Adolescent health briefCharacterizing low-income Latina adolescent mothers: Living arrangements, psychological adjustment, and use of services
Section snippets
Methods
The participants were 304 low-income Latina adolescent mothers participating in the Public Health Foundation Enterprises’ WIC program.
During their WIC appointment, the first 10 adolescent mothers from 55 WIC centers who came in on a specified day were asked by the staff to complete a survey regarding income, family structure, use of services (e.g., food stamps, welfare [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)], Medicaid, involvement in the Cal-Learn [California program assisting young
Results
Because the age of the adolescents in the sample was skewed toward older adolescents and because age was associated with study variables, multivariate analyses of covariance controlling for age were conducted to examine language group differences and interaction effects whenever the dependent variable was continuous. To control for age when the dependent variable was categoric, χ2 analyses were conducted separately for adolescents less than the median age of 18 years (range = 13–17 y) and for
Discussion
The results indicated that Spanish-speaking and bilingual adolescent mothers appeared to be experiencing more adjustment problems than English speakers, and that English speakers accessed services more, despite similar socioeconomic status and family structure. Specifically, the bilingual adolescent mothers exhibited depression scores within the clinically significant range. Spanish-speaking adolescent mothers showed lower self-esteem than their peers, and although the numeric differences in
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Eloise Jenks, M.Ed., R.D., Kiran Saluja, M.P.H., R.D., Judy Gomez, M.P.H., R.D., and the PHFE-WIC staff for their support of this work.
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