What can young mothers’ accounts of their childhood relationships tell us about why they become parents? An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study of mothers aged 16 - 19 supported by the Family Nurse Partnership.

This research project explores links between childhood relationships and adolescent motherhood. It uses Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and a psychoanalytic framework of understanding. Working in collaboration with the Family Nurse Partnership, five young women who had become mothers between age 16 and 19 were recruited as participants. In semi-structured interviews they provided detailed accounts of their childhood experiences, relationships and families. The interview data was analysed using IPA, informed by psychoanalytic thinking. The interviews revealed a complex network of childhood relationships. These were developed into themes exploring the potential impact of participants’ experiences of early relationships on their becoming mothers in adolescence. While the accounts differ according to participants’ unique personal experiences and circumstances, four superordinate themes were found across the data. A preoccupation with their own mothers pervades all participants’ accounts, and the first two themes of this study’s major findings relate to the important problems of first possessing and then separating from a mother. Extending outwards from these first central relationships with mothers, two further themes were uncovered which, additionally, give greater perspective to early relating in participants’ families. Theme 3 is about relating to others in the family including fathers (the first ‘other’), sisters and – significantly - maternal grandmothers. Within this theme an interesting finding is the impact on participants’ emotional development of complicated dynamics between parents. Theme 4 examines the sense of being unsafe in a dangerous-feeling-world. This theme was found in all of the accounts, along with the hope expressed by participants that having a baby might satisfy an unmet need to feel secure.