Predictors of resiliency in adolescent mothers

The adaptation of adolescent mothers to challenges encountered by early childbearing is characterized by much diversity. The focus of the current research was to identify protective factors at the time of the initial pregnancy that predispose the young mother to resiliency. These factors were used as predictor variables in a stepwise discriminatory model to categorize 103 early childbearers as resilient or vulnerable 5 years after the birth of their first child. Six variables accounted for 46% of the variance between the resilient and vulnerable mothers. Resilient adolescents had completed more schooling at the time of the pregnancy, were relatively younger, had more support from friends and siblings, more empathic parenting attitudes, and somewhat lower verbal intelligence scores than their vulnerable counterparts. The linear discriminant function based on these six variables was then applied to an independent sample of 26 adolescent mothers. The function correctly classified 67% of the vulnerable mothers and 92% of the resilient mothers. Implications for more focused interventions with pregnant adolescents are discussed.