Exploring Challenges Encountered by Teenage Mothers and Coping Mechanisms Towards Policy Recommendations

This study was conducted to explore the different challenges encountered by teenage mothers and how they cope with those challenges as the bases for policy recommendations. This included the teenage mothers of Sta. Josefa National High School- Senior High in the School Year 2021-2022. The exploration focused on the challenges that teenage mothers encounter after giving birth, and the coping mechanism they employed. A qualitative phenomenological research method was employed with the use of in-depth unstructured interviews as well as participant observation in data gathering. A phenomenological method is appropriate in this study since it explored the real-life experiences and in-depth collection of information report from the case themes (Creswell, 2013). The findings showed that the challenges encountered by teenage mothers are: financial problem, difficulty in taking care of the baby, inability to planning and decision making, social stigma, and family conflict. The coping mechanisms they used are: thriving hard by utilizing opportunities, accepting the reality, relying from the support from the family, and having pride of being a mother. Based on the results, the following were recommended: strengthen school’s symposia on teenage pregnancy, strengthen parents’ orientation, strengthen school support programs, strengthen reproductive health education, strengthen adopt–a–student program, and strengthen the school, BLGU, and LGU linkages