La maternità in giovane età: uno studio esplorativo su donne italiane e straniere

Background: There is evidence that teenage parents are on different trajectories than other adolescents, before and after the birth of their children. These young parents face unique challenges, such as juggling adolescent developmental tasks with new parenting responsibilities. Many teenage parents face racism, poverty, and barriers to health care, day care, and continuing education. Not surprisingly, there are negative effects on offspring that can be traced to factors present before the birth as well as the parenting and home environment provided by the young parents. Italy has experienced a recent surge in immigration, which has led to an increase in the country’s birth rate. Many immigrant mothers are adolescent parents. Methods: 33 adolescent mothers (17 recent immigrants and 16 adolescents of Italian descent) completed measures of adolescent self-development and motherhood, perceived availability and satisfaction with social support, emotional and behavioral characteristic of their children and mother-child interactions, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Results: The data confirmed that these adolescent mothers showed difficulty with their infants and higher levels of stress. Mothers showed significantly higher than normal affective communication errors, fearful/disorientation behaviors, intrusiveness/negativity and withdrawal. Indeed, findings suggest that immigrant teen mothers show more difficulties related to parenting than do Italian born teen mothers. They experience motherhood and child behavior as more problematic, reporting lower levels of social support satisfaction and availability, and higher levels of parent-child dysfunction.