Becoming and being a teenage mother: how teenage girls in South Western Sweden view their situation.

Our aim in this study was to describe the perspectives, experiences, and reasoning about becoming and being a teenage mother by Swedish teenage girls. Twenty pregnant and parenting teenage girls, aged 15 to 19 years, were interviewed. The teenagers described a pattern of early childbirth in their families, lack of opportunity in life, and ambivalence in contraceptive use as reasons for becoming a teenage mother. They experienced being pregnant and a teenage mother as both a positive transition into adulthood but also as a physiological and psychological hardship. Furthermore, the teenagers emphasized the importance of supportive relationships with families, friends, and society as a prerequisite for successful parenting. The results of our study may be viewed as generating a working hypothesis that can be transferred to other settings on the basis of the information gathered.