School girls and childbearing motives: A randomized clinical trial through hidden curriculum

Background: Childbearing motives are considered as the primary stimulus of fertilityand the importance of making fertility decisions in humans.Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the effect of a new form of interactionalprogram on the childbearing motives of students.Materials and Methods: According to a well-defined, single-blind randomized controlledtrial, we selected eight government schools in Tehran. Students in the age rangeof 7-12 yr and 16-18 yr (130 students in each school with a total number of 260) wereselected for a series of intervention from storytelling to free discussion on a specialsubject through the concept of hidden curriculum. We evaluate the outcome withpretest-posttest based on the Miller childbearing motives questionnaire. One monthafter the last intervention, final evaluation took place.Results: The findings showed that after an intervention conducted in the best way, allpositive scores were promoted while the negative ones declined. One the other hand,no matter what really the participant’s groups were, their total intention score got better.In this way, the total positive scores were significantly increased in the interventiongroups (p = 0.000) Also, the students in high school significantly improved in positivescores and the negative score decreased in them.Conclusion: This study showed that the fundamental childbearing motives even withsmall interventions can be improved. Our intervention could improve the positivechildbearing motives among school girls. In this regard, the role of some confoundingfactor such as the role of some confounding factors such as religious beliefs in family,maternal education is most important.

Keywords:

Childbearing , Motive , School , Adolescents , Intention