ABSTRACT
Although adolescent mothers were shown to be less responsive and more stressed in parenting their infants than adult mothers-and continue to be depressed, anxious, and stressed 5 years later-there was considerable variability in their personal adjustment and parenting skills, with some mothers faring considerably better than others. In this chapter, we seek to understand the sources of their individual differences in the adjustment to parenthood, attempting to explain why some adolescent mothers coped better with their transition to adulthood than others. The specific focus is on identifying the predictors of three important maternal outcomes: (a) parenting at 6 months; (b) risk for child abuse at 1, 3, and 5 years; and (c) maternal adjustment at 3 and 5 years. To accomplish this goal we report new analyses as well as summarize strategic results from our past research.
