Primiparous adolecents’ social representations of “being mothers”

Abstract

The present paper is a descriptive, qualitative study carried out to identify, analyze, and compare primipara adolescents’ social representation of “being mothers”, before and after the childbirth process. The subjects were five students who did their prenatal care in a health service institution on the outskirts of Rio Grande/RS, in the period between August and November of 2006. The data was collected by means of a semi-structured interview and content analysis in the treatment. It was noticed that all the girls seemed to be satisfied with their pregnancy and were proud of their appearance and to show the baby’s trousseau. All of them correlated the social representations of “mothers” with the image of kind, abnegated women. In their opinion, maternity is natural and wonderful, something beautiful and great. They did not consider the commitment entailed by maternity and limited their dreams and expectations to that restricted moment of life. After the babies were born, reported that facing this new reality had a profound impact and unchained numerous changes in their personal expectations. In an attempt to assume the role of mothers, for which they were socially and psychologically unprepared, they came up with two alternatives: finding a job or quitting school, both interfering with the natural process of adolescence and impairing the outlook on opportunities. It is believed that giving the opportunity to the sharing of these representations with other adolescents can decrease the vulnerability to the premature pregnancy.

Key words: Pregnancy in the adolescence; Adolescent; Teen’s health; Maternal-infantile nursing.