Paauglės mamos Lietuvoje: veiksniai, patirtys, sprendimo kryptys

• LSTC leidinių archyvas: knygos tekstas

• Tretjakova, Vaida
• Ubarevičienė, Rūta
• Šumskaitė, Lina
• Pociūtė-Sereikienė, Gintarė
• Žaliauskaitė, Milda

LTStudijoje nagrinėjamas socialinis reiškinys – ankstyva motinystė, kai vaikų susilaukiama jaunesniame nei 20 metų amžiuje, vadinamas paauglių kūdikių gimstamumu. Šiuolaikiniame moksliniame diskurse paauglių kūdikių gimstamumas laikomas spręstina socialine problema dėl įvairių neigiamų medicininių, socialinių, ekonominių pasekmių, su kuriomis susiduria jaunos gimdyvės ir jų kūdikiai. Vis dėlto, Lietuvoje ši problema iki šiol nesulaukė mokslininkų dėmesio. Studijoje pristatomi mokslinio tyrimo rezultatai, kuriuo siekta kompleksiškai ištirti paauglių kūdikių gimstamumą Lietuvoje – dabartinę padėtį, demografinę raidą, regioninę diferenciaciją, šiuos procesus lemiančius veiksnius, vaikų paauglystėje susilaukusių merginų ir su šia problema susiduriančių specialistų patirtis. [Leidėjo anotacija]

ENContext and purpose of the study. This study examines the social phenomenon of early motherhood when children are born to girls younger than 20 years of age, also known as adolescent fertility. In the modern scientific discourse, adolescent fertility is considered to be a social problem that needs to be tackled due to different negative medical, social, and economic consequences faced by young mothers and their infants. However, in Lithuania, this problem has not yet attracted scientific attention. This study presents the research results aimed at a complex investigation of adolescent fertility in Lithuania – the current situation, demographic development, regional differentiation, factors that determine these processes, experiences of girls who had children in adolescence, and professionals faced with this problem. Data sources and methods of the study. The study combines quantitative and qualitative research methods, which allows to analyse adolescent fertility at all levels of analysis – macro, meso and micro. The quantitative studies used reliable demographic birth statistics. The following sources were used: EUROSTAT, Human Fertility Database, 2001 and 2011 general censuses of the Lithuanian population and Statistics Lithuania data on the adolescent birth rate in municipalities, prepared specifically for this study under the agreement on the provision of confidential statistics for scientific purposes. Adolescent fertility has been examined at different territorial levels: the quantitative survey starts with a broad overview of the European context, moving to the analysis of the changes in the fertility rate at the level of the entire Lithuanian territory and the municipal level. Lastly, the changes in the most minor territorial administrative units of Lithuania – elderships – are presented. In addition, a part of the quantitative study was carried out using individual-level data.The qualitative survey was carried out from June 2018 to September 2018 in the municipalities where the adolescent fertility rate (AFR) was the highest in 2011–2015. During the study, its authors conducted semi-structured interviews with girls who had children in adolescence, teachers, specialists from the public health institutions, social workers. A total of 44 interviews were conducted: 20 interviews with girls whose first child was born between the ages of 16 and 19 in the last five to six years (with one exception: one girl had her first child born at the age of 20, her pregnancy period fell into the age group of the girls under investigation); 12 interviews with the staff of schools and public health institutions responsible for implementing the sex education programme in schools; 12 interviews with social workers working with social risk families. Structure of the study. The study consists of three main parts. The first part reviews the issues of adolescent fertility, the international and legal context, and changes in the adolescent fertility rates in the European Union countries and Lithuania. The second part analyses the territorial differentiation of adolescent fertility rate in Lithuania and its factors. The third part presents the results of the qualitative study conducted by its authors. At the end of the study, Conclusions as well as Recommendations for education, social and health policies are provided. [...].The overview of research on adolescent fertility presented in the first chapter revealed that the main factors shaping this demographic process are socio-economic inequalities, inequalities in the accessibility of reproductive health services, and the quality of the content of the sex education programmes. In this context, the research model introduced in the study was designed in such a way that the analysis of regional differentiation of the adolescent fertility rate would assess the role of socio-economic factors, sex education, the accessibility of health services. The AFR developments in the European Union countries presented in the second chapter have shown that in the vast majority of the EU countries, the adolescent fertility rate steadily decreased between 1995 and 2017. The differences between countries also reduced. However, there is still a significant gap between the Western and Northern Europe (except for the United Kingdom) and the Eastern and Central European countries, – Lithuania is closer to the latter ones. Although Lithuania follows the same general downward trend in AFR, in the EU context, it is attributed to the group of countries where these rates are higher. Over seventeen years, AFR in Lithuania has decreased almost twice, or by 9.0 per mille: in 2001 the rate was 21.2, whereas in 2017 it fell to 12.2. However, even such a change did not narrow the large gap between the Western and Northern European countries, where AFR remains three to four times lower than in Lithuania. Thus, Lithuania’s efforts to be on par with these countries and the uptake of good practices should be one of the priorities to reduce the adolescent fertility rate. [...]. [From the publication]