Social support and stress in university mothers

• Grant number: 23/02676-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2023
• End date: October 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Sabrina Mazo D'Affonseca
• Grantee: Camila Naomi Yamamoto
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Pregnancy is a process characterized by intense physical and psychological changes in women, being extremely important social support to have a pleasant experience with pregnancy, a process formed by a set of situations that can be stressful for the mother. When considering a pregnancy in adolescence or youth, in addition to social support, other aspects may be involved, such as the impact that pregnancy has on studies, which may lead to school dropout, for example, in the case of women attending an educational institution. This research, therefore, aims to analyze and relate the social support and stress of adolescent and young women who are experiencing the process of becoming a mother during their university experience. For this, information must be collected from at least 50 (fifty) women aged 18 to 24 who are enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate course at a higher education institution, public or private, and who are going through the process of becoming a mother during the university experience, with children up to 01 (one) year old and who have become pregnant while students of higher education. The participants will answer an online form that will collect some personal information and about the university enrolled, they will respond to the Perception of Social Support Scale (adult version) EPSUS-A and the Parenting Stress Scale (EEPa). A sample of 10 participants who have agreed to participate in a semi-structured interview will be selected, and they will be the participants with the highest and lowest levels of social support and highest and lowest scores of parental stress.For data analysis, quantitative and qualitative analysis strategies will be used due to the mixed method used in the collection. It is expected that teenage mothers and university students do not receive social support satisfactorily and that this generally impacts the stress level of these mothers. Thus, university mothers who do not receive social support from different groups, such as friends and family, tend to have a higher level of stress when compared to university mothers who receive social support from different groups.