Lead image for Pregnant and parenting teenagers in Nairobi’s informal settlements: the hidden mental toll of stigma.
Pregnancy is demanding at any age. But for adolescents, it comes on top of everything else they are dealing with: school, relationships, and the passage into adulthood. Add the hormonal shifts and shock of an unplanned pregnancy, and the weight of societal disapproval, and it is little wonder that pregnant adolescents are at heightened risk of mental disorders.
Existing studies have largely focused on quantifying the burden of mental health problems and their risk factors among pregnant and parenting adolescents. Less attention has been paid to understanding how pregnant and parenting adolescents themselves experience, interpret and navigate these mental health challenges in their everyday lives.
We have spent a combined 40 years researching adolescent sexual and reproductive health across Africa, and what policymakers can do to alleviate their pressures. In our most recent paper we looked at the social consequences of adolescent pregnancy. In particular, we examined experiences of stigma, rejection, social isolation and lost opportunities that affected adolescents’ mental health and how the girls coped with the pressures.
Read: Stop stigma against teenage mothers
Our study drew from interviews with 22 pregnant and parenting girls and 10 parents or caregivers in an urban informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, where adolescent childbearing is common. The burden of adolescent childbearing in Kenya’s informal settlements is disproportionately high, with birth rates reaching roughly 116 per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 (compared to a national average of 73 per 1,000).
We found that much of the mental distress they experienced was socially produced, through paternity denial, financial precarity, humiliation and exclusion by family, school, church and community.
Girls carry the blame; male partners remain socially invisible. We argue that stakeholders should move beyond moralising adolescent pregnancy and instead provide comprehensive, evidence-informed support that enables adolescent girls and their children to thrive.