How an Adolescent's Childbearing Affects Siblings' Pregnancy Risk: A Qualitative Study Of Mexican American Youths

An adolescent’s pregnancy and childbearing surely have profound effects on her family. 1,2 With more than 440,000 teenagers giving birth in the United States every year, 3 and with most of these teenagers continuing to live with their families after their babies are born, 4 these effects clearly have important practical implications. Furthermore, how a family reacts to a teenager’s childbearing likely has significant ramifications for whether other adolescents within the family also become pregnant. 5 And numerous reports have documented that teenage pregnancies tend to occur within families, 6,7 and among sisters. 8–10 Indeed, a teenager’s childbearing might increase her siblings’ risk of pregnancy for several reasons. Social modeling explanations would suggest that a teenager’s childbearing increases her siblings’ acceptance of early parenting by exposing them to this type of role model.11 Having an older sister who has had a teenage birth might legitimize teenage parenthood as an acceptable and permissible life course option. Siblings might also view teenage parenting as less of a stigma as they get used to seeing their sister in the mothering role, and as members of her family, neighborhood and community accept her in that role. They may even idealize her situation as her family and community begin to treat her as an adult because of her motherhood. Another way that a teenager’s childbearing might increase her siblings’ risk of pregnancy is by altering their mothers’ parenting. For example, one study found that mothers became more lenient with and less attentive toward their other children after their teenage daughter gave birth. 12 Another reported that the mothers of childbearing teenagers were more critical and punitive, and less supportive and affectionate, with all of their children than were other mothers. 13 That same study revealed that mothers’ harsh, critical parenting was associated with their teenage children’s increased likelihood of being sexually experienced. Numerous other studies have also found that mothers’ lack of warmth and closeness and infrequent communication with their children are related to adolescents’ increased risk of becoming pregnant or fathering a child, 14 although whether these aspects of mothers’ parenting change once a teenage daughter has a baby is unknown. Nevertheless, mothers’ parenting and their relationships with their children may change after a teenage daughter gives birth, and these changes may increase the risk of early pregnancy involvement for other teenage children within the household. However, a teenager’s childbearing might also give rise to protective factors, which prevent other adolescents within the family from becoming pregnant or fathering a child. For instance, mothers might increase their attentiveness to their children or monitor them more vigilantly, and family members might explicitly discourage adolescents from early sexual activity and early parenting. Mothers might also attempt to use the older daughter’s experience as an object lesson, emphasizing the older sister’s having become pregnant as behavior not to emulate. Siblings themselves might be strongly motivated to postpone parenthood after witnessing the difficulties of teenage parenting. These effects illustrate adaptive responses to a teenager’s childbearing. Understanding such protective effects would offer important insights into preventive strategies that occur naturally within families and that might be easily harnessed into interventions that help families in which one teenage pregnancy has occurred to prevent others. 15,16 The goal of the current study was to understand the circumstances that emerge in the wake of a teenager’s childbearing that might increase or decrease siblings’ risk of teenage pregnancy or fatherhood. The study focuses on Mexican American families, for several reasons. Latinos have the highest teenage birthrate and teenage pregnancy rate of any U.S. racial or ethnic group, and the Latino teenage birthrate has been most resistant to decline. 3,17 Moreover, teenage childbearing is more common among Latinas of Mexican origin than among those with origins elsewhere in Latin America. 18 However, because Mexican American families typically have strong proscriptions against nonmarital pregnancy and childbearing, 19 they might experience higher levels of conflict and dissension following an unmarried adolescent’s childbearing than other families. Thus, although the effects revealed in the current study may not be representative of effects in all families, they are likely reflective of those in many Mexican American families that have experienced a teenager’s childbearing.