Browsing by Author "Boshoff, Sinead Madelyn"
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- ItemNavigating young motherhood: a retrospective study into the reflections of the teenage motherhood experience by mothers within a community of the Western Cape(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-11-14) Boshoff, Sinead Madelyn; Kruger, Lou-Marié; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Psychology.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The current study is situated within the overarching research area of maternal mental health. Sixteen to eighteen years prior, a larger study known as the Women’s Mental Health Research Project (WMHRP) was undertaken from 2002 to 2006. The current study aimed to follow up with a subset of the sample who were classified as teenage mothers. Therefore, this follow-up study explored the subjective experience of young motherhood over time as reflected upon by one group of low-income South African women. The first-hand experiences of young mothers have specifically been of marked interest in recent years. The literature comprises of various studies exploring topics such as the joys and challenges of motherhood, stigmatization, and social support. This has led to increased efforts to incorporate women’s voices into the literature and the development of a more optimistic outlook regarding life outcomes. However, the literature exploring this outlook remains fractured at present. Few retrospective studies which explore the experience of young motherhood in low-income women from the perspective of mothers themselves have been conducted in South Africa and as it stands, very few specific to the Western Cape. The current retrospective study was informed by social constructionist feminism and is of a qualitative nature. All participants resided within a semi-rural community encountering various social and economic vulnerabilities. The sample comprised of 7 participants, of whom one individual’s interview could not be used owing to technical difficulties. Data collection was carried out by administering interviews, which were then transcribed and analysed according to the social constructionist grounded theory method. The chief categories which emerged from the data included motherhood over time: participants’ narratives at present, practical concerns and challenges, emotional experience of motherhood, coping, and the meaning of motherhood. These categories represent the challenges impacting upon young women’s transition to motherhood as well as the range of emotional experiences from joy and struggle to the deeper meanings realised when reflecting on motherhood over time. Our findings suggest that a tension exists at the core of the women’s narrative which is a result of and displays the multiplicity of the human experience in the context of a life experience as complex as teenage pregnancy. Motherhood, particularly young motherhood as it progresses over time, is broadly characterized by both joy and struggle. Rather than occurring in isolation and as a linear progression from one to the other, women interchange and hold space for a range of - sometimes conflicting - emotions, which results in this held tension. The findings of this study were not entirely novel in that the tangible difficulties of young motherhood have been addressed in previous studies of a similar nature. However, this study provided insight from a unique perspective compared to most research exploring teenage pregnancy in South Africa, by investigating the subjective experience of young motherhood of the same women over time within a qualitative paradigm. Due to the multifaceted, complex nature of young motherhood, the exploration of the experience of motherhood from women’s perspective can be expanded beyond the scope of this study. A multi-layered narrative within which there remains more to be discovered was revealed through this research. Limitations specific to the current study and recommendations for future research were considered.