The search for love: unmarried adolescent mothers' views of, and relationships with, men

Sixteen unmarried adolescent mothers and 14 older married mothers were administered a demographic questionnaire and the Washington Sentence Completion Test, a measure of ego development. Demographic variables were subjected to t tests, Spearman correlations between demographic variables and ego stages were computed, and scores on each sentence stem completion were subjected to two-tailed t tests to determine which stems were predictive of overall ego score. Results indicated that adolescent mothers had a significantly higher incidence of divorce in their families of origin, a lower mean length of relationship with partner prior to pregnancy (compared with relationship length preceding marriage for in-wedlock mothers), and lower stages of ego development. Of the seven sentence stems found to be most strongly predictive of ego level, five were related to views of men, family roles, and relationship with (subject's) father. Ego scores of the adolescents, but not the in-wedlock mothers, were positively correlated with age of child. Results are considered in relation to adolescent mothers' vulnerabilities in their choice of sexual partners and implications for their ability to negotiate the risks of sexual intimacy.