Title: Lived experiences of teenagers with pregnancy stress in Taiwan
Abstract:
Background and Objectives: Early pregnancy and unintended pregnancy can cause a variety of stressors for teenagers, which are influenced by the teenager's age, culture, socialization, and support. This study aimed to explore the life stress experienced by pregnant teenagers during the transition to motherhood under Taiwan's health care and education policies. Anticipated to provide healthy self-care for pregnant teenagers to reduce stress during pregnancy, improve the health of pregnant teenagers and their fetuses, and serve as a guideline for the health caregivers.
Methods: This study used qualitative methods with data collection of intent sampling and semi-structured interviews. Data saturation was achieved after interviewing 11 pregnant teenagers. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, and narratives were analyzed by Colaizzi's method (1978). In the interests of rigor, Lincoln and Guba (1985) proposed criteria: accuracy, inference, reliability, and verifiability were adopted as measures of the study's validity.
Results: The findings include four themes and eleven sub-themes.
(1) Role strain: insecurity as a wife and lack of confidence as a mother.
(2) Body-initiated anxiety: fear of unintended pregnancy, anger about changes in appearance, physical fatigue, and anxiety about pregnancy complications may cause fetal damage.
(3) Social pressure: insufficient family support, educational challenges, and lack of peer relationships.
(4) SSupport system: Social worker intervention, universal health insurance policy, educational environment. Among them, teenagers are more concerned about their appearance during pregnancy than adult women and are particularly angry about maternal obesity. In addition, even though Taiwan's universal health insurance policy has significantly reduced medical expenditures for pregnant teenagers, all teenagers are unintended pregnancies, and most of them come from low-income families. Therefore, they need more pregnancy self-care knowledge and financial support to ease the stress of pregnancy.
Conclusions: Although Taiwan's universal health insurance policy has significantly reduced out-of-pocket payments to improve teenagers' health care during prenatal and delivery. Pregnant teenagers still suffer from physical fatigue, psychological anxiety, and social pressure, such as anxiety about raising children and a lack of financial confidence and loneliness. Support remains vital for teenagers, including support from partners, family, and intervention systems and practical help adjusting to new roles and responsibilities.
Audience Take Away Notes:
• Understand the stress experienced by pregnant adolescents in Taiwan during the transition to motherhood
• Instruct caregivers to help pregnant teens relieve stress
• Pregnant teens need more support to improve their own health and that of their fetus
