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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Being adolescent, being pregnant, becoming mother: Experiences, life paths and healthcare around adolescent pregnancy in Mexico.

presenters

    Bianca Vargas

    Nationality: Mexico

    Residence: Mexico

    National Autonomous University of Mexico

    Presence:Online

Keywords:

adolescent preganancy, early motherhood, obstetric healthcare, sexual and reproductive rights

Abstract:

Reproductive process among adolescents has been defined as a health problem, associated with obstetric complications and risks, although most of them are linked to social and cultural factors. It is also conceptualized as a social problem, referring on one side, to its linkage with social vulnerabilities and the poverty cycle reproduction (Stern, 2012). On the other side, it means that not only appeals to the persons who experience it, but to the society. While national strategies are linked to prevention, reproductive healthcare inside public hospitals is a daily activity, representing important challenges, since young women, from 10 to 19 years are being considered homogeneously, with high obstetric risk, and healthcare providers usually ignore and fail in recognizing them as subjects of rights. To further explore this phenomenon, I conducted a sixteen-months hospital ethnography between 2017 and 2019, exploring the sociocultural constructions of the reproductive process in adolescence and its implications in obstetric healthcare, as well as the experiences, perspectives and interactions between health providers and teenagers. Narratives about adolescent pregnancy are not just life stories, but a deep critique of sexual abuse, gender, race, and class inequalities, asymmetrical relationships, and structural violence in communities and institutions (Erdmans & Black, 2015). Hence, a methodological strategy centered on dialogic and interactive observation, and the experience of a close accompaniment to adolescents during pregnancy consultation, labor, birth, postpartum, and beyond the clinical setting, provided a deeper understanding of relevant determinants related to early pregnancies, such as poverty, social vulnerability, and diverse forms of violence.