EARLY PARENTHOOD FOR THE SISTERS OF ADOLESCENT MOTHERS - A PROPOSED CONCEPTUAL-MODEL OF DECISION-MAKING

Previous research has demonstrated that the sisters of adolescent moth ers have an increased risk of becoming teenage parents. From our exper ience in caring for over 600 teenage mothers in a comprehensive family -oriented teen-tot clinic, we have developed a conceptual model, based on social cognitive theory, which describes the influence of teenage mothers on their sisters' decisions about pregnancy and childbearing. Our model focuses on the direct effects of both intrafamilial and soci al-cultural factors on adolescents' childbearing attitudes and their i ndividual sexual values. Intrafamilial factors include the impact of s ibling teenage parents and influences of parenting styles. Social-cult ural factors include social norms that favor early sexual behavior and childbearing. These interact with peer influence to directly affect s ocial and self-regulative skills, feeling of self-efficacy, and the in dividual's sexual values. Personal factors, such as hopelessness and d epression, are influenced by multigenerational poverty. These personal factors are integrated with intrafamilial and social-cultural factors to produce the adolescent's personal meaning and cognitive assessment of pregnancy and childbearing. Clinicians can use this model when dev eloping interventions that focus on the various factors that influence an adolescent sister's decisions about becoming pregnant.