Background: Adolescent motherhood disrupts the developmental pursuit of personally meaningful life goals, making goal adjustment, the capacity to disengage from unattainable goals and reengage with alternative ones, an important adaptive resource. However, little is known about the contextual factors that shape goal adjustment among young mothers in sub-Saharan Africa. Objective: This study examined the contributions of childhood trauma, father presence, religious commitment, attachment dimensions, and parent–adolescent relationship quality to goal disengagement and goal reengagement among young mothers in Ondo State, Nigeria. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 266 young mothers aged 14–20 years (M = 18.09, SD = 1.62) purposively recruited from health facilities in Ondo West Local Government Area. Participants completed self-report measures of goal adjustment and the study predictors. Multiple regression analyses with HC3 heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors were performed. Results: The predictors explained 14.6% of the variance in goal disengagement and 43.4% of the variance in goal reengagement. Religious commitment emerged as the strongest positive predictor of goal reengagement, followed by father presence, secure attachment, and parent–adolescent relationship quality, whereas childhood trauma and dismissing attachment independently predicted lower reengagement. Dismissing attachment positively predicted goal disengagement, while father presence, religious commitment, and secure attachment were associated with lower disengagement, indicating greater persistence in attainable goals rather than premature withdrawal. Conclusion: Goal reengagement appears substantially more responsive to relational and spiritual resources than goal disengagement. The findings suggest that strengthening secure attachment, paternal involvement, supportive parent–adolescent relationships, and engagement with faith communities, while addressing childhood trauma, may enhance young mothers' capacity to reconstruct meaningful life goals following early motherhood.

This study examined how psychological distress relates to achievement goal orientation among 298 in-school adolescents (150 male, 148 female; aged 10 to 21 years) in Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria, exposed to varying levels of community violence. Rather than treating achievement goal orientation as a single motivational construct, this study disaggregated it into its four constituent orientations, mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance, and tested psychological distress as a mediator of community violence exposure (CVE) separately for each. CVE significantly predicted psychological distress, B = .215, SE = .029, t = 7.53, p < .001. Distress, controlling for CVE, significantly and positively predicted mastery-approach goals (B = .084, p = .004), performance-approach goals (B = .077, p = .001), and performance-avoidance goals (B = .070, p = .012), but not mastery-avoidance goals (B = .021, p = .514). Bootstrapped indirect effects (5,000 resamples) of CVE on goal orientation through distress were significant for mastery-approach (ab = .018, 95% CI [.006, .032]), performance-approach (ab = .017, 95% CI [.007, .028]), and performance-avoidance (ab = .015, 95% CI [.004, .028]), but not mastery-avoidance (ab = .004, 95% CI [−.009, .019]). Rather than showing a uniform association with academic motivation, psychological distress was associated with greater endorsement of mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals, suggesting a differentiated motivational profile rather than a generalized decline. Male adolescents reported significantly higher CVE than females (d = .60), with no gender differences in distress or goal orientation. These findings indicate that visible academic striving is not a reliable indicator that an adolescent has been unaffected by violence-related distress and highlight the need to examine the developmental resources that shape whether distress is expressed through adaptive or self-protective motivational strategies.

Caregiver knowledge of early child development (ECD) may shape the developmental opportunities available to young children, yet few measures assess this knowledge during the preschool years, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study developed and psychometrically evaluated the Caregiver Knowledge of Early Child Development Inventory (CKECDI) and examined associations between its domains and preschool children’s executive and motor functions in Nigeria. In Phase one, 517 caregivers completed the CKECDI. Exploratory factor analysis (n = 259) and confirmatory factor analysis (n = 258) supported a 35-item, four-factor structure comprising cognitive development, socioemotional caregiving, school readiness, and health, nutrition, and safety. The four-factor model demonstrated good fit (CFI = .994, TLI = .994, RMSEA = .013, SRMR = .078), with acceptable internal consistency across domains (KR-20 = .74–.90; ω = .74–.89). Known-groups validity was supported by significant differences in domain scores across caregiver educational attainment. In Phase two, the CKECDI was administered to an independent sample of 286 caregiver-child dyads. Adjusted path analyses showed distinct associations between CKECDI domains and children’s inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and motor function. The CKECDI provides a multidimensional assessment of caregivers’ knowledge of preschool child development in LMICs and may support developmental assessment and research in culturally and contextually diverse settings.