The adolescent girl and contraception. Notes on the psychodynamics of pregnancy and motherhood desires
Halperin, M.; Halperin, D.S.
Contraception Fertilite Sexualite 10(10): 685-690
1982
ISSN/ISBN: 0301-861X PMID: 12338451 Document Number: 195834
The availability of efficient birth control methods does not guarantee efficient contraception. Many adolescent girls are insufficiently informed about the mechanisms of reproduction or the techniques of birth control and first come to medical attention or consult a family planning center when already pregnant. However, among those teenagers who do become pregnant or even experience motherhood at an age when society would rather see them on school benches, some are neither ignorant about sexuality nor the victims of an unpredictable failure. For those, contraception and the desire for pregnancy or motherhood are in conflict with one another and is only further aggravated by various sociocultural and psychosocial factors. All too often, such a conflict results in a voluntarily ignored or unconsciously rejected contraception option, with an unplanned pregnancy as the outcome.