Consequences for mothers and children of adolescent childbearing in rural and urbanizing Guatemala
Engle, P.L.
Battelle PDP Working Paper, Battelle Population and Development Policy Programme 3: 80
1978
Document Number: 407573
This study aims to determine whether children of adolescent mothers in rural and peri-urban Guatemala suffer retarded growth or mental development as compared with children born of mothers in their prime child-bearing years. It is based on two different sets of data. The first is retrospective life-history reports of 952 women in two kinds of villages: four rural, isolated, subsistence-farming communities; and two villages on the outskirts of Guatemala City, which are undergoing rapid acculturation to the city environment. The second set of data comes from an eight-year longitudinal study of the effects of protein-calorie malnutrition on mental development, which was conducted in the same four rural villages but not the two peri-urban communities. The socioeconomic circumstances are described, and this is followed by an analysis of pregnancy patterns and socioeconomic correlates of early child-bearing. The data suggest that early child-bearing has few negative consequences for the mother or child, although it is less desirable in the peri-urban setting than in the rural setting. In the four rural villages the younger mother does not appear to be obviously deprived of opportunities for advancement, nor does she produce less healthy babies than the older mother. However as women become more modern, have more opportunities for work and economic independence, and are less likely to be part of an extended family, as is already the case in the peri-urban setting, early child-bearing becomes more limiting.