Becoming A Mother

Support Groups For Pregnant and Parenting Teens

Becoming A Mother (BAM) clubs provide pregnant and parenting teens opportunities to learn parenting skills along with other teen parents in their communities who are facing similar challenges. BAM club members provide each other support for working through anger, guilt, and the "what do I do?" sense of helplessness that can result from an unplanned pregnancy or adolescent motherhood. BAM clubs give pregnant and parenting teenagers a comfortable learning environment in which to gain the skills they need to be effective parents.

Purpose
The threefold purpose of BAM is to:
1. Teach parenting skills to teen mothers.
2. Keep teen mothers involved in ongoing Cooperative Extension programs.
3. Provide a means for teen mothers to become sources of support for each other.

Audience
The primary audience is pregnant or parenting teens, ages 14 -19. Older single mothers who were teen mothers themselves also participate in some of the BAM clubs and educational experiences.

Resources
A recruitment pamphlet is used by BAM club members and Extension staff to recruit participants. A curriculum titled Becoming A Mother: Keeping In Touch With You was developed specifically for use by BAM clubs. This ten lesson curriculum, designed to help pregnant and parenting teen mothers take control of their lives, utilizes the 4-H experiential learning model. The curriculum empowers teen mothers to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of their children by helping them improve their self esteem and self-understanding, set goals and work to achieve them, build skills in interpersonal relationships through effective communication and conflict management, and develop strategies for coping with life's challenges.

When club members apply the information in the curriculum, they are better able to take charge of their lives and make things happen "for" them instead of just letting things happen "to" them. The curriculum package includes a facilitator's guide (with strategies for organizing and maintaining BAM clubs), experiential lessons, participant work sheets, audio and video cassettes, marketing materials, and evaluation plans.

Delivery method
Adolescent mothers participate in small group meetings within their community. Every effort is made to keep each club community-based and within walking distance for participants. Club meetings include an educational program and a sharing session. The educational program focuses on topics such as discipline, child development, budgeting, goal setting, strategies for returning to school and many other subjects that young mothers need to explore. A highlight of each BAM meeting is the sharing session. In the sharing sessions, club members discuss their successes, concerns and challenges. The discussions are valuable not only for the information exchange, but also for the emotional and psychological support club members gain from each other.

BAM club members are supplied educational and publicity materials to recruit new members for their clubs. Club members take on key responsibilities for organizing and conducting club meetings. The teen mothers also take on major responsibilities for planning and implementing such county and regional events as camp outs, mini retreats, fashion revues, and educational tours.

Cooperating agencies and partners
Many different agencies and organizations have cooperated and supported the program. Some of the cooperators include local health departments, department of social services, community colleges, schools, hospitals, mental health agencies, public libraries, and such community service organizations as Extension Homemakers, the YWCA, Healthy Carolinians Task Force, and a number of social sororities.

Impacts and outcomes
There have been 83 agents, paraprofessionals, volunteers, and BAM club members trained to facilitate the BAM curriculum. Eleven counties have utilized the curriculum in North Carolina. Information about the support group program has been shared with 12 other states. Written surveys and self-assessments indicate that BAM mothers are not only gaining knowledge and content from the curriculum, but are finding ways to apply what they are learning to their daily lives. When club functions involve children, interactions between the children and their mothers often reflect key components of the curriculum: positive child discipline, without shouting or spanking, is put into practice.

In the program's first two years (1987-89), approximately 80 teen mothers in three counties were ongoing participants in BAM support groups. Last year, 166 teen mothers were continuous participants in the support group programs. An estimated 1,000 additional teen mothers have participated in one or more of the educational programs sponsored by the BAM clubs.

Last year also marked the tenth anniversary of the BAM program. As part of the ten-year celebration, fourteen members were recognized for continuous membership since 1987. (These young mothers were teenagers in 1987 and have continued their membership in the groups as young single mothers.) Also in conjunction with the ten-year celebration, an 18 minute video documenting the impact of the program was produced.

Grandparents head 33 percent of families with school-age children in Rockingham County. An outgrowth of the BAM program has been the formation of a support group for grandparents who have had to assume the role of parents for their grandchildren. This support group for parenting grandparents, called Becoming A Parent: Second Generation, was started in 1995. Twenty grandparents, ages 35-65, have participated in ongoing educational programs. Participants have reported in formal and informal surveys that the educational programs provided at their group meetings have provided them with the information they needed to take advantage of the resources available to them and to learn coping strategies for parenting a new generation of children.

As a result of the support group programs, Playing to Learn was started five years ago with help from BAM club members. Playing To Learn provides meaningful learning experiences for youth in high-risk housing communities during the summer months. The learning experiences cover a variety of topics, from exploring music to citizenship. Forty-two teen mothers and young, single mothers have been trained to facilitate learning experiences. Over 600 youth have participated in these educational opportunities. These youth, ages 3-12, have benefited from enriched learning experiences which have not been previously available to them during the summer break from school.

The local library supports Playing to Learn by providing regular bookmobile visits to the learning sites. In 1992, BAM members reported reading a combined total of 2,864 books to their pre-schoolers. In Rockingham County, each year the mother who has documented and read the greatest number of books to her child receives a reading award certificate. Last year, 26 mothers reported reading at least one book each day to their preschool-age child.

For more information, please contact:

Jean Baldwin, (336) 334-7956

Related press releases:

Adjusting to Teenage Pregnancy