Ensino e pesquisa

Resumo:

Aim: Pregnancy and motherhood among adolescents have become a global concern, particularly when appearing in a vulnerable contexture. This concern is presented in terms of probable risks to the health and evolution of children and adolescents. Nevertheless, in environments touched by urban violence and drug dealing, breeding of adolescents has become a complicated phenomenon, in terms of its origins and psychosocial repercussion. As a paradox, pregnancy and motherhood might become protection factors before serious risk conditions associated to collective settings, where drugs and criminality are found. Being pregnant or having a very young child might seclude female adolescents from such violent territories. However, these conditions create big difficulties for these girls to remain at school or at work, once it is very hard to find day nurseries where to accommodate their children. Method: For the past ten years, eight pairs of adolescent mothers and firstborns, belonging to social and urban peripheries of large cities in the State of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, have been investigated in a continued research, when: a) their children were younger than 5 months; b) their children were about three and a half years old; and c) their children were about ten years old. Result and Conclusion: Risk and protection factors have been identified and related to the development of these pairs, based on the Bronfenbrenner model of ecological systems.