Riding the rollercoaster: an infant observation of a teenage couple and their baby

Abstract

This paper describes a one-year infant observation of Matt, who was the first baby born to a teenage couple. The family struggled with many ups and downs in the course of the year, as the parents were faced with the challenges of new parenthood on top of the challenges of their own adolescence. At times the reliance on projective identification, so expectable at their age, posed problems for this couple's capacity to co-parent. Mother and baby developed a close, loving bond in the early months, but as he grew over the course of the year, some aspects of Matt's development were experienced as very rejecting by his mother. This may offer some clues as to why teenage mothers tend to become less communicative with their babies as they grow.

Keywords:

• infant
• observation
• adolescent
• parents
• teenage
• mother