TEEN MOTHERS
Still a child for his own parents and already a parent for his own child ...
France 1995
Teenage motherhood is a phenomenon that has always existed, especially in the past.
Today, this phenomenon has become more marginal. However, there are 6,200 births per year, or nearly 1% of all births for these young women between 13 and 18 years old. Our productivist society still regards these adolescent parents or young adolescent women as errors in the functioning of its own system.
However, this phenomenon plays, in my opinion, the role of mirror for our society. It reveals the place it assigns to each age group or each social class. Because this phenomenon also reveals the ambiguities of our desires and actions, these women confuse us with who they are, that is, these others ourselves.
Teenage pregnancies are an old phenomenon that one might have thought has disappeared from developed societies like ours. However, they represent original recent aspects. They are consciously or unconsciously desired and it would be simplistic to regard them only as always due to an accident or a lack of information.
These adolescents, premature parents, find themselves at the hinge between child and adult. They are at the origin of many paradoxes and contain the whole problem of adolescence: on the one hand, these young people are psychologically and biologically capable of procreating and on the other, society refuses them economic, social or legal means. to be autonomous. For these young people today, there are few real sources of appreciation. In addition, they experience a whole series of failures: emotional, family, school, professional, etc. The solution, as some say is to have a child. It allows the young girl to acquire social status. At least she will be a mother ...
Carrying a child, bringing it into the world, raising it or bringing it up for adoption is always to love it.
I wanted to explore their life by revealing the beautiful and the noble and perhaps also, let's not be idealistic and naive, the aspects less rosy and yet no less real.
I wanted to visit their existence, to be a companion for a moment, to share their daily life, their habits with sorrows, sorrows and joys, in their family, in foster homes or in the very "new" family that they have now created with their friend, partner or husband.
Still a child for his own parents and already a parent for his own child.
This child projects them into adulthood when childhood is so near.
Paradox, fiction or reality?
Lizzie SADIN
Linda vit dans un foyer d'accueil pour mères adolescentes et pour jeunes mineures enceintes à Montpellier. Elle voit rarement son ami, le père de l'enfant qu'elle attend. Elle dit qu'elle l'aimait mais ne pense pas pouvoir vivre un jour avec lui. "Il est trop dans la galère". Elle ira au foyer jusqu'aux trois ans de l'enfant, après "on verra".
Toutes les deux sont enceintes de 5 mois et comparent leurs rondeurs.
Arnaud vit dans une cité de Rennes avec Patricia 17 ans. Ils vivent dans un appartement qui leur est fourni par le foyer afin d'entrer "dans une phase de socialisation" avant l'autonomie complète. Il a deux CAP de boucherie mais est actuellement au chômage. Patricia s'est retrouvée enceinte et s'en est rendue compte très tôt. Ils ont voulu garder le bébé. Ils en ont parlé aux parents qui leur ont laissé le choix.
Linda vit dans un foyer d'accueil pour mères adolescentes et pour jeunes mineures enceintes à Montpellier. Elle voit rarement son ami, le père de l'enfant qu'elle attend. Elle dit qu'elle l'aimait mais ne pense pas pouvoir vivre un jour avec lui. "Il est trop dans la galère". Elle ira au foyer jusqu'aux trois ans de l'enfant, après "on verra".