The aim of this study was to understand the parents' perception of pregnant adolescents, taking as evidence their perception about the conversations established in the family context about sexuality. Thirteen semi-structured interviews with nine mothers and four fathers, coming from low middle class, were conducted. The interviews were analyzed and interpreted according to three phenomenological reflexive steps: description, that indicates the way of comprehension of the theme in focus; reduction, that specifies critically the way of comprehension and its relation with the concreteness of the situation; and interpretation, that defines new possibilities of understanding, explication and intervention. The analysis showed that the parents had conflicting values in relation to adolescent sexuality and were confused about their role in the sexual orientation of their daughters. This ambiguity was an effect of the re-signification of the sexual experience of parents in face of their daughters' experiences and the changing values of present days. Parents were capable of perceiveing what was going on in their daugthers' sexual lives, but did not feel able to give them an effective orientation. They failed in their attempt to provide this effective orientation because: 1) they overestimated their daughters' knowledge about contraceptive methods; 2) they tried to postpone the sexual initiation of their daughters; and 3) they felt unprepared to talk about sexuality and contraception
talking; adolescence; pregnancy; family; Phenomenology