Представления о будущем родительстве в подростковом и юношеском возрасте

Abstract

Introduction. Studying ideas about future parenthood has been gaining importance in recent years. This study focuses on the sensitive period of the spontaneous formation of ideas about parenthood and explains a fundamental shift towards their harmonization during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood.
 Methods. The study used the following techniques: (a) the Consistency of Ideas About Parenthood questionnaire developed by the authors to reveal the content and the degree of adequacy of ideas about future parenthood; (b) the Unfinished Sentences technique to reveal respondents’ ideas about parenthood, their attitudes towards parenthood, and self-attitudes as future parents; and (c) the Maternal Roles technique to identify the most preferred maternal roles.
 Results. This section describes and compares the content of ideas about parenthood in adolescents and young adults. The values of the consistency of ideas were low in the whole sample. Besides, there were significant differences between the two compared groups regarding all the parameters of consistency. Compared to young adults, schoolchildren had more adequate and realistic ideas about parental positions and means of parenting. Ambivalent attitudes towards parenthood as a whole were characteristic of adolescents. About 25 percent of all the respondents had negative attitudes towards their future parenthood. Orientation towards children’s needs and harmonious combination of maternal and spousal roles underlay the strategies of the realization of maternal roles that were mostly preferred by adolescents.
 Discussion. The authors interpreted the findings in terms of the effectiveness of the used means and compared them to data from previous studies. The authors draw conclusions about (a) low consistency of ideas about parenthood among adolescents and young adults, (b) significant differences in ideas about parenthood during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, (c) gender differences in ideas about parenthood, (d) the most attractive image of future motherhood, and (e) correlations between value orientations and ideas about parenthood.