Family change during an unwed teenage pregnancy

The results suggest that on average the families became more cohesive and had improved family functioning over the pregnancy and one month after the baby's birth.

Abstract

To determine the qualitative impact of unwed adolescents' pregnancies on family processes and stability, 16 white intact families completed Olson, Portner, and Bell's Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scales III and Cervera's Family Alliance Questionnaire for 4 time periods: 6 months before conception (retrospectively measured), during the 6th and 8th months of pregnancy, and 1 month after delivery. The mean age of family members was 46 years for fathers, 42 years for mothers, and 17 years for the unmarried teen. The families identified themselves as working class. All parents indicated that their daughters had behavioral, emotional, and educational problems prior to the pregnancy, while daughters characterized their families' emotional climate as tense and disengaged. At all 4 points, the family functioning score was well above the midrange for family dysfunction, but a significant increase in cohesiveness and communication with parents and siblings occurred over time, generally after the birth. On the other hand, the pregnancy exerted little effect on family roles, rules, or power distributions and the infant was assimilated into the pre-existing structure. Most striking was an improvement in the intensity of mother-teen communication, from weekly conversations early in the pregnancy to daily communication immediately before delivery; there was no mechanism, however, for evaluating the quality of this communication. For chronically dysfunctional families with poor communication skills, an adolescent pregnancy can represent an opening for clinicians to intervene to restructure family relationships and teach more effective negotiation skills.