Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.
J Adolesc Health. 2021 May;68(5):906-913. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.08.002. Epub 2020 Sep 14.
Adolescent parenthood is a major challenge in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, the vast majority of the evidence has focused on adolescent motherhood. Little is known about adolescent fatherhood in LMICs. The aim of this study was to examine the determinants of early fatherhood and its consequences on a range of outcomes among adolescent males.
This study used three waves of longitudinal data from the multicountry Young Lives cohort study, specifically following a sample of 1,779 adolescent boys at ages 15, 19, and 22 years in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Individual fixed effects models were conducted to investigate the sociodemographic determinants of adolescent fatherhood and the consequences of adolescent fatherhood on males' education, health, psychosocial well-being, and time use outcomes.
The results indicated that lower educational attainment, absence of the adolescent's mother and father from the home, larger household size, and poverty increased the likelihood of becoming an adolescent father by age 22 years. The results revealed that becoming an adolescent father was associated with a higher likelihood of school dropout, being overweight, smoking, greater internalizing problems, and less time spent on leisure activities and more time spent on caregiving responsibilities.
Highlighting the experiences of young men as adolescent parents in LMICs, findings underscore the importance of prevention strategies to delay early parenthood for adolescent boys and multicomponent interventions to support young fathers and their unique health, socioeconomic, psychosocial, and behavioral needs.
青少年生育是中低收入国家（LMICs）面临的一个主要挑战。然而，绝大多数证据都集中在青少年母亲身上。对于 LMICs 中的青少年父亲，人们知之甚少。本研究旨在探讨青少年男性早育的决定因素及其对一系列结果的影响。
本研究使用了来自多国青年生活队列研究的三波纵向数据，具体跟踪了埃塞俄比亚、印度、秘鲁和越南的 1779 名 15 岁、19 岁和 22 岁的青少年男孩样本。个体固定效应模型用于研究青少年父亲身份的社会人口决定因素以及青少年父亲身份对男性教育、健康、心理社会福祉和时间利用结果的影响。
结果表明，教育程度较低、青少年的父母不在家、家庭规模较大和贫困会增加到 22 岁时成为青少年父亲的可能性。结果表明，成为青少年父亲与更高的辍学可能性、超重、吸烟、更多的内化问题以及更少的休闲时间和更多的照顾责任有关。
强调了 LMICs 中年轻男性作为青少年父母的经历，研究结果强调了预防策略的重要性，以延迟青少年男孩的早期生育，并采取多方面的干预措施，以支持年轻父亲及其独特的健康、社会经济、心理社会和行为需求。
