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The primary aim of this chapter is to explore stigmatization, stress, and coping among adolescent mothers and to identify positive coping mechanisms that not only resist stigmatization but also generate positive affect.

Fifty-two pregnant and parenting adolescents in an urban county in the Midwestern United States were recruited to participate. A journaling tool was developed and used to allow participants to express their thoughts and concerns in a real-time, reflexive manner. Data were coded at different “nodes” or themes. Concepts, such as stigma, stress, strength, and empowerment were operationalized into key words and “themes” based on previous published literature. Key phrases were used to code the journaling data.

Adolescent mothers used positive reappraisal of life circumstances to create a positive self-image and resist the stress of stigma and parenting. Overcoming stereotypes and success in parenting were reappraised as “strength,” which allowed the young women to feel empowered in their caregiving role.

The chapter also contributes to the sociological literature on positive coping responses to stigma and stress. Indeed, very few studies have employed the sociological imagination of pregnant and parenting adolescents by describing not only their lives but also seeking their understanding and explaining their lives sociologically. This chapter also has direct implications for several health care providers, including nurses and social workers. For example, nurses and social workers are a vital part of the healthcare team for pregnant and parenting adolescents, and they often serve as the link between the adolescent, her family and significant others, and healthcare and social service agencies.

This chapter described the mechanisms that adolescent mothers use to cope with stress with a focus on how caregiving generates positive affect through the voices of these young mothers themselves. This chapter contributed to the sociological literature on stress and coping. In particular, our findings were also in line with the work of sociologist Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence concept. SOC is a global measure that indicates the availability of, and willingness to use, adaptive coping resources as a key variable in maintaining health.

Recent research suggests positive links between adolescents' participation in sports and the quality of their relationships with their fathers. It is unclear, however, the degree to which the gendered nature of sports, and in particular the ways sports have been used to define and express masculinity, mean that these important links between sports participation and parent–child relationships might or might not extend to relationships with mothers. Recent scholarship connects joint recreational activities to mother–child relationships, but here we extend these ideas in connection to adolescents' formal sports participation. We use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health from the United States to evaluate potential connections between adolescent sports participation and maternal relationships, focusing on the adolescent's perspective on joint activities with mother, closeness to and warmth and communication with mother, and satisfaction with the relationship with mother. We also examine whether these associations differ for boys and girls. We found that adolescents' sports participation was good for relationships with their mothers, but also that there were gender differences in how sport paid off for boys and girls. We discuss our findings in terms of contemporary shifts in gendered norms and conclude that gender may remain salient to how sports participation can promote mother–child relationships.

Past literature has focused on the intergenerational transmission of gender ideologies, without considering the role cultural context plays. That is, while it is understood that there is a positive relationship between mothers’ gender ideology and that of their adolescents, how might this relationship differ among foreign-born mothers and their native-born adolescent children? This chapter extends the literature on the construction and transmission of gender ideology between immigrant mothers and their children in two ways. First, using data from the child sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N=2,202), it examines adolescent gender ideology as influenced by mothers’ gender beliefs and nativity. Second, it assesses the interaction between maternal gender ideologies and nativity as they influence adolescent ideology. Findings from this study suggest that the nativity of the mother does not affect the adolescent’s ideology, nor does it act as a moderator of maternal influence. The chapter ends with a summary and contextualization of the findings framed in developmental psychology and suggesting that factors external to the household, such as the influence of peers, may work to mitigate the effects of cultural frameworks.

Depressive symptoms are higher among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Many studies have evidenced associations between school disconnectedness and depressive symptoms by race and ethnicity in adolescence (Joyce & Early, 2014; Walsemann, Bell, & Maitra, 2011). Given that adolescents spend most of their time at home when they are not at school (Larson & Richards, 2001), it is important to understand how mother-child relationships may moderate school disconnectedness, and how mother–child relationships may serve as a protective buffer for depressive symptoms in the transition to adulthood. I use data from Waves II and III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) from 1995 to 2002 (n = 9,766) and OLS regression analysis to examine how school disconnectedness in adolescence is associated with depressive symptoms in the transition to adulthood, and how mother–child relationships in adolescence moderate these associations in the United States. I examine differences in these relationships across racial and ethnic groups. I find that school disconnectedness in adolescence is associated with increased depressive symptoms in the transition to adulthood, and that maternal warmth and communication moderates the association between school disconnectedness and depressive symptoms. Maternal relationship quality in adolescence serves as an important protective factor for mental health in the transition to adulthood.

This study examined the impact of an early childhood community-outreach summer camp on teaching single adolescent mothers early communication tools and strategies to support interaction with their infants and toddlers who were language delayed or at risk for language delay. Twenty-two mothers and their children were taught communication strategies through the use of baby signs and Hanen techniques for parents. Pre-post knowledge and skills were assessed. Mothers also completed a post-camp satisfaction questionnaire. Overall, mothers learned the information on baby signs and communication strategies. They were positive about the impact of the camp program activities on the social-emotional and communicative relationship between themselves and their child.

High rates of union dissolution and repartnering among parents means that today’s youth are increasingly likely to spend some time living with a stepparent. Although family structure has been linked to adolescent well-being, most work has compared those in stepfamilies with those in intact families, so it is not clear which aspects of stepfamily life are more or less consequential for adolescent behaviors among those exposed to a co-residential stepfamily.

To examine stepfamilies more closely, we focus explicitly on youth who had ever lived with a stepfather using mother and child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (n = 1,754). We specifically explore how structure and stability, timing of exposure, and sibling configuration influence risk-taking, operationalized as sexual debut and drug use at age 16.

We find that timing and sibling composition seem to be unrelated to risk-taking, but stepfamily structure and stability are highly salient. Adolescents currently in a cohabiting stepfamily and those who have experienced the dissolution of a prior stepfamily are more likely to engage in sex (and sometimes use drugs) than their counterparts living with only their stepfather in a married-parent family.

The findings highlight the importance of stability, more so than structure, timing, or sibling configuration, in understanding adolescent risk-taking. The results provide further evidence that children in stepfamilies have unique vulnerabilities and opportunities for resilience, and should be evaluated independently from samples of children from intact families to avoid a deficit approach in modeling and theorizing.

Despite the over-representation of stepfamilies in the clientele receiving protective services, there is still very little information about the different forms of the parental commitment of stepfathers in those families. However, the characteristics of families receiving child protective services (CPS) are likely to influence the way that the stepfathers’ commitment is expressed.

Taking into account the viewpoint of mothers (n = 10), stepfathers (n = 10), and adolescents (n = 10), this study attempted to document, using the free association method and semistructured interviews, the following: (1) the representations that the members of these stepfamilies had of the stepfathers’ parental commitment; and (2) the way in which engagement was expressed in daily life.

While the participants agreed that the stepfather had a parental role to play, that is to take care of the children, they did not necessarily agree about which dimensions were the most important. Whereas the adults emphasized the child-rearing dimension of this role and the necessary cooperation with the biological parents, the adolescents insisted on the relational aspect. The results likewise indicated that these men were very committed to their partners’ adolescents and showed that even in families challenged by problems that lead to involvement with CPS, stepfathers can play a positive, supportive role.

This study represents an important addition to the existing literature on the role of stepfathers in that it uses multiple measures and direct reports from father figures allowing us to explore the main dimensions of stepfather commitment.

The “moral panic” generated by public response to teenage mothering marginalizes the experiences of young women as mothers, with adolescent pregnancy viewed as catastrophic for young women, their families, and society. In this analysis, focused on the experience of a group of teen women from the city of São Paulo, Brazil, the author explores how the integration of a maternal identity, shaped by Brazilian norms of “good motherhood,” with previously existing identities might lead to new aspirations and ambitions for the future or to hopelessness and despair.

Visions of the future were shaped by individual women’s structural circumstances and fell into four rough groups. Well-established adult women expressed their maternal identity through personal ambition, revealing confidence in their ability to provide “the best” for their children. Some adolescent mothers were fortunate enough to be buffered by family resources so that optimistic objectives for the future that pre-dated the pregnancy remained fairly attainable and were compatible with a “good mother” identity. For teens from less well-off families, motherhood resulted in a new-found determination to succeed in school and work, in line with ideals of Brazilian “good mothering” that focus on working hard to benefit one’s children. Women from the poorest households could or would not conjure a vision of the future, faced with the overwhelming challenges of their circumstances. The detailed, longitudinal qualitative data analyzed here reveal how the construction of maternal identity and visions of the future among adolescent mothers are shaped by the embodied experience of motherhood and pre-existing structural forces.

This chapter analyzes which factors influence adolescent obesity by separating nutritional factors of the food consumed from socioeconomic and demographic variables.

A general linear equation is utilized to model the results empirically. A descriptive analysis is also utilized to determine which foods adolescents consume.

The empirical results found that food at home and food away from home and calories have a similar positive influence on obesity as measured by body mass index (BMI). The evidence shows that mothers have a greater influence on adolescents’ BMI than do fathers.

The results offer insight on what factors may be attributed to obesity in urban China.