Transmission of teen pregnancy attitutdes between mothers and adolscent daughters

Abstract

Mothers have a significant influence in transmitting sexuality-related attitudes to their daughters. Although, mothers may influence her older and younger daughters differently. Including more than one child from the family was important for analyzing birth order as a moderator on mothers' attitude transmission. However, little is known about how maternal attitudes towards teen pregnancy influence her adolescent daughters' teen pregnancy attitudes or how mothers' influence is moderated by birth order and maternal acceptance. I examined how mothers' attitudes toward teen pregnancy were associated with her daughters' attitudes toward teen pregnancy the following year (controlling for daughters' own attitudes at Time 1; T1) (N = 36 triads). Using multilevel modeling, I found that mothers' attitudes were more significantly related to her older, but not younger, daughters' attitudes. Further, I found that mothers' attitudes were significantly related to her older daughters' teen pregnancy attitudes only under conditions of low maternal acceptance. These associations were dependent on the context of the mother- daughter relationship and birth order.