Struggling with motherhood and coping with fatherhood - A grounded theory study among Thai teenagers.

OBJECTIVE: to gain a deeper understanding of Thai teenage parents' perspectives, experiences and reasoning about becoming and being a teenage parent from a gender perspective.

DESIGN: an exploratory design using grounded theory methodology. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. An interview guide was developed, a pilot study was undertaken, and interviews were performed on two different occasions: once during the second trimester of pregnancy and again when the infant was 5-6 months old.

SETTING: a province in the western part of Thailand.

PARTICIPANTS: the selection of a heterogeneous group of teenage parents-to-be continued until saturation was reached, as describe by Glaser and Strauss (1967), in all n=50. Inclusion criteria for participants were that they were heterosexual couples, under 20 years of age, cohabiting, and expecting their first child.

FINDINGS: the core category 'struggling with motherhood and coping with fatherhood' comprises descriptions of the process from when the teenagers first learned about the pregnancy until the child was six months old. The teenagers had failed to use contraceptives which led to an unintended parenthood. Their parenthood became a turning point as the teenagers started to change their behaviours and lifestyle during pregnancy, and adapted their relationships to partner and family. Family commitments was a facilitator, through support given by their families. Finally, becoming a parent describes ways of dealing with the parental role, by engaging in parental activities and reestablishing goals in life. Most of the teenage parents reproduced traditional gender roles by being a caring mother or a breadwinning father respectively.

KEY CONCLUSIONS: 'struggling with motherhood and coping with fatherhood' referred to the parents' stories about how they struggled and coped with life changes and their parental role when they became unintentionally pregnant, accepted their parenting, and finally became parents. After becoming parents, the main concerns of most of the teenage parents were being a caring mother and a breadwinning father.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: this study contributes a deeper understanding of Thai teenage parents' experiences of becoming and being a parent and might improve health care professionals' adaptation of care for teentranatanage parents and inspire them to tailor their care specifically to teenager's needs from early pregnancy to parenthood.