Competent Adolescents Despite Risk: Life Histories, Stress, and Coping Strategies of Resilient Teenage Mothers
Year: 1995
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The processes by which high-risk individuals achieve and maintain competence were examined in this study.Chronic and acute stress, coping, and competence were studied among 46 pregnant and parenting female adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds.Five chronic stress/support factors were coded from life-story interviews: consistent caregiver, family size, number of physical moves, parental education level, and outside, non-familial support.Acute stress was measured for positive and negative life events using a life-events checklist.The Ways of Coping measure yielded three dimensions of subjects' coping repertoires: complexity, effectiveness, and focus.Finally, competencies evaluated through self-report measures included: selfesteem, social support, and school enrollment status.Findings supported both simple direct effects, and indirect, mediating and moderating effects among variables.In evaluating how stress and competence were related, parental education level and positive acute stress predicted competence; while negative acute stress was associated with poorer competence.Further, coping effectiveness was a mediator of this last relationship.viii Stress and coping were found to be related in that positive acute stress was associated with greater problemfocus in the coping repertoire, and negative acute stress was related to less effective coping.Finally, an unexpected result was noted in that more family moves predicted greater problem-focused coping and greater coping effectiveness.This last relationship was further illuminated by compensatory/vulnerability analyses.These uncovered a moderating effect which suggested that the impact of family moves on coping depends on the level of acute stress the subject had been experiencing.Similarly,
Author: Anne Pelissier Montague
Language: English
Topic: Resilience and Mental Health
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3026802644