Abstract:
Becoming an early adolescent mother is the transition period from being a child to a mother. She has to encounter with several changes including roles and age-appropriated development as well as tasks and responsibilities, which happen simultaneously. This descriptive qualitative research aimed to describe experiences of an early adolescent to become a mother. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a sample of 15 adolescent mother aged 10-14 years with their 12 months old baby or younger. To participate in the study, the adolescent mothers must give participate in caring for the baby since the baby was born until 4 months old or more. Data were collected from January to May, 2015 by using in-depth interview, observation without participation and information from maternal and infant health record. Content analysis method was applied for data analysis.
Results revealed that three core categories emerged from the analysis. There were 1) the meaning of an early adolescent mother contained 5 subcategories of the most wonderful thing in life, deeply delighted, do everything for the baby, tired but bearable and learning experiences 2) encouragement to be an early adolescent mother consisted of 3 subcategories of assistance from family members, instruction and guidance from nurses and previous experience of caring for a baby, and 3) consequences of becoming an early adolescent mother included 4 subcategories of increase maturity, perceived self-esteem, worry about body image and less peer relationship.
Findings of the experiences of becoming an early adolescent mother from this study could be used as fundamental information to plan or develop effective program of intervention for adolescent mothers.