Parent-adolescent Relationship Quality, Gender, and Youth Attitudes Toward Pregnancy

Abstract

Although many studies have focused on teen sexual behavior and predictors of teen pregnancy, few have examined potential predictors of teen attitudes toward pregnancy, particularly attitudes of ambivalence. Using a sample of 501 students from a Midwestern, urban area, this study models the effect of mother- and father-adolescent relationship quality on the likelihood of group membership in one of three attitudinal categories toward teen pregnancy using a series of multinomial regressions. Categories were created by adolescent endorsement of one of three attitudes toward becoming pregnant or of impregnating someone (in the case of males): a negative or anti-pregnancy attitude, a favorable or pro-pregnancy attitude, or an ambivalent attitude, and separate analyses were run by adolescent gender. After controlling for participant age, ethnicity, parent education, mother having been a teen parent, and parental communication about sex, results indicated that increases in mother and father relationship quality significantly decreased the odds of female participants having an ambivalent attitude toward pregnancy when anti-pregnancy attitudes was the reference group. Additionally, mother relationship quality was found to decrease the odds of female participants having pro-pregnancy pregnancy attitudes when anti-pregnancy attitudes was the reference group. No significant predictive relationships between the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship and teen pregnancy attitudes were found for male participants. Implications for future research and clinical application are discussed.