Knowledge of infant development: A comparative study of adolescent mothers, older mothers, and never pregnant teenagers

Abstract

It has been reported that children of adolescents are at risk for development delays primarily because of their mothers’ lack of understanding of normal infant development. In the present study a comparison of never pregnant teenagers, adolescent and older mothers was undertaken in order to determine if there were differences among the three groups: (a) on an overall test of infant development; (b) on a test of motor, cognitive, social and language infant abilities; and (c) on a test of first and second year infant abilities. Eighty females (20 adolescent mothers, 20 older mothers, 40 never pregnant teenagers) were given a 56 item test to determine their understanding of the emergence of specific infant behaviors. Analysis of variance indicated that older mothers were better at predicting the emergence of these behaviors, overall, and for each of the behavioral domains. No differences were found between the other two groups. Older mothers also were better at predicting first year behaviors, but there were no differences among the groups in their ability to predict second year behaviors. Findings are discussed in terms of differences in social‐class and parent‐child interaction styles.