Adolescent girls’ resilience to teenage pregnancy and motherhood in Begoro, Ghana: the effect of financial support

ABSTRACT

Adolescent childbearing in contemporary times are determinants of their outcome in the future. This paper draws on Bourdieu’s concept of capitals, specifically economic capital to examine how adolescent girls avoid and/or adjust to the challenges they are predisposed to in their sexual and reproductive experiences. Data were collected from a survey of 500 older adolescent girls. These were supported with data gathered from 20 in-depth interviews from the same pool of respondents. The study found that access to financial resources for non-pregnant girls were not directly to help them avoid risky sexual behaviour, but it served that purpose to some extent. For the ever-pregnant girls, financial support helped them to cope with teenage pregnancy and motherhood. Parents stood out as a significant source of economic support for girls. Therefore, parents should be economically empowered to provide the needed support for girls to develop resilience to teenage pregnancy and motherhood.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent girls
• financial support
• Ghana
• teenage pregnancy
• adolescent motherhood
• resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. School fees here applies to those who are at the senior high school level because public schools are supposed to be tuition-free at the basic level.

2. School supplies include stationary, school uniforms, school shoes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research North–south (NCCR North–south), an international research programme of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and co-funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).