Abstract
BackgroundAdolescent school-going mothers return to school in the rekindled hope of obtaining an education. However, their re-introduction into the school environment requires adequate support from teachers, fellow pupils, and the community. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of school-going mothers in Lusaka to understand their coping mechanism in the process of re-integration.MethodThis is a qualitative case study. We conducted in-depth interviews with 24 school going mothers between the ages of 16–19, purposively selected from 2 schools in Lusaka district. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed, coded using Nvivo 10 software and analysed using thematic analysis.ResultsThe girls reported experiencing stigmatization, discrimination, mockery and abuse from their teachers. Some community members labelled, humiliated, gossiped about and isolated the girls from their friends and classmates because of fear of ‘contamination’. Families forced some girls into early marriages making them feel rejected. These experiences resulted in low self-esteem, inferiority complex, poor performance in their academic work and identity crises in the young mothers. Therefore, because of the experiences the girls faced, they developed certain behaviours such as beer drinking, truancy and running away from home. They found it difficult to adjust to motherhood while doing their schoolwork.ConclusionThere is a need for the teachers to undergo training on how to handle young mothers and have a flexible time-table to accommodate adolescent school going mothers when they miss lessons to attend to their babies. Non-parenting school girls should be counseled so that they do not stigmatize adolescent mothers. Parents need to be educated on how to deal with adolescent mothers in the community. The guidance office should have a qualified psychosocial counselor to help create a conducive learning environment for adolescent mothers, by helping them with missed lessons and seeing to it that they are not stigmatized.
Highlights
Adolescent school-going mothers return to school in the rekindled hope of obtaining an education
There is a need for the teachers to undergo training on how to handle young mothers and have a flexible time-table to accommodate adolescent school going mothers when they miss lessons to attend to their babies
Parents need to be educated on how to deal with adolescent mothers in the community
Summary
Adolescent school-going mothers return to school in the rekindled hope of obtaining an education. Their re-introduction into the school environment requires adequate support from teachers, fellow pupils, and the community. Adolescent motherhood is especially disruptive to the educational process of the girls with many teenage mothers leaving school, never to return. Those that return experience a disruption in the learning process both psychosocially and through lack of support from their social environment [3, 4]. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest numbers of teenage mothers dropping out of school [5]. Much research shows that the single predictor of family health is the completion of primary (elementary) school by girls normally from the ages of seven to 12 years
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