Madam Cynthia Adarkwah Adolescent Focal person, Tema Polyclinic and Mary Kissiwaa Registered Community Nurse, Tema polyclinic speak on Adolescent Parent hood on Plan B Fm’s Apomudenfie hosted by Akua Konadu Okontie.
They said that Adolescent parenting refers primarily to women and men nineteen years or younger who give birth to and elect to parent a child.
Although most adolescent pregnancies are unintended, an increasing number of pregnant adolescents choose to continue the pregnancy and become parents.
They further explained that estimates suggest that each year, slightly more than 10 percent of all births in Ghana almost are to adolescent women, which is not healthy looking at the challenges it comes with.
They also said that at any age, pregnancy and first parenthood produce changes that require adaptation. For adolescents, three transitions occur simultaneously.
They must adjust to changes in their family-of-origin relationships during adolescence, changes in their physical and cognitive abilities, and changes in their social reality add to this the changes caused by premature parenthood, and the potential for stress increases.
“Typically, adolescent parents experience stress from five sources: relationships with the self, partners, parents, nonfamily institutions, and intergenerational relations. Thus, the adolescent parent faces a series of competing developmental tasks that increase the likelihood of stress, mostly in a pure African home they mistreated”. They said .
They revealed that compared to older mothers, adolescent mothers are more likely to experience pregnancy and delivery problems and have less healthy babies overall (e.g., low birth weight, high infant morbidity), but these negative health consequences are very common in Ghana because they receive less health care.
“Children of Adolescents show few differences in cognitive functioning in infancy, but small and consistent differences are detected in preschool children that continue into middle childhood. Also, preschool children of adolescent mothers tend to show more behavior problems (e.g., aggressive, less self-control) than children of older mothers, a finding especially pronounced for boys. During adolescence, problems begin to show up, such as grade failure, delinquent acts, and early sexual activity and pregnancy.”
Concluding they advised that adolescent parents seek for help from older people and frequently visit health facilities.
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