Page - 180 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

180 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits patterns incorporate widely divergent aspects – the adolescent’s unfulfilled longings, rivalry with the mother, self -damaging impulses and fantasies of omnipotence. As described in the chapter about sexuality, earlier rivalries and envy of parents reawake in adolescence; the boy’s wish to be an attractive partner for his mother and exclude the father as rival remains unconscious, just as is the girl’s fantasy of taking her much -admired father away from her mother. Now, however, both the male and female adolescents have the physi- cal power to render these fantasies reality. The longing to have the father’s baby is projected onto a young man and often fulfilled through “carelessness”. The unfulfilled longings of the young girl who was neglected in childhood, not sufficiently cared for and protected by her parents, are then shifted onto her impending baby. The provocative behavior inherent in all relationships with adolescents – who stand to be the next sexually potent generation, thus relegating their parents’ gen- eration to the periphery – is rendered concrete through an actual pregnancy. An early pregnancy of a girl who has not yet finished her schooling also forces her parents to “mother” her, since they usually feel they must support her along with her new baby. Instead of attaining more autonomy, she usually intensifies her dependence on her parents. The destructive side of her behavior is self -directed: through her pregnancy, she is forced to radically alter her life, interrupt her edu- cation, or continue it with great effort alongside caring for her baby. Pregnan- cies often emerge out of a short relationship, “summer love” or the first sexual experience, meaning that the two incipient parents’ relationship is still fragile; it is seldom possible for them to assume the great burden together and also develop their relationship. It must be asked whether an unplanned pregnancy also is a symptom of insuf- ficient family sex education, where parents rely on the purely cognitive sex education supplied at school. Parents might take interest in their daughter’s first menstruation or son’s first ejaculation as well as the question of birth control, in order to afford their child an emotional connection to this new area. Can they accompany their daughter to the gynecologist before she begins an inti- mate relationship? Can they explain the significance of menstruation and to the “realm of women”? Can the father point out the responsibility of birth control to his son? Employing three case studies, I will now illuminate the various constellations of teenage pregnancy in the context of middle -class Austrian families. In her Mas- ter’s thesis, Eva Pankratz discusses the background(s) of unwanted pregnancies in adolescence2 (Pankratz: Teenage Mothers: Backgrounds of Unwanted Pregnancy, 1997). Case study: Sarah3 At the age of 18, Sarah – a student at the academic high school – became preg- nant. Both her parents worked for a living: her father was a trade salesman and her mother a salesperson in a shop.