Introduction

The election of the New Labour government in a landslide victory in 1997 marked the end of nearly two decades of Conservative rule. The party was voted into power again in 2001. In May 2005, Labour achieved a historical party first: its third consecutive term in office.

Early in its first term, the New Labour government made a reduction in teenage pregnancy one of the foci of its reforming policy programme (Evans, 2006). The previous Conservative administration had also attempted to reduce early conceptions, but New Labour's approach was different. The government made a conscious break with previous political stances on teenage pregnancy (and earlier representations of young mothers), which were now deemed to be judgemental. Instead, New Labour sought to recast youthful pregnancy not as a problem of sexual morality but as a cause, and consequence, of health and socioeconomic inequalities.

This idea was articulated at length in the government's seminal policy report on the issue: Teenage Pregnancy (SEU, 1999). The report described trends in teenage pregnancy and fertility, made comparisons with rates in other countries, offered explanations for early pregnancy (drawing on the large body of research in this area) and introduced the long-term, multifaceted campaign to reduce it: the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy (TPS) and the unit (the TPU) that would house the strategy. The TPS has two main targets: to halve the under-18 conception rate by 2010 and establish a downward trend in the under-16 rate; and to increase the numbers of teenage parents in education, training or employment to 60% by 2010, to reduce their risk of social exclusion.

It is the reframing of the ‘problem’ of teenage pregnancy and motherhood, the ways in which representations of pregnant and mothering teenagers differed under New Labour, the run-up and reaction to Teenage Pregnancy and the TPS and the kind of explanations for (and solutions to) teenage pregnancy offered within it, and how these reflect New Labour philosophy, that are considered in this chapter. The first target of the TPS, to reduce conception rates, has always been, arguably, the more difficult to attain as well as the more politically contentious, and is the principal focus here.