What’s the problem represented to be in policies?

All policies require the work of problematisation. The starting point of analysis is recognising that problems are not independently formed, but actively constituted and shaped. As a result, all policies are made of implicit representations of what the problem is represented to be. The problem representations analysed in this article predominantly come from the representations translated through the main primary laws and policies governing teenage pregnancy. This assemblage best reveals the broader logic behind the treatment of teenage pregnancy as a policy issue that is located at the intersection of several policies.

In the French context, teenage pregnancyFootnote ¹ usually refers to women’s pregnancy under the age of twenty and thus does not differentiate between women who have reached the legal age and those who have notFootnote ² . The lack of clarity surrounding the term is further exacerbated by the absence of legal clarity regarding the age for sexual consent for minorsFootnote ³ . Government policies also seem to problematise teenage pregnancy as only unwanted (Le Den, Reference Le Den2012). Le Den (Reference Le Den2012) highlights that the most widely used manner to report teenage pregnancy and abortion is the number and not the rate, thus emphasising numbers rather than their proportion related to the total number, which is marginal. Definitions of ‘teenagers’ also vary among studies. Overall, despite statistical indicators reporting the decreasing number of teenage pregnancies, the level of preoccupation by public authorities remains high in France (Le Den, Reference Le Den2012).

On a national scale, the issue has typically attracted neither much research nor intersectional considerations. Some studies have examined the ‘problem’ in relation to the development and legalisation of contraception, abortion, sexual education and changes in family models and relationships (Daguerre, Reference Daguerre2010; Le Guen and Bajos, Reference Le Guen, Bajos, Cherry and Dillon2014). These studies, however, do not challenge the rationality of the state linking teen pregnancy to individual action (whether focusing on sex education, contraception or preventive actions), nor do they interrogate the governance structures as powerful means to construct the ‘problem’.

Contrary to the US, which favours a restrictive view on sexuality as a way to decrease the number of teen pregnancies, continental Europe and Scandinavia have progressively adopted a more permissive position, accentuating the guidance and support of teenagers with regard to sexuality (Daguerre and Nativel, Reference Daguerre and Nativel2004). Contraception was legalised in 1967 in France through the Neuwirth Law, which repealed a law voted in 1920 that explicitly prohibited the sale, distribution, and advertising of contraceptive devices and abortion. The 1967 law initially contained a section requiring parental consent to use a contraceptive, which was removed in 1974 on the condition that services are obtained at a government-sponsored centre (Le Guen and Bajos, Reference Le Guen, Bajos, Cherry and Dillon2014), for parental consent was rapidly perceived as a barrier for teenage women in accessing contraception. Likewise, the Veil law of 1975 legalised abortion and originally set the condition of parental consent. These laws were reformed in 2001 by the 2000 Aubry bill, modifying the parental consent for minors – now requiring any adult’s consent to obtain an abortion – and ensuring free and confidential access to contraception for minors (Allwood and Wadia, Reference Allwood and Wadia2009). These changes conveyed the idea that the sexuality of youth has an intrinsic social dimension (Le Guen and Bajos, Reference Le Guen, Bajos, Cherry and Dillon2014). The government also adopted several measures to improve access to contraception for juveniles, such as the decree n°2012-883, which facilitates the renewal of oral contraception, and the decrees n°2012-910 and n°2016-41, which posit conditions that enable women to access emergency contraception free of charge.

In parallel, sex education policies developed gradually. A 1973 memorandum about sex education and information (No. 73-299) emphasises ‘instilling responsibility’ in teenagers (Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale, 1973). However, the sexuality of young people did not spark public debates in France until 1974, when the legal age of civil majority was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen and sex education and information started to become part of the school curriculum (Le Guen and Bajos, Reference Le Guen, Bajos, Cherry and Dillon2014). National trainings for teachers that have been in place since 1995 aim at reducing risky sexual behaviours. Sex education notably aims to prevent and reduce risks related to teen pregnancy (‘grossesses précoces’), sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS (Jasmin, Reference Jasmin2007). The Act of July 4, 2001 greatly consolidated the role of schools in terms of sexual education and guidance about contraception and risks derived from sexual behaviours. It established mandatory sex education that spans elementary and secondary education and pointed to the importance of the state’s action in the ‘transmission of knowledge and in the development of responsible attitudes toward sexuality’ (Le Guen and Bajos, Reference Le Guen, Bajos, Cherry and Dillon2014: 299).

Preventive actions regarding unwanted pregnancy and abortion access represent a third important facet of policies governing teenage pregnancy. The first contraception campaign in 1982 targeted women, emphasising their right to contraception. In 1992 and 2000, the campaigns aimed to remove the taboos in discussing adolescent sexuality (Le Guen and Bajos, Reference Le Guen, Bajos, Cherry and Dillon2014). Whereas most preventive programs explicitly target girls, one media preventive campaign launched in 2009, ‘Faut-il que les hommes tombent enceintes pour que la contraception nous concerne tousFootnote ⁴ ?’ (IGAS, 2009), was found to extend the question to boys and men, presenting the question as a ‘couple issue’ (IGAS, 2009: 39). The border between sexuality and relationship remains, however, grounded in heteronormativity and rigid social constructions (Jasmin, Reference Jasmin2007).

In short, four problem representations emerge: (1) teenage pregnancy is the consequence of a lack of knowledge about or access to contraception; (2) teenage pregnancy is the consequence of a failure of preventive sexual education or weak implementation; (3) teenage pregnancy is primarily conceived as an individual’s ‘problem’; (4) it can be prevented through the use of contraception and access to information. By emphasising on individual behaviour, most policy accounts of teenage pregnancy fail to acknowledge gender roles and contingent relations underpinning the representations as well as structural power imbalances shaping sexuality and identities.

To put it concisely, teenage pregnancy is represented as being an individual’s ‘problem’ related to ‘inappropriate’ or ‘risky’ sexual behaviour. Policies and laws are conferred a ‘solving’ role in response to the constructed problem. State intervention is thus meant to affect individual behaviour. The next section explores the knowledge and practices (ways of thinking and doing) that shaped the issue as a policy problem.

What discursive practices have shaped the problem representations?

In policy work, the manipulation of problems is closely related to modes of governance. Analysing the knowledge formation underpinning the problem representations exemplifies how the governance of the question is embedded within wider configurations of governing practices. The relationship between teenage pregnancy and the government is never ‘neutral, natural or apolitical’ (Bletsas, Reference Bletsas, Bletsas and Beasley2012: 53). The problematisation of teenage pregnancy is contingent on constructions of the reality at the discursive level (Monk, Reference Monk1998). Such a perspective draws attention to the dominance of certain knowledge that underpin public policies and the strategic place of ‘experts’ within the debate (Bacchi, Reference Bacchi2009). Legitimacy of knowledge derives from the locus of authority at a certain time and place.

Neoconservative discourse is best described by its attachment to morality (Monk, Reference Monk1998). It is influenced by institutions such as the Christian Church and some right-leaning political parties. This discourse often draws strict contours of what legitimate sexuality is and constructs teenage pregnancy as a symptom of decadent sexual morality (Monk, Reference Monk1998). Beyond judgments related to individual lifestyle choices, teenage pregnancy is also conceived as a disruption to the institution of marriage and the traditional model of family (Monk, Reference Monk1998). Although the neoconservative discourse still holds authority among certain segments of the population (such as Catholic associations and right-leaning parliamentarians) as exemplified by the regular polemics regarding sexual education in schools surfacing from public discussions (Gallot and Pasquier, Reference Gallot and Pasquier2018), its overall influence has waned.

In contrast to neoconservatism, neoliberal discourse is much more concerned with individualistic and economic considerations than morality. Based on rational calculations, neoliberal discourse does not strictly condemn sexuality, abortion or contraception as long as it does not increase dependency on the state (Monk, Reference Monk1998). In France, rationalisation of the phenomenon through numbers has led to denouncing the negative dimensions of teen pregnancy such as educational failure, poverty and financial dependence on welfare (Le Den, Reference Le Den2012).

Studies have documented the authority that the scientific and medical expertise has on health and social policy (Loriol, Reference Loriol2002; IGAS, 2009). Until the mid-1980s, the dominant discourse in France insisted on exaggerating the medical risks associated with early pregnancy, pointing to higher rates of premature births and higher mortality rates. These statistics were soon discredited by comparative research that found no clear correlation between age and pregnancy risks for women of equal socio-economic status (Le Van, Reference Le Van2006). Ironically, these conclusions were not seized upon as incentives to develop further research taking into account the intersections of class, age and gender, but instead shifted the focus onto pregnancy and its medical risks among women aged forty-plus (Le Van, Reference Le Van2006).

More recent insights from social psychology have shifted the grounds to problematise teen pregnancy, though the issue remains framed as a policy ‘problem’. As scientific-oriented research remains the privileged method of ‘knowing’, the chief discourse today is centred on the socioeconomic difficulties arising from early motherhood such as economic instability, precariousness, gaps in educational development, or dramatic repercussions for the child (Le Van, Reference Le Van2006).

As presented above, discourses surrounding teenage pregnancy have evolved and coexist with each other with varying degrees of salience. Of critical importance is the fluidity along which grounds of problematisation have succeeded or superimposed on each other with almost no respite for people to think differently about the issue. It highlights how the concept of ‘teen pregnancy’ has been substantially evolving, thereby wiping away the illusion of ‘problems’ as fixed entities. Most obviously, if the underlying discourse and knowledge have changed and reshaped the representation of the term, the status of teenage pregnancy as a ‘problem’ has remained stable and unquestioned. Essentially, the right of teenage girls and boys to have a sex life is not questioned or re-questioned by the State. Abortion, contraception and youth sexuality are no longer loathed by government policy, denoting a shift away from a morality to concerns over ‘autonomy’ and, implicitly, dependency upon society and the state. As current discourses emphasise the multiplicity of problems generated by early pregnancy and are based on the assumptions that the teen mother is unable to respond to her own economic and social needs as well as those of her child (Le Van, Reference Le Van2006), there are long-term costs for the society and the state (Le Den, Reference Le Den2012). Furthermore, abortion continues to be considered as a deviant behaviour or a ‘trauma’ for young girls, and contraception is presented as a mean to reduce abortion rate (Pavard, Reference Pavard2012). Consequently, the only way to solve the ‘problem’ of teenage pregnancy is to make policies encouraging contraceptive uses among teenage girls.

While the focus has gradually shifted from sexuality to motherhood as a ground for problematisation–and this is not to say that girls’ sexuality has ceased to be of concern–the policy response remains focused on the ‘individual’ level, emphasising individual behaviour, characteristics and responsibility rather than structural elements. In governmentality, individuals are created as ‘the problem’ with emphasis on their private responsibility for health, economic success, educational achievement or contraception (Bacchi, Reference Bacchi2015a). Governing practices that produce individuals and shape their lives are completely invisibilised and left out of the political discourses and representations. The gradual deployment of an assembled policy response to teen pregnancy is warranted based on the current prevailing knowledge and discourse, which are contingent on a particular place, time and governance mentality. The analysis demonstrates the links between neoliberal and scientific discourses, governmentality and the representations of teen pregnancy.

This perspective illuminates the production and contingence of the representations of problems and allows us to move beyond the longstanding debate of whether teenage pregnancy has its roots deep in individual failings or, conversely, in structural deficits, as it has no independent existence. The WPR lifts us to another level of debate by shedding light on a space largely made of political questions and power relations. Hegemonic and authoritative knowledge, currently defined by their scientific dimension, are shaping the problem representation of teen pregnancy. The main preoccupation for the analysis shifts from identifying the ‘cause of the problem’, or the means available to ‘solve’ it, to the relationship between governance mechanisms and ‘problems’.

How has this problem come about?

The emergence of teenage pregnancy as a governmental concern is perhaps less the effect of a fundamental change in the substance of the phenomenon than it is a reflection of a shift in governing logic. A genealogy in the Foucauldian sense serves as a method to question and challenge what is often perceived as natural, revealing the power of norms (Foucault, Reference Foucault1971). Governmentality in the legacy of Foucault encompasses two distinct components. First, it refers to rationalities through which governance is made possible. Second, it describes ‘the form of political organisation in contemporary western societies that is both ‘totalising’ and ‘individualising’’ (Bacchi, Reference Bacchi2015b: 131). I illustrate my arguments by drawing on two specific segments of history that epitomise the contingency of categories and ‘problems’. The first section explores the historical tensions underlying the concept of legitimate motherhood as shaped by governmental interest, using the lens of single motherhood as a category of analysis. The relative invisibility of teenage mothers as an independent political entity threatens the fixity of a category that appears unwavering today. In the second section, the focus is on the political emanation of ‘teenagers’ as a group and category of analysis and the medicalisation of sexuality, which are closely tied to an alteration of governing logic and concerns, substantially shaping the path along which teenage pregnancy became a policy ‘problem’. These sections expose that ‘teenage pregnancy’ exists in relation to other problems such as teenage motherhood and adolescent sexuality, with emphasis on hegemonic discourses and knowledge.

Rethinking the political contingency of ‘problems’ through a feminist lens

A WPR approach constructs a space where it becomes evident that realities, knowledge and problems are intrinsically political and remain in eternal flux. These two conclusions have major ramifications for contemporary scholarship in general, and feminist scholarship in particular, captured in this article through the concepts of self-reflexivity and disruption.

The WPR approach reveals a space where knowledge is in essence political and thereby calls for greater self-reflexivity (Bletsas, Reference Bletsas, Bletsas and Beasley2012; Goodwin, Reference Goodwin, Bletsas and Beasley2012); this being true for policymakers, policy analysts and researchers. This acknowledgement compels us to recognise that trying to research or study any issue beyond political or personal bias is a mere illusion, but this idea is hardly novel in critical research. Bletsas cogently articulates it as she writes that ‘in refusing to treat research as simply neutral and descriptive, post-structuralism in general, and the “WPR” approach in particular, offer the possibility of research as a political engagement’ (2012: 48). For feminist research, seeing problems as entities that need to be politically re-appropriated or intervened with is certainly a promising perspective. A reflexive move implies an acknowledgment that the knowledge we produce cannot exist independently from relations of power. All feminist political engagement is based on particular premises, deep-seated assumptions and representations that all need to be interrogated under the same light as the hegemonic discourse underlying policies. Moreover, no feminist political engagement is ever without the influence of competing knowledge, resulting from the increasing fragmentation and diversification of knowledge. Knowledge entering the scope of politics can destabilise prevailing knowledge, while simultaneously fuelling the potential displacement or reconstruction of a ‘problem’. Contrasting political knowledge creates indeterminate content. The relationship between knowledge, politics and the issue at hand is not a linear or deterministic one. It means that knowledge contributions, as radical and critical as they are, will potentially be evolving when crossing the path of other knowledge, producing unintended consequences that can have detrimental effects on groups of people. Spill-over effects are possible, meaning that changing the representations of teen pregnancy can result in a shift in the representations of other problems. It is perhaps a risk to endorse for defying marginalised people’s exclusion from knowledge creation and research focus, as well as challenging dominant androcentric norms.

According to Collins (Reference Collins2000), because elite white men historically controlled the structures of knowledge validation, their interests are reflected in the themes, paradigms and epistemologies of mainstream scholarship. It also means that the experiences of marginalised individuals are misrepresented or excluded from what counts as legitimate knowledge. Institutional actors governing teenage pregnancy policies are numerous in France, including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of National Education, the High Council of Public Health and the French Agency for Public Health. Additional actors, such as l’École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique or the Société Française Pour la Santé Publique, often offer their expertise on public health issues. French expertise in the field of public health relies primarily on scientific advice. Scientific expertise is assessed based on ‘scientific independence’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘competence’ (Houssin, Reference Houssin2013), giving the illusion of apolitical knowledge. There is a pressing need to incorporate and develop pluralistic knowledge and practices that make visible the multiple contexts of lives and experiences, effects of structural inequalities, and the intersection of gender and other inequalities such as race and class, with continuous self-reflection.

Imagining ‘problems’ as fluid certainly threatens the common acceptance that assumes that the substance of the object of study is stable or has linearity. The WPR approach encourages one to rethink the ontology of policymaking: ‘problems’ can perhaps not be qualified by the state of ‘being’; rather, they are entrenched in the process of ‘becoming’. If phenomena underlying problems are endlessly in flux, certainty and finality of not only feminist but any knowledge remain forever out of reach (Bietsas, Reference Bletsas, Bletsas and Beasley2012: 48). If problems will remain forever unaddressed and continuously displaced by new knowledge and discourses, the traditional way of ‘solving’ problems appears futile. It seems that the critical intervention occurs in the underpinning space of the WPR, at the level of representations of problems and the battle to make marginalised and diverse knowledge valuable and visible to political debates. By extension, ‘certainty and finality are not the only goals towards which our analysis should strive […] perhaps we need to evaluate it in terms of its political effects’ (Bletsas, Reference Bletsas, Bletsas and Beasley2012: 48). The process of identification of political effects obliges feminist researchers to reflect on the various oppressive aspects that all feminist engagement with policy necessarily entails. For example, feminism in France is often conceived based on a republican and universalist perspective, masking the standpoint of white and bourgeois women (Bereni, Reference Bereni2009) and significantly constraining the emergence of marginalised discourses. The need to reflect on the effects of our own theoretical and ontological bases, even when those are explicitly critical and intended to be inclusive, is urgent.

(Un)(re)making ‘problems’: dismantling political rationalities

Critical directions to reconstruct problems from a transformative feminist perspective can be identified. First, all critical research should be treated as a political engagement aimed at the continuous displacement and transformation of ‘problems’. Second, critical research should reflect on its political effects. In this perspective, developing and nurturing alternatives that illuminate the messiness of lived realities are powerful strategies to destabilise predominant political rationalities at multiple levels. In regard to teenage pregnancy in France, intersectionality taken as a disruptive concept can provide a starting point to feminist engagement with policymaking.

Intersectionality, developed based on the US context, sheds light on the multiple systems of oppression that not only intersect, but also interact in the (re)production of inequalities (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989; Collins, Reference Collins2000). Taken as a paradigm, intersectionality departs from a content-based specialisation to focus on normative theories and empirical research, which allows the conceptualisation of the structural dimensions of oppression (Collins, Reference Collins2000; Hancock, Reference Hancock2007; Bilge, Reference Bilge2009). Proposing intersectionality as a framework for research involves assumptions regarding ‘what we think ought to change and hence what we assume or represent the “problem” to be’ (Bacchi, Reference Bacchi2011: 36). It suggests that teen pregnancy is not only a gender issue but also relates to class and/or race as contextually defined. Intersectionality provides a tool to deconstruct and better understand the messiness of lived realities and relations of power. A review of qualitative and quantitative studies in the US demonstrates that preexisting characteristics, which act as predispositions to early motherhood, are significantly responsible for poor socioeconomic outcomes regarding teenage pregnancy (Smithbattle, Reference Smithbattle2018). The same study found that deferring motherhood does not fundamentally improve the lives of girls who are already disadvantaged and suggests that cumulative social and economic exclusion and marginalisation bear more weight in the production of negative outcomes for young mothers regardless of age. Instead of assuming that age in relation to gender is the ‘problem’, research should start interrogating class and other social and economic factors in relation to gender based on an analysis that questions the category of age as a central axis of causality.

One mechanism of social control is the power to classify the social world and attribute categories with defined assumptions that most serve dominant interests. The construction of homogenous notions and categories obscures the diversity of experiences, causes and identities composing an entity, and produces the idea that identities are stable, ahistorical and devoid from relations of power. Intersectionality offers the possibility to redefine categories and complexify the often simplistic equation posited by the political power in place, drawing on embodied narratives while acknowledging the fluidity of categories. Based on interviews with teenage mothers (below twenty) in France, Le Van (Reference Le Van1998) shows the great diversity of situations of these women and finds that in many cases pregnancy was deliberately chosen. This study challenges commonly accepted public discourses and knowledge developed by ‘experts’ conceptualising teen pregnancy as only unwanted and focusing excessively on the related difficulties.

For intersectionality to be empirically translatable, the interaction between different categories must be analysed, which also implies that data disaggregated according to gender, race or class are available. In France, social sciences have historically been uncomfortable with categories pertaining to race and ethnicity, making it difficult to construct a more nuanced understanding of lived realities with regard to these specific identity categories (Chapman and Frader, Reference Chapman and Frader2004; Simon, Reference Simon2010). The collection of information related to ethnicity and race has been severely restricted by law since 1978 (Data Protection Act).

Further, if intersectionality constitutes a promising lens not only to reorient future research but also to enhance the reflexivity of the researcher vis-à-vis the prioritisation of one or two categories over the others, we can wonder to what extent such an angle would retrace a new boundary of what acceptable pregnancy/motherhood is. Categories in social sciences are primarily conventions that designate objects of knowledge but also target groups for action and policy (Stone, Reference Stone1997). They are central to the process of problematising, the configuration of public policy approaches and, perhaps more dramatically, the process of assigning stigmas. Powerful political actors exploit stereotypes of social groups, in particular powerless groups, based on a selective use of facts (Schneider and Ingram, Reference Schneider and Ingram1997). These constructions impact target groups. Powerless groups (deviants if constructed negatively, or dependents if described positively) have often poor resources to challenge or exploit the way they are described by policymakers. Even if their construction changes, we could imagine that shifts in the representations of a group can lead to the creation of new stigmas or displace stigmas from one group to another, as the construction of target groups is perhaps an inevitable condition of policymaking. Social policy design is almost always based on a particular understanding of the target group it seeks to affect.

In short, the rationality of current policymaking derives from: i) problems are the raison d’être of policymaking, ii) target groups are narrowly constructed based on stereotypes and depending on their political power, and, more importantly, iii) its inability to take into account the intersections of an individual’s identities. Rather, individuals are conceived as part of a social group whose homogeneity, based on chief characteristics, often erases other identity axes and reifies individual experiences. As such, if intersectionality holds the potential to shift the problem representations of teen pregnancy, efforts to do so perhaps come at the cost of creating new categories of exclusion and marginalisation as the logic of policymaking is not so easily dismantled. Without such interventions, however, we are tacitly accepting hegemonic constructions of realities.