The study aimed to comprehend the meaning for the adolescent mother of experiencing care with her child and the construction of a theoretic model that is representative of this experience. The strategies employed were participant observations and a semi-structured interview. Eight adolescent mothers who had become mothers between 15 and 19 years old took part in the study. The Symbolic Interactionism was adopted as a theoretic referential and the Data-Founded Theory as a methodological reference. The comparative analysis of data revealed that for the adolescent mother the experience of taking care of her child is driven by experiencing positive feelings, which provide the development of action and interaction strategies, in the sense of searching for resources to take care of her child the best way as possible.
Adolescent; Pregnancy in adolescence; Mother-child relations; Pediatric nursing
