Adolescent Pregnancy and Building a Life Project

Abstract

The objective in this study was to understand the life projects of a group of pregnant adolescents, investigating what those projects were before the young women became pregnant and what their future plans are after the pregnancy was confirmed. The research involved 16 pregnant adolescents, between 13 and 19 years old, who lived in Curitiba-PR and were assisted in out patient prenatal care in a maternity of SUS. Ethical guidelines were followed. The semi-structured interview technique was used with questions based on a script that included topics about teenage pregnancy, such as the reaction of the teenagers and their families to pregnancy, the plans which these adolescents have made before they became pregnant, their life projects after the confirmation of the pregnancy, among others. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and then submitted to content analysis. It was noticed that most of the young future mothers did not plan their pregnancy, and had not even thought about its probable repercussions. Their life projects before pregnancy proved to be absent or with a loose structure – “ to study and to work “– while they did not clearly perceive the consequences of the new reality. This fact may be related to the poor quality of the public education, which does not provide the means for the students to develop their capacity of abstraction and critical thinking, in order to elaborate their abilities to construct feasible strategies to achieve their goals. Moreover, these teenagers face difficulties within their families and communities, which usually do not provide them with information and opportunities to create innovative projects of life. It was concluded that conditions such as educational, historical and social contexts could help us to understand the lack of authentic and consistent projects of life.