Between Childhood and Adulthood: Young Mothers in Uganda Co-Creating Ways to Meet their Life Goals while Combatting Systemic and Individual Discrimination


Kathleen Manion, Royal Roads University

In Uganda, Covid-19 resulted in a “shadow pandemic” of teenage pregnancies and young mothers. Now these girls face a myriad of issues, notably systemic and individual discrimination and exclusion from school, family, and community, as they traverse complex experiences of still being children and yet at the same time parents. Most of these young mothers do not receive any support, financial or otherwise, from the fathers of their children. In fact, many young mothers became pregnant as a result of sexual assault or exploitation/coercion; yet, the male perpetrators typically face no legal, financial, or other repercussions for violating the rights of these girls, and are free to carry on with their lives, whilst the young mothers are forced to navigate precarious new realities whilst living in a state of intense and multidimensional vulnerability. Young mothers often face discrimination, marginalization, and abuse from their communities where they are considered to be “spoiled” or “useless” and are humiliated by verbal, and even physical, assaults to the extent that they do not want to leave their homes. Furthermore, parents and other family members often disown teenage mothers and force them to leave home to fend for themselves. Without money, jobs, skills, or support of any kind, young mothers and their babies frequently move from one place to the next, seeking shelter, food and possibilities for earning money to survive; yet, their options are limited and most find themselves in desperate straits. With motherhood, education also tends to be inaccessible to young mothers and girls generally have to forfeit their childhood life goals and dreams. While Uganda legislation now no longer allows schools to expel students who are pregnant or parenting, without additional support young mothers are often still unable to continue schooling, which limits their possibilities for future employment as well as critical social, emotional, and intellectual development. Although there is awareness at the national government level that the welfare of hundreds of thousands of young mothers in Uganda need urgent support to meet their socioemotional, financial, and educational needs, as stated in policies and initiatives specifically targeting this demographic, little has been done to learn from the young mothers themselves what is most needed to support them and enable them and their children to thrive. In response, this paper reports on an ongoing, SSHRC/NFRF-funded 2- year Feminist Participatory Action Research project in rural, southwest Uganda, involving 11 young mothers and their 13 children. The project focuses on working closely with the young mothers to learn about their needs and future hopes and co-create an environment that strives to best support them achieve these. We have developed a residential vocational environment which includes a communal home, nutritious food, health checks, psychosocial support, child care, vocational training (either hairdressing or tailoring), as well as other educational and personal development workshops, as requested by the young mothers (e.g., goal-setting, career advice, learning from women who were themselves, teenage mothers). Data collection includes individual interviews, focus group discussions with, and writing, photography, and arts-based artifacts by the young mothers as well as interviews and focus group discussions with stakeholders such as health and psychosocial care providers, community members, and NGO and government representatives. In looking at creating a more inclusive shared future, this research directly offers critical insight from the young mothers themselves about their realities and ideas for meeting their goals. A comprehensive data bank will enable us to inform policy and programming to better support these and other young Ugandan mothers who are struggling for their rights, equality, and opportunities for their and their children’s best futures.

Non-presenting author: Tracey Smith-Carrier, Royal Roads University; Shelley Jones, Royal Roads University

This paper will be presented at the following session: