Leaf Through

I wanted to design an app that makes parenting advice from experts digestible, engaging, and community building.

Child Care Education Is Vital: In our research, we found that teen parents are generally undereducated and underprepared to raise kids.

New Parents Need Reliable Information: Parents we spoke to get advice from social media. They look to Instagram and “MomTok,” where the information is concise, entertaining, and interactive. However, social workers warn that such public platforms do not always offer “data-driven and science-based" support.

Books Are Not Teen Parents’ First Choice: We found that teen parents don’t gravitate toward parenting books, despite the fact their research and philosophies are more regulated for accuracy.

Teen parents are rarely met with the same support system most first-time parents rely on — despite the fact they are more vulnerable.

In 2021, about 10 percent of the world population was born to mothers under 20 years old, the U.S. having the highest teen pregnancy rate among high-income countries (14.4 for every 1,000 births). Although this rate has declined since the 1990s, it is not declining as rapidly in rural and low-income areas. Low income teen parents especially are exposed to pregnancy-related health risks like obstructed labor, preterm birth, and postpartum infections, as well as risks to their education, career, finances, mental wellbeing, and social relationships.

In response, our team sought to research and design for the needs of low income teen parents in Texas.

We found emotional support, strong community, and child care and development resources are most crucial to teen parents.

We interviewed teen parents, student parents, and social workers and asked them to rank seven categories of needs in order importance.

We found the most pivotal pain points in a teen parent’s journey center around emotional readiness, communication with their family and friends, and the transition from student to parent.

I wanted to address the lack of child care resources available to teens without strong community.

Going into our research, I hoped to learn more about child care and child development. I thought teen parenting would be a unique angle to research it from and looked forward to designing with both adolescents and newborns in mind.