9 Months

In Naples the rate of teenage pregnancies is one of the highest in Italy. Most of these pregnancies are wanted and well accepted by the families. This photographic journey, which lasted two years, starts from the encounter between Stephanie Gengotti and the gynecologist Floriana Di Maggio, who has been following the adolescents in ASL Via Maddalena, one of the most popular napolitan neighbourhood. Two mornings a week, Dr. Di Maggio goes in high schools, teaches sex education and would like to offer the girls a weapon of love: prevention. Often, though, it's too late and the only way to proceed is assistance. She Follows twenty teen moms a year and the most difficult thing is to draw the line, explain to the girls that from that moment on a thin line divides their lives, the passage from adolescence to motherhood. The teenagers then smile: they know that at home they will find support from the future grandmothers, who are in their late thirties and who have traced the same familiar pattern before them, because 'from mother to daughter', at times, it’s not only a way of saying. In a society that rejects them, these teenage mothers use their own strength to conquer and build hope and a future. Carla is 17, Virna 14, Marsia 15, Carmela and Angela 18; they all look forward to a new phase of life, and behind their windows, silent and hidden, we wonder whether it’s irresponsibility or courage.