Development of Resilience in Teenage Mothers within Contextual Realities of Poor Rural South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the ways in which teenage mothers develop strategies of resilience within the context of poverty in a rural setting in South Africa. It draws on conceptualizations that situate individual resilience within the social ecologies that individuals exist in, whilst simultaneously recognizing the limits of individual resilience within these social ecologies. Qualitative data were generated through in-depth interviews with 16 school-going teenage mothers. Findings show that while the negative outcomes of poverty within this rural community cannot be ignored, many teenage mothers reveal that they are agentic beings by demonstrating resilience in the face of prevailing adverse conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Teenage pregnancy
• resilience
• poverty
• rural context
• teenage mothers
• gender

Acknowledgments

1. This work is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. Grant No: 103761 and Grant No: 113818.

2. We would like to acknowledge Alvi Hamid for assistance with data generation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Statement

This article has not been published elsewhere and has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation [Grant No: 113818.].