Determination of the motherly reactions to adolescents' experience of menarche. II.

Objectives: The study was conducted to identify mothers' reactions to adolescent girls' experience of menarche.

Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic of the University Hospital in Eastern Anatolia in Erzurum, Turkey, between April and May 2009. The study comprised mothers of adolescent girls who had experienced menarche during the last 12 months. Two hundred and four mothers formed the sample for this study. However, 10 were removed from the study because their daughter did not inform them about their menarche experience and the mothers could not answer some questions. The study was thus conducted with 194 mothers. The data were collected via a questionnaire prepared by the researchers and the data were evaluated using percentages. Approval for the research was obtained from the hospital and the ethics committee before commencement. The researchers provided the women with information about the survey.

Results: The average age of mothers was 41.37 ± 6.5. A total of 44.3% of mothers had achieved primary school educational level and 78.9% of mothers have lived in a nuclear family. Mothers' reactions to their daughters' experience of menarche largely consisted of providing them with information about what to do (72.2% of them gave information about bathing, 59.3% of them gave information about genital hygiene). Mother' positive attitudes were very low (18% of them kissed their daughters, 11.3% of them congratulated their daughters). There were 12.4% of mothers who were sad about their daughters' experience of menarche.

Conclusions: It was determined in this study that the extent to which mothers showed reactions of happiness to their daughters' experience of menarche is rather low, but the rate of mothers telling their daughters what to do in this period was quite high.