Social Support, Parenting Competence, and Parenting Satisfaction Among Adolescent, African American, Mothers.

The sample was small and convenience-based, with 34 mothers, and the authors call the secondary analysis a pilot. The participants were first-time, unmarried, low-income, African American adolescents aged 16 to 21 in two Midwestern cities who had uncomplicated deliveries, so results may not apply to other mothers. The parenting competence and satisfaction measures were developed largely from research on middle-class Caucasian mothers, so they may not fully reflect African American adolescent mothers' experiences. The analysis combined the original intervention and control groups because social support did not change differently by group, so it cannot show how the intervention worked or whether support caused better parenting. Only the mother's perspective was collected, not the perspectives of the mother's parents or the baby's father. The paper does not report how many of the 34 mothers were analysed at each postpartum time point.

The publication types list the article as receiving extramural NIH research support. The article text does not state author conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that social support causes higher parenting competence or satisfaction. This was a pilot secondary analysis of a small convenience sample, support did not change significantly over time, and the original intervention and control groups were combined.