Discussion
Achieving balance emerged as the core category
through participants’ perceptions and actions. Even
though some of them reported some role conflicts, all
of them could gradually adapt themselves to deal with
multiple roles and stated that they finally felt good
about this situation. This finding was congruent with
a theory of work-family balance 33 that was defined
as satisfaction and good operation at work and at
home, with the least amount of role conflict.
After giving birth, the adolescent mothers
learned the maternal care-giving tasks from their
mother or mother-in-law, and interacted with their
child until obtaining maternal role attainment which
leaded the new mothers to achieve a maternal identity.
These findings are congruent with the theory of maternal
role attainment theory19, 20, 21 in that the maternal role
is a process that leads a woman to achieve a maternal
identity. In addition, the participants reported that the
motherhood brought more discipline and more
responsibility to their dual roles of mother and student.
Similarly previous studies found that motherhood helped
women to become more responsive and mature.25,34
All adolescent mothers had to adapt their daily life to
fit to their new roles in order to get their life balance. These
findings were supported by a previous synthesis of the
studies that motherhood changed adolescent wome