Psychological Well-being of Unwed Mothers

An unwed mother is a girl or woman who is not legally married to a man by whom she has conceived a child. Research indicates that single mothers experience excessive stress and that the stress is a result of various factors like of social isolation, lack of family support, the need to provide financially for the family. The purpose of this study was to assess the psychological wellbeing of unwed mothers in comparison with wed mothers. The first objective was to find out the level of depression among wed and unwed mothers. The study is also aimed to find out the different dimensions of social support of wed and unwed mothers and the relationship among the level of depression, and social support in wed and unwed mothers. The sample for the present study consisted of two groups: wed mothers and unwed mothers. The wed and unwed mothers are comprised of 30 each between the ages of 20-35 years. Tools used were Beck depression inventory (BDI-II) and the multidimensional scale oferceived social support. To know the difference between the wed and unwed ttest was administered. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was administered to know the correlation between the depression level and different dimensions of social support. Result reveals that there is much higher depression level in the unwed mothers. 36.66% of the unwed mothers were found to have severe depression where as none of the wed mothers had the same. Social support from the significant other, family and friends were found to be lower in the unwed mothers compared to wed mothers. The result shows that a very high negative correlation is obtained in different dimensions of social support and depression, indicating that when the social support decreases the level of depression increases.