‘Model mums’ offer hope to Thailand’s 1 million teenage mothers

The Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) said it launched the “Model Teenage Mums” programme to reduce the pressures on young mothers and families.
These include a lack of income and access to education, and domestic violence, said Nattaya Boonpakdee, director ThaiHealth’s Healthy Child, Youth, and Family Promotion section.
She said that a recent survey of teenage mothers found that 62.8 per cent had no job or income, 43.6 per cent were facing domestic problems including violence, and 31.4 per cent had no knowledge of how to raise children.
Nattaya explained that ThaiHealth had partnered with Mahidol University and the Women's Health Advocacy Foundation to pilot the “Model Teenage Mums” in sub-districts of Chiang Mai, Chainat, Sing Buri, Chachoengsao, Nakhon Nayok and Songkhla. The programme will teach the teenagers about child-raising and train them up as models for other teenage mothers, offering them guidance.
More than 70,000 teenagers aged 15 to 19 gave birth in 2018 alone, according to Department of Health figures. Meanwhile, concern is growing that the current lockdown period will bring a rise in unwanted teenage pregnancies. Abortion remains illegal in Thailand. 
The programme will select teenage mums for instruction and then allow them to help their peers in local communities, explained Assistant Professor Kanokwan Tharawan, a lecturer at Mahidol University’s Institute for Population and Social Research.
“The [model teenage] mums will be monitored and supported so they improve,” she said, adding that so far 18 teenage mothers had been trained up under the programme.