Motherhood in Childhood

Child, 2003; CEDAW, 1999; CRPD, Article
7) and calls on States to ensure that appropriate
services are made available to them independent
of parental or guardian authorization
(Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2003;
CEDAW, 1999).
Nine years earlier, the Programme of Action
of the International Conference on Population
and Development, which continues to be
the basis for the work of UNFPA today, also
acknowledged adolescents’ evolving capacities
and called on governments and families
to make information and services available
to them, taking into account the rights and
responsibilities of parents (paragraph 7.45).
The 179 governments that endorsed the
Programme of Action also agreed that the
“response of societies to the reproductive
health needs of adolescents should be based
on information that helps them attain a level
of maturity required to make responsible decisions.
In particular, information and services
should be made available to adolescents to help
them understand their sexuality and protect
them from unwanted pregnancies…. This
should be combined with the education of
young men to respect women’s self-determination
and to share responsibility with women
in matters of sexuality and reproduction”
(Programme of Action, paragraph 7.41).
Other individual-level determinants
Factors that place individuals at risk for early
pregnancy do not start only with the onset of
puberty; rather, many of the risk factors they
experience have their origins in early childhood
or even generations before they were born. In
high-income countries, for example, girls who
become pregnant at an early age are significant-
“Sometimes I think my pregnancy and
motherhood in those years made me
stronger. I am more prepared to face all
of life’s problems. But, on the other hand,
I believe that being a mother at that age
complicated my life… I have not gone
through all the steps of growing up as my
peers did. I did not have all the advantages
of being a young person, and I did not have
equal opportunities for success.”
Zeljka, 27, pregnant at 17, Bosnia-Herzegovina
ly more likely than their non-pregnant peers to
have had a mother who had an early pregnancy.
Another influence is maternal nutrition, which
affects birth weights and can have life-long consequences.
In 1995, physician and researcher David
Barker hypothesized that newborns with low
birth weights (often the case with babies born to
poor adolescent girls) went on as adults to be at
significantly greater risk than average for a host of
non-communicable diseases (Barker, 1995).
The special vulnerabilities of girls
ages 10 to 14
Very young adolescents, ages 10 to 14, undergo
tremendous physical, emotional, social, and
intellectual changes. During this period, many
very young adolescents go through puberty, have
their first sexual experiences, and in the case of
girls, may be married as children.
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