The Nature and Support of Adolescent Mothers' Life Aspirations.

The Nature and Support of Adolescent Mothers' Life Aspirations* Phame M. Camarena,** Kris Minor, Theresa Melmer, and Cheryl Ferrie Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 58 young mothers from a rural region of the upper midwest to examine how mothers construct life aspirations in the face of new parent roles. The majority of the participants reported that parenting demands had resulted in an adjustment of expectations rather than a dramatic change in either the level or nature of aspirations. Although all of the mothers reported some support for pursuing life goals, this support was generally weak and inconsistent. Access to resources and firm encouragement to pursue aspirations now characterized participants with the most resilient stories of adjustment. Although the negative consequences of early parenting have been well documented, the societal image of teenage parents has become too stereotyped and fails to recognize the diversity of adolescent parents' experiences (Chase-Lansdale, Brooks-Gunn, & Paikoff, 1992). One of these stereotypes is the belief that early parenting dooms young mothers to a life of unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. The consistent link between adolescent pregnancy and relatively low levels of educational and employment achievement certainly does lend some support to this belief (e.g., Barbour, Richardson, & Bubenzer, 1993; Hayes, 1987). These connections, however, are not necessarily causal in nature since many of the factors that predict adolescent childbirth are linked to educational and employment aspirations prior to pregnancy (Melhuish & Phoenix, 198788; Upchurch, 1993). The resultant picture of adolescent mothers' aspirations is, therefore, somewhat difficult to disentangle. What is clear, however, is that life aspirations are an important component of adolescent mothers` adjustment. As suggested by Blinn (1990), aspirations for family. education, and work become highly salient to adolescent mothers as they are "forced" to reevaluate their visions of the future. Both the long and short term choices that most adolescents face now take on a new sense of urgency for the adolescent parent as priorities shift to account for the future of the new child (White & Cummings, 1995). The Significance of Aspirations The importance of aspirations and goals for adjustment during adolescence generally are manifest conceptually in two different ways. First, they provide a yardstick or standard to help adolescents weigh the degree to which different choices will help or hinder their chances of achieving desired goals. Second, as a motivational force they influence the degree to which effort is expended on tasks that make achievement of aspirations and goals possible. For adolescent mothers forced to confront new parenting demands, a clear set of aspirations and goals may provide an important protection as a guide through difficult choices and serve as a buffer against the discouragements and stressors they experience. Evidence for this power of aspirations as a protective factor for risk populations. generally, and adolescent mothers, specifically, is found in both the Kauai and Baltimore longitudinal studies. The Kauai study (Werner & Smith, 1992) was designed to examine factors that protected an "at risk" sample of individuals born in Hawaii in 1955 from prenatal development into young adulthood. Although Werner and Smith describe a number of different factors that distinguished the adolescents and young adults who had "overcome" their earlier high risk status, they concluded that the greatest differences could be found in the "goals they had set for their adult lives" and their sense of "personal competence and determination" (pp. 69-70). These same factors were highlighted as being central parts of "the paths that led to improvement" for the adolescent mothers in this sample (p. 95). In a similar vein, the Baltimore study followed a sample of primarily African American urban adolescent mothers from birth of child to young adulthood to trace the developmental paths of both mother and child (Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, & Morgan, 1987; Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, & Chase-Lansdale, 1989). …