Transition into Motherhood among Adolescent: A Scoping Review

Abstract

The transition period to motherhood is one of the most challenging changes in social, biological and psychological aspects. A woman experiences the change of the roles and responsibilities of being a mother, including adolescent mother. Research has shown that an adolescent mother who experiences the process of responsibility began when she became a wife, became pregnant and gave birth to a child. An adolescent mother often becomes a mother without knowledge, skills, and the lack of the source of information needed to become a mother. The objective of this paper is to review the evidence about experience of transition into motherhood among adolescent mother. Scoping review was used and Arksey & O'Malley framework was adopted to conducted the review, in which consisted of 5 stages namely identifying scoping review questions with the PEOS framework; Identifying articles relevant to inclusion and exclusion criteria, conducting literature searching through relevant data bases namely PubMed, ProQuest, Wiley, Science Direct, the grey literature was also searched through Google Scholar.  PRISMA Flowchart (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyzes) was used to improve transparency of searching literature. 7 articles were included after filtering processes five with grade (A) and two articles with grade (B), two articles were from developed countries and five articles from developing countries. All seven articles used qualitative methods. Three themes emerged as a result of the scoping review namely, the difficulties in the transition to becoming an adolescent mother, the impact of psychological to be an adolescent mother and the support needed in the transition to be an adolescent mother. In conclusion, the process of developing a mother's identity, family and social strongly support for the adolescent mother during the transition to becoming motherhood. Additionally, the support of the health providers is necessary to provide services for adolescent mother to have better understanding about the transition for adolescent mothers.