Looking Back and Looking Forward

Abstract

This study of teenage pregnancy and motherhood was complicated by a number of tensions which manifested in different ways. On a personal level, I often found myself caught between conflicting loyalties and at times experienced considerable difficulty maintaining a neutral stance. For instance, I was sometimes overly critical of midwives’ interactions with the teenagers and/or their significant others, forgetting that I had once been in their shoes and had similarly experienced the frustration of being confronted with, and horrified by, the circumstances of clients’ lives. I too had been on the receiving end of violent and abusive behaviour from clients and had observed similar conduct in their interpersonal and familial relationships. As a practitioner, I had witnessed the appalling neglect some mothers visited upon their children and I had passed judgements on mothers I had deemed unfit, requesting intervention by social services and/or the police. I had justified my actions by invoking the mantra of professional accountability, aware that failing to act could be interpreted as a dereliction of duty.