Tsolo Joseph Pitso

Pregnant Teenagers' Readiness for Motherhood Tsolo Joseph Pitso

This book portrays the current positions of women whose first child was to be born when they were teenagers in the rural Eastern Cape setting. Questionnaires were given to 20 pregnant teenagers who visited clinics around Alice for pregnancy check-up. Convenient sampling was utilized to the sample which was 19 Xhosa women and 1 coloured woman. The items of the questionnaire were divided into the following sub-topics: Prenatal and postnatal challenges and roles and responsibilities of motherhood. The study found that most of the pregnant teenagers were aware of the prenatal and postnatal challenges but they were not ready to perform the roles and responsibilities associated with motherhood. The psychosocial theory of Erikson and the Psycho sexual theory of Freud advocated the results of the study by showing that the teenage stage is liable to identity problems which can lead one to uninformed decisions.