This is a pilot study of an intensive home visitation intervention, """"""""Minding the Baby"""""""" (MTB), adapted for first-time teen mothers and their infants living in an urban community. The study, grounded in human ecology and attachment theory (parental reflective functioning [RF]), integrates advanced practice nursing and mental health care by pairing master's level clinicians (pediatric nurse practitioner and clinical social worker) with high risk young families.
Aims of the study are: 1) to determine the feasibility and estimate the effect size of the MTB intervention in teen mothers and infants with respect to a) maternal variables including the quality of the mother-infant relationship, maternal attachment capacity (RF), maternal mastery/self-efficacy and social support, maternal mental health (depression and psychological distress), and maternal health and life course outcomes (educational success, delaying subsequent child-bearing); and b) infant variables including early attachment and infant health outcomes; 2) to adapt and describe the implementation of the intervention elements with young teen mothers; and 3) to describe RF in teen mothers though a generic descriptive qualitative analysis of maternal interviews in pregnancy and at 12 months. The longitudinal two-group study (random assignment to group), will include multi-method approaches with a cohort of first-time mothers between the ages of 14-19 (and their infants). MTB home visits occur weekly for intervention families (n=27) beginning in mid pregnancy and continuing through the first year of the child's life. Mothers and infants (n=27) in the comparison group will receive standard prenatal, postpartum and pediatric primary care in a community health center. Maternal variables and infant outcome variables will be followed over time (pregnancy, 12 months) as well as compared between the 2 groups .
