Abstract
For any woman, pregnancy and giving birth are major life-changing experiences. This period is argued to indicate a shift from
girlhood into womanhood. However, this experience takes on new meaning when the woman is very young—an adolescent,
who is still in school—and learns that she is HIV-positive. For such adolescent, becoming a mother, just like living with HIV/
AIDS, involves moving from a known, current reality to an unknown, new reality. To understand how HIV-positive adolescent
mothers grapple with the demands and responsibilities of unplanned motherhood while living with HIV, this study explores
the complexities of their experiences in South Africa. Drawing on qualitative methods, this study examines their meaning
to motherhood while meeting their personal health needs. Through in-depth interviews conducted among 10 HIV-positive
adolescent mothers living in Johannesburg, this article presents an empirical study of their narratives and how they negotiate
these complexities in their unplanned new realities. Emerging themes from the interview transcripts were identified, coded,
and analyzed thematically following an interpretivist approach. From the interviews conducted, it is evident that HIV-positive
adolescent mothers perceive unplanned motherhood as difficult and this negatively affects their future childbearing decisions.
Given the importance of motherhood and adolescents globally, this article advocates for feminist policies that would facilitate
larger transformative narratives. It also recommends the implementation of relevant policy that would alleviate the difficulties
of HIV-positive adolescent mothers generally.