Schaeffer, & Uitti, 1985;McLanahan, 1983;Thompson, 1986;Unger & Wandersman, 1985;Wolkind & Kruk, 1985), its positive benefits have been most often associated with positive familial support (Boukydis, 1987;Crnic, Greenberg, Ragozin, Robinson, & Basham, 1983;Crockenberg, 1987;McLanahan, 1983;Mercer, Hackley, & Bostrom, 1984;Stevens, 1988). Adolescent mothers often have few friends in their social networks (Crnic, Greenberg, Robinson, & Ragozin, 1984;Thompson & Peebles-Wilkins, 1992), and at least one study indicated that informal support from friends was significantly related to increased distress among a sample of parenting adolescents of primarily African American descent (Thompson, 1986).…”

Toward an Integrative Model of Adolescent Parenting

“…Some research has indicated that adoles cent mothers are similar in adjustment to their nonpregnant peers [Barth et al, 1983]. Several studies, however, suggest that adoles cent mothers may experience personal dys function related to poor self-esteem, poor cop ing skills, and limited ability in social prob lem-solving [Zongker, 1977;Olson and Worobev.…”

“…For ex ample, Barrera [1981] and Barth et al [1983] identified social support as a major factor in promoting adolescent adjustment to pregnan cy. Prenatal family support has been associ ated with adolescents' feelings of adjustment [Unger and Wandersman, 1985].…”

“…In sum, research has suggested few differ ences between pregnant and nonpregnant ad olescents [Barth et al, 1983], or between preg nant adolescents and adults [Quay, 1981] with respect to psychosocial adjustment. However, research on individual differences among pregnant adolescents has suggested that adjustment may be influenced by low self-esteem [Olson and Worobey, 1984;Zongker, 1977], poor problem-solving ability [Steinlauf, 1979], or ineffective coping [Col letta and Gregg.…”