This article is an analytical essay on a historical moment in the formation of public health thinking vis-à-vis adolescent pregnancy: the 1960s. Its relevance lies in the fact that several assertions produced then still bear great influence on ideas and models concerning adolescent maternity in current public health thinking. From the technical and methodological point of view, one can assume two levels: an explicit one pertaining to the documentary record, consisting of messages clearly communicated by authors of scientific texts, and an implicit one, with elements that could only surface in text discourse through stylistic effects. Based on such assumptions, we explored the specialized literature using a metaphorical/metonymical analysis in search of such implicit dimensions.