Predictors of adolescents' romantic attitude toward parenthood

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of gender-role attitudes, experiences with children, expected age at marriage, socioeconomic status, and gender as predictors of adolescents' romanticized attitudes toward parenthood. The unique contribution of this study was the consideration of romanticized parenting attitudes in adolescents. Of special interest was how prospective parents view children and the parenting role.

Data were collected from 185 adolescents who were juniors at Farragut High School in Knox County, Romantic views of parenthood were measured by the Attitudes toward Parenthood Scale, a scale based on LeMasters' "folklore" about parenthood. The Osmond and Martin Sex-Role Attitude Scale was used to assess the gender-role attitudes of the students. Scales developed specifically for this study were used to assess the amount of experiences the young people had with children and the age at which the adolescents expected to marry.

Multiple regression analysis was used in this study to analyze the contribution of the five independent variables to one dependent variable in the model. It was found that traditional gender-role attitudes are predictors of romantic attitudes toward parenthood for adolescents. None of the other variables examined in this study were found to predict romantic attitudes.

A secondary analysis using statistical models for each gender was performed on the relationships between each independent variable and romantic attitudes toward parenthood. It was found that female adolescents with traditional gender-role attitudes have romantic notions of parenthood. The gender-role attitude variable was found not to predict romantic attitudes in males.