Background and introduction Jamaica is a developing country with a comparatively high level of teenage pregnancy. Clarendon, the third largest parish in Jamaica, has a population of 211,447 people (Census 1991), and approximately 53,000 people reside in and around its capital town, May Pen. Teenage pregnancies continue to be a problem across the island of Jamaica, and no less so in Clarendon and its adjoining parishes. Poverty, low self-esteem, inadequate parental support and insufficient school-based guidance counselling all have an impact on the psychosocial development of the parish’s teenagers, and early pregnancies are common. Misinformation about sex is prevalent among teenagers and contributes to the figures of approximately one teenage pregnancy in every 10 births in the parish. Many of these teenage mothers are between 12 and 15 years of age and are poorly prepared for the task of parenting. In ever-growing numbers, the teenage mothers add to the ranks of the poor in Jamaican society in which single parent families abound, putting their offspring at risk. Internationally, in recent years a great deal of interest and research has been conducted to study the immediate and long term impact of adolescent parenthood on both the mother and the child. A longitudinal study in New Zealand
(Fergusson and Woodward, 1999)1 explored the relationships between maternal age (at birth) and psychosocial outcomes at 18 years in a birth cohort of 1,025 children. Resiliency in Adolescent Mothers, a North American study (Wolin and Wolin, 1998)2, used ethnographic interviews to assess the academic success, attitudinal and coping behaviours of a group of teenage mothers. In the Caribbean, RussellBrown (1997)3 studied the economic and social conditions of 46 teenage mothers and their children who were born at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados.
The Teenage Mothers Project (TMP) Twelve years ago, the problem of teenage pregnancy among poor young women in the rural parishes of Jamaica was targeted through a project launched by the University of the West Indies, Mona. Titled the ‘Teenage Mothers Project’ (TMP), young women at risk of dropping out of the school system because of early pregnancies were provided with education, counselling and child care support services, providing them with the opportunity of a better future. This project was funded with support from the Bernard van Leer Foundation of the Netherlands. Over the 10 year period between 1986 and 1996, the Teenage Mothers Project sought to:
.
decrease the number and frequency of teenage pregnancies in and around Clarendon;