Improving the well-being of teenage mothers through resilience-focused interventions in rural schools

The well-being and resilience of teenage mothers are adversely affected after the sudden transition into motherhood. This could be explained by the insufficient support in their social environment, such as the family, church, and school, which increased the rate of school dropouts. This study explores the source of the support system that teenage mothers receive in their motherhood in rural secondary schools. It adopts a qualitative approach and research design. The interpretive paradigm was used in this study. Five teenage mothers from five rural schools were purposefully selected for this study. It employed amended semi-structured interviews to generate data. The thematic findings revealed that teenage mothers received support packages entailing unified, interconnected, and inclusive community structures, such as local health institutions, faith-based organisations, neighbourhoods, inter alia. Lastly, this study recommends that schools be critical in implementing effective, resilience-focused interventions to support and empower teenage mothers to cope with early parenthood, academic responsibilities, and psycho-social demands.