Changing Behavior and Changing Personal Identity: The Case of Pregnant and Parenting Young Women and Antisocial Behavior

Abstract

This mixed methods study explores behavioral change and personal identity in 27 pregnant and parenting young women with histories of antisocial behavior. The study began with a qualitative investigation of experiences of behavioral change and participants’ conceptions of their salient self-values. Most participants reported a process of positive change in their behavior and the values that are salient to the self. A range of motivations were described for these changes, focusing on relationships with others and the self. Some participants’ narratives were more coherent than others, particularly in terms of the extent to which self-values reported as personally salient were supported in participants’ identity narratives. Exploratory quantitative analyses suggest that narrative coherence may be related to age and behavioral change. Implications are discussed with respect to research and applied work focusing on processes of positive behavioral change.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks the young women who generously participated in this research. She also thanks Mary Louise Arnold, who supervised the PhD research on which this article was based, and Kate McLean, who provided helpful comments on an earlier manuscript.

Notes

¹There are two likely reasons for this surprisingly high number of pregnant and parenting participants. First, one of the recruitment sites was a center for pregnant and parenting young women, and there was strong interest in the study among young women attending this center. Second, I was pregnant at the time of the interviews and it is possible that some pregnant and parenting young women volunteered to participate because they felt especially comfortable with me as an interviewer.

²All parents were mothers who had only one child, with the following exceptions: one participant reported a confirmed pregnancy with a second child and one participant reported that she suspected, but had not yet confirmed, that she may be pregnant.

³The names of all participants have been changed to protect confidentiality.

⁴It should be noted that no person can (or perhaps should) be expected to behave with 100% consistency in relation to his or her self-values. However, the focus of this coding is on assessing the story or narrative that the participant tells about the self rather than her actual behavior. Although we cannot be expected to act with perfect consistency, it is possible to tell a story about the self that suggests flawless coherence.