Social support of teenage mothers

The purpose of this paper is to report the social support perceived as available by teenage mothers during their first year of motherhood and the correlation of perceived social support with maternal role attainment variables. Social support was one of 11 independent variables studied for their impact on the maternal role for three age groups of first-time mothers: 15-19, 20-29, and 30-42 years. Social support described was categorized into four types--informational, emotional, physical, and appraisal--and by the network size. Sixty-six teenagers agreed to participate in the study, and they were interviewed in the hospital during early postpartum and in their homes or a setting of their choice at 1,4,8, and 12 months after birth. This highly mobile population was difficult to follow, and there was a subject loss over the year of 39.4% (N = 26). During early postpartum, the only type of support to correlate with maternal attachment (one of the two maternal role attainment variables measured at that time) was informational support, and teenagers had received significantly less than older women. There were no significant correlations of any of the support variables with the teenagers' perceptions of their neonate, the second measure of maternal role attainment. Teenagers received less emotional support from mates and from parents than older women. At 1 month postpartum, teenagers received less emotional support than older mothers, but reported more informational support. Support variables failed to correlate with maternal role attainment measures of perceptions of the neonate, ways of handling irritating child behaviors, or infants' growth and development. Physical and emotional support correlated positively with feelings of love for the infant, and informational and emotional support correlated positively with gratification in the mothering role. Physical support correlated positively with maternal competency behaviors. At 4 months after birth, teenagers continued to receive less emotional support than older mothers, but there were no differences in other types of support received. Physical support correlated positively with maternal gratification in the role, infants' growth and development, and maternal competency behaviors. Other types of support and the size of the network did not correlate with any of the maternal role attainment variables. Teenagers continued to receive less emotional support than older mothers at 8 months after birth, although there were no differences in other types of support received. The support variables failed to correlate significantly with any of the five maternal role attainment variables at this time.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)