BackgroundIn the last 20 years, adolescent pregnancy has become one of the most critical problems affecting women in Latin America and the Caribbean.MethodsThis qualitative study was based on in-depth interviews with 29 teen mothers. All of the pregnant teens were from low- to lower-middle-class social strata in the Mexico City metropolitan area. The family (living with the girl) and the individual context of pregnant teens were analysed on the basis of data from at least three interviews: during pregnancy and at approximately 6 and 24 months following delivery. Additionally, six mothers, four fathers, and four partners of the pregnant girls of the group were interviewed. The information on the individual and family situation before, during and after the pregnancy was recorded and transcribed, then analysed in three phases, comprising pre-analysis, exploration and interpretation.ResultsThe pregnant teens had a family background of teen pregnancy. The girls disclosed feelings of repression, loneliness and indifference to their parents, leading them to unprotected sexual relations without fear of pregnancy. After the pregnancy, communication improved between the girls and their parents, but became worse with their partner. Consequently, these teens returned to feeling as they did before getting pregnant. They stated that they would make their situation work for the sake of their child, and regretted dropping out of school and getting pregnant so young. Almost all said they were seeking love outside the family, which revealed a scenario of limited communication and unsatisfactory relations within the family.ConclusionsUnderstanding how communication works between parents and children is necessary to avoid teenage pregnancy, as well as early marriage or cohabitation, resulting in dropping out of school and financial constraints, which lead to great frustrations between the couple and affects the child. In addition, it is vitally important that adolescents be motivated in the family setting in order for them to continue their studies. There is also an urgent need to implement measures that compensate for educational inequality, as well as to strengthen strategies aimed at adolescent mothers and pregnant teens that encourage their school performance through the support of scholarship programs and day care centres. Many of the problems inherent in adolescence are related to the lack of affection and support, and in many cases are a reaction to authoritarian rules or limits established unilaterally by parents with little or no dialogue involved.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12884-017-1570-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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The way the inhabitants of two communities of Nahua origin in southwestern Tlaxcala in Central Mexico perceive their own and each other’s identities defy categorizing these towns as “indigenous” or “Mestizo”. In the Mesoamerican culture area at large, situations such as these far outnumber those of regions such as the Chiapas highlands with a clear caste-like ethnic divide. This is so in part because of the massive and rapid language shift in the twentieth century that took place in tens of thousands of Mesoamerican communities that were repúblicas de indios during the colonial period, consequent to a nation-state building project based on Spanish monolinguism. In this paper I criticize how anthropologists have used the “indigenous” and “mestizo”. Instead of centering on how that policy has caused massive re-identification, ethnicity and identity studies are equated with identity politics. By paying more attention to state than to local categories, anthropologists have ignored important social processes and have contributed to the Mexico´s twentieth century state building and forced identity change project. Emphasis is placed on the role of the cargo systems in defining membership in communities that in the colonial period were “repúblicas de indios” or “pueblos de indios”.

This article considers the effects of economic factors on changing fertility rates, with special attention to a decline in the age at marriage. The analysis of field, archival, and census data from Acxotla del Monte in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala focuses on two comparisons: (1) a comparison of 1929 with 1976 censuses; and (2) a comparison of ages of women at first birth in the periods 1959 to 1965 and 1970 to 1976. These data show a decrease in the age at marriage coinciding with increased wage labor. This, in turn, is linked to a breakdown in the domestic group as the unit of economic production. A decline in the age at marriage has also been reported for England during the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization has probably had a similar effect on many rural communities in Mexico, as well as in other developing countries, and should be considered, along with improved health care and declining infant mortality rates, in explaining Mexico's recently burgeoning population growth.

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