Cheraghi Mohammad Ali, Rezasoltani Parvaneh, Vedadhir AbouAli, Taghizadeh Ziba, Samadanifard Seyyed Hossein
a Department of Nursing, School of Nursing & Midwifery , Tehran University of Medical Sciences , Tehran , Iran.
b PhD candidate, Department of Reproductive Health & Midwifery, School of Nursing & Midwifery , Tehran University of Medical Sciences , Tehran , Iran.
Int J Qual Stud Health Well-being. 2018 Dec;13(1):1453179. doi: 10.1080/17482631.2018.1453179.
In recent times, parents have become increasingly concerned, both subjectively and objectively, about their adolescents' body height/weight growth. Parent-adolescent interactions about this issue and the potential socio-psychological consequences of such interactions should be considered as an important influencing factor on the future of adolescents' sexual and reproductive health. To achieve a greater understanding of such concerns, it is necessary to further elucidate parents' experiences on this topic, so as to expand the existing literature. This study aimed to explain the perceptions of parents' concerns regarding their adolescents' growth characteristics in the socio-cultural context of Iran as a transitional society. This paper is part of a larger qualitative study designed using the Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology (CGTM). We conducted open-ended intensive interviews with eleven parents individually and recruited them through purposeful and theoretical sampling from a teaching hospital, community, and a primary school in Tehran with theoretical sampling variation in terms of teenagers' age, sex, and birth order, place of residence, parents' occupation and education, and the self-reported socio-economic status. Using the analytical procedures of the CGTM, we performed analyses. In the findings, the concept of 'living with constant sense of uncertainty' emerged from the subcategories including 'feeling existing and potential concern about expected minimum and maximum bio-positions of growth,' 'feeling potential concern about biological health consequences,' 'feeling potential concern about the emergence of early/late maturity signs,' 'feeling potential concern about adolescent's emotional threat,' 'feeling concerned about future employment, education, marriage, and fertility,' and 'feeling potential concern about the society's view'. These findings suggest that parents are living with a constant sense of uncertainty about their teens' growth characteristics throughout the transition from adolescence. All stakeholders including parents, health-care practitioners and policymakers, and anthropologists/sociologists should be focus on such concerns, in order to manage them and their possible socio-psychological burdens.
近年来，家长们在主观和客观上都越来越关注青少年的身高/体重增长。父母与青少年围绕这个问题的互动以及这种互动可能产生的社会心理后果，应被视为对青少年性健康和生殖健康未来的一个重要影响因素。为了更深入地理解这些担忧，有必要进一步阐明家长在这个问题上的经历，以丰富现有文献。本研究旨在解释在伊朗这样一个转型社会的社会文化背景下，家长对青少年成长特征的担忧认知。本文是一项采用建构主义扎根理论方法（CGTM）设计的大型定性研究的一部分。我们对11位家长进行了开放式深入访谈，通过目的抽样和理论抽样从德黑兰的一家教学医院、社区和一所小学招募了他们，在青少年的年龄、性别、出生顺序、居住地点、父母职业和教育程度以及自我报告的社会经济地位方面进行了理论抽样变异。我们使用CGTM的分析程序进行了分析。在研究结果中，“生活在持续的不确定感中”这一概念出现在以下子类别中：“对成长预期的最低和最高生物状态感到现有和潜在的担忧”、“对生物健康后果感到潜在的担忧”、“对早熟/晚熟迹象出现感到潜在的担忧”、“对青少年的情感威胁感到潜在的担忧”、“对未来就业、教育、婚姻和生育感到担忧”以及“对社会看法感到潜在的担忧”。这些发现表明，在从青春期过渡的整个过程中，家长对孩子的成长特征一直存在着持续的不确定感。包括家长、医疗从业者和政策制定者以及人类学家/社会学家在内的所有利益相关者都应关注这些担忧，以便应对它们及其可能带来的社会心理负担。
