Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:19:52.889Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What a Difference a Decade Makes: Rethinking Teenage Pregnancy as a Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

Lisa Arai
Lisa Arai*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Health and Social Care, The Open University E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Teenage Pregnancy Strategy (TPS) has been implemented in England since 1999 and has two aims: to halve under 18s conceptions; and to reduce the risk of social exclusion among young mothers. The TPS portrays young motherhood as problematic, the cause of poor outcomes. Yet, the problematisation of teenage fertility has been contested, especially by qualitative researchers who have demonstrated that early motherhood can be experienced positively. This research is discussed here, as are findings from a small-scale study in three English locations, where teenage mothers reported good experiences of parenthood. The discrepancy between these accounts of motherhood and policy is considered.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 171 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, I. and Bourke-Dowling, S. (1998), Teenage Mothers: Decisions and Outcomes, London: Policy Studies Institute.Google Scholar
Arai, L. (2004), ‘Teenage pregnancy and fertility in English communities: Neighbourhood, family and peer influences on behaviour’, Ph.D. thesis, Queen Mary (University of London), London.Google Scholar
Arai, L. (forthcoming, 2009), Teenage Pregnancy: The Making and Unmaking of a Problem, Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Aronson, J. (1994), ‘A pragmatic view of thematic analysis’, The Qualitative Report, 2, 1. Accessed online at: http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/BackIssues/QR2-1/aronson.html (checked 22/04/08).Google Scholar
Berthoud, R., Ermisch, J., Francesconi, M., Liao, T., Pevalin, D. and Robson, R. (2004), ‘Long term consequences of teenage births for parents and their children’, Report to the Department of Health, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Botting, B., Rosato, M. and Wood, R. (1998), ‘Teenage mothers and the health of their children’, Population Trends, 93, 19–29.Google Scholar
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979), The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carabine, J. (2007), ‘New Labour's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy’, Cultural Studies, 21, 6, 952–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandola, T., Coleman, D. A. and Hiorns, R. W. (2001), ‘Heterogeneous fertility patterns in the English-speaking world: results from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States’, paper presented at the EAPS Population Conference, Helsinki, 7–9 June.Google Scholar
Cherrington, J. and Breheny, M. (2005), ‘Politicizing dominant discursive constructions about teenage pregnancy: re-locating the subject as social’, Health, 9, 1, 89–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Choi, P., Henshaw, C., Baker, S. and Tree, J. (2005), ‘Supermum, superwife, supereverything: performing femininity in the transition to motherhood’, Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 23, 2, 167–80.Google Scholar
Clemmens, D. (2003), ‘Adolescent motherhood: a metasynthesis of qualitative studies’, The American Journal of Maternal and Child Nursing, 28, 2, 93–9.Google Scholar
Cunnington, A. (2001), ‘What's so bad about teenage pregnancy?’, Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care, 27, 1, 36–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Jonge, A. (2001), ‘Support for teenage mothers: a qualitative study into the views of women about the support they received as teenage mothers’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 36, 1, 49–57.Google Scholar
Duncan, S. (2007), ‘What's the problem with teenage parents? And what's the problem with policy’, Critical Social Policy, 27, 307–34.Google Scholar
Graham, H. and McDermott, E. (2006), ‘Qualitative research and the evidence – base of policy: Insights from studies of teenage mothers in the UK’, Journal of Social Policy, 35, 1, 21–37.Google Scholar
Geronimus, A. T. (1997), ‘Teenage childbearing and personal responsibility: an alternative view’, Political Science Quarterly, 112, 3. Accessed online at: http://www.psqonline.org/cgi-bin/99_article.cgi?byear=1997&bmonth=fall&a=03free&format=view (checked 22/04/08).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilgartner, S. and Bosk, C. L. (1988), ‘The rise and fall of social problems: a public arenas model’, American Journal of Sociology, 94, 1, 53–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hosie, A. C. S. (2007), ‘“I hated everything about school”: an examination of the relationship between dislike of school, teenage pregnancy and educational disengagement’, Social Policy and Society, 6, 3, 333–47.Google Scholar
Jewell, D., Tacchi, J. and Donovan, J. (2000), ‘Teenage pregnancy: whose problem is it?’, Family Practice, 17, 6, 522–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidger, J. (2004), ‘Including young mothers: limitations to New Labour's strategy for supporting teenage parents’, Critical Social Policy, 24, 3, 291–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidger, J. (2005), ‘Stories of redemption? Teenage mothers as the new sex educators’, Sexualities, 8, 4, 481–96.Google Scholar
Kiernan, K. E. (1997), ‘Becoming a young parent: a longitudinal study of associated factors’, British Journal of Sociology, 48, 3, 406–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkman, M., Harrison, L., Hillier, L. and Pyett, P. (2001), ‘I know I'm doing a good job’: canonical and autobiographical narratives of teenage mothers', Culture, Health and Sexuality, 3, 3, 279–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavender, B. (2007), ‘Young, gifted and pregnant’, The Guardian, 31 March. Accessed online at: http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2046551,00.html (checked 22/04/08).Google Scholar
Lawlor, D. A. and Shaw, M. (2002), ‘Too much too young? Teenage pregnancy is not a public health problem’, International Journal of Epidemiology, 31, 3, 552–3.Google Scholar
Macintyre, S. and Cunningham-Burley, S. (1993), ‘Teenage pregnancy as a social problem: A perspective from the United Kingdom’, in Lawson, A. and Rhode, D.L. (eds.), The Politics of Pregnancy: Adolescent Sexuality and Public Policy, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McDermott, E., Graham, H. and Hamilton, V. (2004), ‘Experiences of being a teenage mother in the UK: a report of a systematic review of qualitative studies’, ESRC Centre for Evidence-Based Public Policy, Lancaster University.Google Scholar
Murcott, A. (1980), ‘The social construction of teenage pregnancy: a problem in the ideologies of childhood and reproduction’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 2, 1, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Statistics (2006), Conception Statistics in England and Wales, 2006 (Provisional), London: National Statistics.Google Scholar
ONS (2008), ‘Conceptions for women resident in England and Wales, 2006’, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/conceptions2006/conception_statistics_06_web.pdf.Google Scholar
Phoenix, A. (1991), Young Mothers? Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Rice, P. L. and Ezzy, D. (2000), Qualitative Research Methods, Victoria, Australia: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rosato, M. (1999), ‘Teenage fertility in England and Wales: trends in socioeconomic circumstances between the 1971 and the 1981 censuses’, Longitudinal Study (LS) Working Paper 78, Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, University of London, London.Google Scholar
SEU (Social Exclusion Unit) (1999), Teenage Pregnancy, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Singh, S. and Darroch, J. E. (2000), ‘Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: levels and trends in developed countries’, Family Planning Perspectives, 32, 1, 14–23.Google Scholar
SmithBattle, L. (2003), ‘Displacing the rule book in caring for teen mothers’, Public Health Nursing, 20, 5, 369–376.Google Scholar
SmithBattle, L. (2000), ‘Developing a caregiving tradition in opposition to one's past: lessons from a longitudinal study of teenage mothers’, Public Health Nursing, 17, 2, 85–93.Google Scholar
Weyman, A. (2003), ‘Promoting sexual health to young people: preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections’, The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 123, 6–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitehead, E. (2001), ‘Teenage pregnancy: on the road to social death’, International Journal of Nursing Studies, 38, 437–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiggins, M., Rosato, M., Austerberry, H., Sawtell, M. and Oliver, S. (2005), Sure Start Plus National Evaluation: Final Report, Social Science Research Unit Report, London: Institute of Education.Google Scholar
Wilson, H. and Huntington, A. (2006), ‘Deviant (m)others: the construction of teenage motherhood in contemporary discourse’, Journal of Social Policy, 35, 59–76.Google Scholar