Early Child Marriage: Customary Law, Support System, and Unwed Pregnancy in Gorontalo

The rate of underage marriage in Gorontalo is very high, even though religion, customs and state laws prohibit it. The results of the direct interviews conducted and the observations made indicate that poverty, low levels of education and matchmaking myths may have caused this increase. Furthermore, the increasingly high level of promiscuity and weakened socio-cultural ties have led to an increase in the number of extramarital pregnancies, and forced marriage is unavoidable to maintain the dignity of the community. It was discovered that most married couples do not wed legally until they have problems in their marriage and seek a divorce. Moreover, women must also be responsible for their life choices because this paper shows that poor service practices have caused underage women to be objectified by physical, social and symbolic violence. The unavailability of a support system from the government and society makes a partner rely on the kindness of his or her parents. Therefore, it was suggested that government intervention, in the form of prevention and support systems for underage married women, must be integrated with the role of the community and religious leaders.

The Resilience of Unwed Pregnant Teenagers: A Preliminary Survey at Malaysian Women’s Shelter Homes

Unwed pregnant teenagers tend to experience various problems. Apart from that, they also receive negative perception from community. For that reason, most shelters are provided to assist and protect the teenagers involved. However, only those who can adjust to hardships or resilient can survive the worse. This preliminary survey aimed to identify the level of resilience among unwed pregnant teenagers (UPTs). The study involved 34 UPTs from four women’s shelters under the supervision of the government and private organizations in Peninsular Malaysia. The respondents were selected using the purposive sampling technique. This study used a quantitative approach, and the instrument of this study was a questionnaire named Tahap Resilien Remaja (TReR), which was administered based on the Ego-Resiliency Scale (ER89) and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). The items in the TReR were validated by five expert evaluators in the psychological and social fields. Study data were analyzed descriptively using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 25.0. The findings of the study showed that UPTs in women’s shelters had a moderate level of resilience (Mean[M] = 3.40, Standard Deviation [SD] = 1.010). The UPTs in this study showed good progress in the shelters. Therefore, the shelters are expected to maintain and improve the quality of existing services from time to time. Other shelters can also utilize the findings of this study to provide better services to their residents to recover from psychosocial problems resulting from cases of unwed pregnancy.

Baby Mama

This chapter uses the ubiquitous “baby mama” to discuss what Lindon Barrett calls “bla(n)ckness”—a concept that radically calls into question traditional discourses by exposing the violence that often sets those discourses into motion and by revealing alternative discourses that resist the dichotomization upon which dominance, and dominate discourses, often rely. It argues that not only have social scientists found the link between poverty and unwed pregnancy that has long structured national debates about single black mothers to have been fatefully misinterpreted, but that young black mothers themselves evince the faulty logic upon which these debates so heavily rely.

Psychological Factors Differentiating Unwed Mothers Keeping Their Babies from Those Placing Them for Adoption

The study focused on possible psychological variables which could differentiate unwed mothers keeping their babies from those placing them for adoption when certain pragmatic, sociological variables were kept constant. These psychological variables were derived from a model constructed on the basis of psychoanalytic writing on the genesis of unwed pregnancy. Three hypotheses generated from this model were tested, viz. that unwed mothers who kept their babies would have poorer feminine identification; greater hostility toward their own mothers; and greater object needs than unwed mothers who released their babies for adoption. The Thematic Apperception Test was used to investigate these hypotheses. The experimental group consisted of 15 unwed mothers who had decided to keep their babies. These were compared with a control group of 12 unwed mothers who had decided to place their babies for adoption. The experimental and control groups were matched on a number of sociological variables. The results supported the above hypotheses. The applicability of these results were discussed.