[Between desire and fear: female adolescents' social representation on sexual initiation]

This article discusses one of the emergent themes of a qualitative research carried out with female adolescents in the neighborhood of Acaba Mundo, in the city of Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, and aims at understanding their social representations on sexual initiation concerning gender. The data was collected in four workshops and analyzed on the basis of the social representation theory by means of the discourse analysis technique. Two empirical categories and their consequences emerged from the discourse: leaving childhood behind and fear of pregnancy. The understanding of the social representations and of the gender relationships made the values, ideas and practices of the adolescents and their family clear. It also made clear that those values, ideas and practices were in frequent transformation in the social field.