Representaciones sociales de las y los adolescentes de Quilanga, frente al embarazo adolescente

Abstract

Is an alarming concern the steady numbers of teenage pregnancies, and that the related consequences of these pregnancies aggravate the poverty condition of young women. This despite the multiple efforts of governmental institutions and NGO to reduce the teen pregnancy rate in the region and the country. The objective of this research was to understand the social representations that teenagers from Quilanga have regarding teen pregnancy. In order to achieve this, deep interviews were applied to 20 male and female adolescents ranging from 15 to 17 years old, who attend to high school and have not had a pregnancy experience. The gathered information was processed through a thematic analysis with three axes: knowledge, perceptions and attitudes. The results give evidence that teenage pregnancy represents a very serious problem and a situation that no adolescent should go through. The negative representations that teenagers give to pregnancy are associated with pragmatic elements such as the immediate consequence of having to abandon their life projects. Participating adolescents associate adolescent pregnancy with different causes: lack of knowledge about pregnancy and reproduction, poor family relationships, inability to control sexual desire, blackmail and emotional manipulation from male teenagers to their female partners. The consequences of teen pregnancy are represented as negative for the lives of those who assume it, especially for women who abandon their studies and postpone their life projects, but above all for the discrimination and social stigma that an early pregnancy represents in this territory.