Psychosocial Development of Erickson's Stages: Casting in MTV's Teen Mom

Overview

Objectives/Goals According to People magazine over half a million teenage girls, who became pregnant in 2008, kept their babies. This study was created to examine the impact that being a teenage parent has on the teenager's social development based on Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Developmental Stages. It was predicted that in couples who keep their babies the fathers would stay in a stage of adolescence while the mothers would move to the early adulthood stage. Methods/Materials A study guide was created for Erickson's stages, focusing on adolescence (identity vs. role confusion) and early adulthood (intimacy vs. isolation). A coding sheet was developed to classify statements and behaviors that would be either, adolescent or early adulthood. Using a rating scale and the coding sheets behaviors and statements of each member the cast of MTV's Teen Mom were recorded to determine their placement as being in an adolescent or early adulthood stage of development. The couple in the show who had placed their child in an open adoption represented the control group. Results The study indicated that teenage mothers who keep their babies moved to early adult hood faster than their non-parenting counterparts and fathers show less movement into early adulthood when faced with parenthood than did the teenage dad that did not take on the responsibilities of parenthood. Conclusions/Discussion In order to determine if the trend from adolescence to early adulthood of the teen mom is due to keeping the baby, we would like to study teenagers who have not had the responsibility for raising a baby. Our question would be: do girls still move more quicker than their male counter parts to early adulthood. If not, then we could conclusively say that teen mothers progress more rapidly into early adulthood.

Competition history

• CSEF 2011 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry S0426

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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