After a Teenage Daughter Has Become Pregnant or Given Birth, Mothers Monitor All Their Children Less Closely

Volume 31, No. 6, November/December 1999

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DIGEST

After a Teenage Daughter Has Become Pregnant or Given Birth, Mothers Monitor All Their Children Less Closely

Women with an adolescent daughter who has never been pregnant have higher achievement expectations for her and monitor all their children more closely than do mothers with a pregnant or parenting daughter. Moreover, they perceive adolescent childbearing as more problematic than do mothers of parenting adolescents and consider older ages as more appropriate for sex, marriage and childbearing.¹ Over time, mothers of pregnant teenagers supervise their children less closely, become more accepting of teenage sex and communicate less frequently and less easily with their younger children about sex and contraception.

Data for analysis came from 189 mothers in an urban area of southern California. Mothers were eligible to participate if they had a teenage daughter between 15 and 19 years of age who either had never been pregnant, was pregnant for the first time and planned to keep the baby, or had delivered her first child within the preceding six months and had kept the child. The family also had to include a younger sister or brother (aged 11-16) who had been living in the same household as the older sister for at least the previous five years.

Mothers were brought into the study through eligible older daughters. Pregnant and parenting young women were recruited from a university adolescent obstetrics clinic, at local Planned Parenthood clinics and through snowball sampling (a technique in which participants are asked for referrals to other potential participants); only those whose pregnancy or birth was the first in the family were eligible to participate. Never-pregnant teenagers were approached at a university adolescent medicine clinic, at local Planned Parenthood clinics and through snowball sampling.

Initial interviews were conducted with the mothers between July 1993 and February 1995, and follow-up interviews were conducted 13 months later. Fifteen families were excluded from the study because a teenager other than the older daughter had previously become pregnant or had a baby, leaving a baseline sample of 174. Of the participating mothers, 94 had a never-pregnant daughter, 32 a pregnant daughter and 48 a parenting daughter. The second round of interviews included 145 mothers.

The majority of the mothers were Mexican American (65%), while 25% were black, 6% were non-Hispanic white, 1% were Asian and 3% were of other races. The three types of families did not differ by most socioeconomic and demographic factors. However, pregnant and parenting teenagers were significantly older (17.2-17.6 years) than never-pregnant adolescents (16.7). Furthermore, their families earned significantly less than those of never-pregnant teenagers and were significantly more likely to have received welfare.

At both baseline and follow-up, the mothers completed a 102-item questionnaire. These items formed 10 scales: parental monitoring, achievement expectations for the older daughter, achievement expectations for younger children, acceptance of adolescent sex, acceptance of teenage childbearing, problems caused by teenage childbearing, status attained through childbearing, appropriate ages for life-course transitions (i.e., first sex, marriage and childbearing), ease and frequency of communication with the older daughter about sex and contraception, and ease and frequency of communication with the younger children about those topics.

To determine if mothers of pregnant, parenting and never-pregnant adolescents differed according to these factors at either baseline or follow-up, the investigator performed multivariate analyses of covariance that controlled for family income, welfare receipt and the older daughter's age. Univariate follow-up tests were conducted on scores that reached statistical significance in those analyses.

At baseline, mothers with a never-pregnant teenager had higher achievement expectations for her and monitored all their children more closely than did mothers of adolescents in the other two groups (Table 1). In addition, compared with mothers of parenting adolescents, they were less accepting of teenage childbearing, ascribed less status to childbearing, perceived more problems associated with teenage childbearing and considered older ages as appropriate for life transitions. Mothers of pregnant teenagers and mothers of parenting adolescents did not vary significantly in their scores on any of the 10 scales.

Table 1. Mean scores of mothers' parenting, attitudes and communication with children at baseline and follow-up, by older daughter's pregnancy and parenting status at baseline
Measure	Never-pregnant	Pregnant	Parenting
Baseline
Monitoring	3.59*,†	3.28*	3.30†
Expectations for older daughter	4.24*,†	3.93*	3.92†
Expectations for younger children	4.38	4.17	4.17
Acceptance of teenage sex	1.62	1.57	1.86
Acceptance of teenage childbearing	1.19*	1.41	1.45*
Problems with teenage childbearing	4.54*	4.29	4.17*
Status gained by childbearing	1.60*	1.91	2.03*
Age at life-course transitions	22.84*	22.61	21.83*
Communication with older daughter	4.06	4.21	4.27
Communication with younger children	3.81	3.90	4.04
Follow-up
Monitoring	3.27*	2.97*,†	3.16†
Expectations for older daughter	4.73*,†	4.03*,‡	3.73†,‡
Expectations for younger children	4.35	4.26	4.18
Acceptance of teenage sex	1.77	2.15	1.70
Acceptance of teenage childbearing	1.35	1.40	1.37
Problems with teenage childbearing	4.39*	4.14*,†	4.32†
Status gained by childbearing	1.50*,†	1.97*	1.89†
Age at life-course transitions	23.12*	22.95	22.30*
Communication with older daughter	3.97	4.21	4.27
Communication with younger children	3.51	3.41	3.81
Notes: Within each row, values with the same footnote symbol are significantly different from each other at p<.05. Value for life-course transitions is the mean of ages considered best for first sex, marriage and childbearing. All other measures are scales ranging from 1 to 5.

At follow-up, compared with mothers with a teenage daughter who had been pregnant at the beginning of the study, mothers with a never-pregnant daughter had higher expectations for her, supervised their children more closely, saw teenage childbearing as more problematic and ascribed less status to childbearing. They had higher expectations for their daughter than did the mothers of teenagers who had been parenting at baseline, felt that women gained less status through childbearing and saw older ages as appropriate for life transitions. The mothers of adolescents who had been pregnant at the beginning of the study monitored their children less closely than did the mothers of parenting adolescents, had higher expectations for their older daughter and saw teenage childbearing as less problematic.

Comparisons between the baseline and follow-up scores indicate that over time, the mothers of never-pregnant adolescents monitored their children significantly less, had higher achievement expectations for their older daughter and communicated less with their younger children. Likewise, the mothers of adolescents who had been pregnant at the beginning of the study gave their children less supervision, communicated less with their younger children and became more accepting of teenage sexual activity. The attitudes and behaviors of mothers of teenagers who were parenting at baseline did not change significantly over time.

When asked how having a baby had affected their daughter's life, the mothers of parenting adolescents perceived more difficulty at follow-up than they had at baseline, both in general and in terms of finishing high school. Nevertheless, they reported greater permissiveness over time about how late their other children were allowed to stay out at night and about whom their other children dated. They were no more likely to indicate at follow-up that their daughter's pregnancy had made their other children want to have a baby, scared their younger children into being more careful about sex or affected the time the mothers could spend with their other children.

According to the investigator, her results reveal within-family factors associated with teenage childbearing and show how families may be affected when an adolescent becomes pregnant. Pointing out that mothers monitor their children less closely, communicate less easily and frequently with them about sex and contraception, and become more accepting of teenage sexuality after a daughter becomes pregnant, she notes that such changes may "create a prime context for younger siblings to engage in delinquent or sexual behavior." She suggests that interventions that include all family members may help them deal with the daughter's pregnancy.--F. Althaus

Reference

1. East PL, The first teenage pregnancy in the family: does it affect mothers' parenting, attitudes, or mother-adolescent communication? Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1999, 61(2):306-319.

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