Social support and nutrition during adolescent pregnancy: Effects on health outcomes of baby and mother

Pregnancy during the teen years presents sociocultural and biological challenges to mother and baby. Teen mothers tend to be less physically and psychologically prepared for child bearing and often give birth to underweight babies for social, cultural, and physical reasons. Teen mothers in adverse environments marked by poverty are simultaneously constrained by a lack of access to resources necessary to healthy fetal and maternal development and exposed to risks which can indirectly or directly harm mother and child. Social support mediates the relationship between gravida and environment and contributes to better health outcomes by operating directly to channel resources and indirectly to regulate risk exposure. This study examines how social support contributes to dietary intake during pregnancy by analyzing meal patterning, quality of nutrition and use of prenatal services in relation to social support and mother and child outcomes. Results indicate a strong relationship between social support and higher intakes of nutrients important to pregnancy including folate, magnesium, potassium, calcium and other micro and macro nutrients. Examination of the relationships between dietary behavior and social support demonstrates significant positive relationships between medium to high social support and intakes of folate, magnesium, thiamin, potassium, phosphorus and fat, compliance with prenatal iron prescriptions and overall prenatal iron intakes and significant negative relationships with takeout meals, snacks and sexually-transmitted infections during pregnancy. Meal provisioning by adults is positively associated with higher intakes of Vitamins A, C, riboflavin and fiber and negatively associated with takeout meals, snacks and excessive maternal weight gain. Meal sharing with adults is positively associated with higher intakes of Vitamins A, B12, C and fiber and negatively correlated with snacking, cervical abnormalities and maternal days in the hospital post-birth. In this study, social support functions as a biocultural process to promote dietary behaviors which may encourage healthy birth outcomes among teen mothers and provides an example of how social support in pregnancy can be visualized as an adaptive strategy in a modern urban setting