Object Ties and Interaction of the Infant and Adolescent Mother

Abstract

The familiar wrangle between Lady Capulet and the Nurse, one exhorting Juliet to marry and bear children, the other remembering her infancy and nursing days, brings to a sharp focus the dilemma of the adolescent child mothers we have seen in our clinical services over the past several years. The graceful language of Shakespeare is not often duplicated in the pained and bitter conflicts between the adolescent mother and her own mother, as each struggles to contend with the merging and antagonistic developmental phases which are forced upon them with the coming of the child-mother’s baby.

Lady Capulet. Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you here in Vernoa, ladies of esteem, are made already mothers. By my count, I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid.

Romeo and Juliet. Act I, Scene iii

William Shakespeare