Choosing Motherhood? Re-thinking the factors that influence young motherhood in low socio-economic contexts in Colombia

While recent research in Colombia around young motherhood has been based in the ecological framework, public policy in the country still focuses its strategy to decrease the phenomenon on changing young women’s behavior through sexual education and sexual and reproductive services, and fails to recognize the complex and constrained structure in which young women are embedded. Likewise, research, policy and practice in general has limited the analysis to those cases considered “unwanted”, living very few space to understand other “types” of it. Through the use of qualitative methods with 10 young women and some of the relevant actors around them, the study analyses the exercise of their situated agency, giving special emphasis to how gender inequality is normalized in their culture and material scarcity create a very constraint environment for them. The research findings point out that young women do exercise their agency in several ways, but as it is constrained by a structure that has very strong forces that in general do not permit that their actions change the status quo. The investigation identifies the need to tackle structural problems such as poverty, inequality and social exclusion in order to start generating real alternatives where young people can choose.