Received Grant to Follow-Up All Study Families
We recently received funding to conduct a follow-up
of all study families now that the teenager's baby is 3 years old. This was a generous grant
from the Office of Population Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services. Continued
follow-up allows us to better understand the longer term impact of adolescent childbearing for
families and siblings, particularly the factors that contribute to the high co-occurrence of
teenage pregnancy between siblings. The siblings in the study are now 18 or 19 years old,
an age after which many of their sisters first became pregnant.
Preliminary Findings
Researchers from UCSD’s
PROJECT FIT interviewed roughly 200 Latino families living in or nearby
San Diego starting in the Fall of 2003. About half of the families had a
teenager who was expecting her first child. We were interested to see how
these families changed across their baby's 1st year of life. We also wanted
to learn how younger siblings in these families adjusted to their new niece
or nephew.
Here are some of the
things we learned :
The less prepared the
pregnant teenager felt about the birth of her baby, the more anxious and
depressed she felt after her baby was born. There are many ways to prepare
for your baby. You can take Lamaze classes at a nearby community clinic to
learn about labor and delivery, you can read books and magazines about babies
and the birth experience, and you can take a parenting class. There are many
parenting classes offered throughout San Diego, such as the classes offered by
SAY San Diego. Teens who did these kinds
of things to prepare for their baby were much happier
and less stressed once their baby
arrived.
It is very important
to talk about who will take care of the baby after it is born and to have a
clear plan set into place on which everyone agrees. The mothers and daughters
who argued the least after the baby was born were those who talked most before
the baby was born about who was going to take care of the baby.
It is also very important
for the mothers of the teenagers to feel prepared for their grandchild's birth.
Mothers who reported feeling very prepared for the arrival of their daughter's
baby were happier and less stressed after the baby was born than mothers who were
not prepared. They were better parents too, because they were more nurturing,
loving, and supportive of their other children. It may be helpful for mothers
to also take labor and delivery and parenting classes with their daughters — to
show their support and to help feel more prepared.
An important part of
parenting is keeping a close eye on all of your children – particularly your
younger children, such as knowing where they are when they're out with friends,
where they are after school, and when they go out at night. This can be especially
difficult for mothers whose daughters just had a baby. But our research shows
that mothers who know where their children are and who talk with their children
on a daily basis have children who are least likely to get into trouble.
Younger siblings help out a
lot with the new baby. In fact, they spend about 10 hours a week on average caring
for or helping to care for their sister's baby. Although most youth said that they
liked taking care of the new baby and that they were learning about parenting and
children by doing so, too many hours of child care help can lead to stress, not getting
their homework done, and poor grades. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on
the amount of time that other children in the household care for the teen's baby -- even
if they want to do it or say that they want to help. They need to have their own lives too.
Spending more than about 15 or 20 hours a week caring for their sister's baby may be too
much and may interfere with their own activities and school work.
We wish to thank all the participating families for
their time and effort in completing the study questionnaires. The experiences they
shared will help other teenagers and their families across the country adjust to having a
new baby. We couldn’t have done it without them, and we are extremely grateful
and indebted to them for all their help!
Check back to this link periodically to see new findings and updates of our studies!
