Abstract
This edited collection contributes to a growing body of work, which challenges assumptions underpinning the construction of teenage pregnancy and parenthood as a problem in Britain and in other contexts (Arai, 2009; Carabine, 2007; Kidger, 2004; MacLeod, 2002; Phoenix, 1991; Wilson and Huntington, 2006). As argued in Teenage Pregnancy: What’s the Problem?, the characterization is almost exclusively negative in much media discourse in Britain. This has, however, appeared to provide much of the stimulus for state policy and intervention, since the late 1990s, designed to reduce teenage conception rates as part of a broader strategy to tackle social exclusion (Social Exclusion Unit, 1999). The monolithic and consensual view of teenage pregnancy and parenthood, as inherently problematic, is challenged in light of the evidence presented in each of the nine chapters of this book. Furthermore, the assumptions which feed the discursive constructions, policy and intervention strategies relating to teenage pregnancy and parenthood, are shown to be ‘top down’, taken for granted and lacking in empirical evidence. In the concluding chapter, it is strongly argued that the policy responses and modes of service provision being pursued, in the British context, are misdirected and ultimately unhelpful because they are rooted, despite evidence to the contrary, in constructions of teenage pregnancy and parenthood as social and personal calamities.
The research presented in some chapters in this book seeks to redress this perception, by giving voice to young mothers (Alldred and David; Macvarish and Billings; Alexander, Duncan and Edwards; Owen et al.): in other chapters their partners and significant family members are featured (Alexander, Duncan and Edwards; Formby, Hirst and Owen). The material in these chapters shows how thinking, planning, decision making and other experiences, as well as outcomes associated with teenage pregnancy and parenthood, are much richer and more complex than suggested by the problematization and its attendant discourses. In other chapters, a large-scale quantitative study is analysed (Hawkes) and research with different generations conducted (Formby, Hirst and Owen; McNulty). These further disrupt the truth claims underpinning the definition of teenage parenthood as a social problem. By uncovering young parents’ hopes for their children and their own values in life, attention is drawn to their ‘sameness’ rather than their ‘otherness’ with those who parent later in life. Furthermore, the positive experiences and opportunities resulting from early parenthood, are given due attention as a means of counteracting the overwhelming focus on the negatives of early parenting for young persons, their families and society. Alldred and David argue that the values and decision making associated with the neo-liberal construction of the (middle class) self, with its valorization of paid work over parenting, is a project of less cultural relevance and of less benefit to some young people. Similarly, as highlighted by Macvarish and Billings, not all young people have so much to gain by being on the ‘slow track’ to parenthood: some will actively choose parenting or come to the realization that it is through becoming parents that their lives have come to be invested with greater meaning, gratification and purpose.
There are a number of key strengths in this book and it is worthwhile in demonstrating, to students of social policy, the value of unpacking and scrutinizing problem representations lodged in policies and interventions. It brings together in one source, an extensive and rich body of qualitative and quantitative research evidence, which pulls apart the problem of teenage pregnancy and instead reveals its problematization. This shift in focus is a very useful conceptual device for social policy analysis, precisely because it reveals the usefulness of thinking about policy problems and solutions differently.
Overwhelmingly the focus of many chapters is on how social policy subjects, in this instance teen parents, are constituted in particular ways, which are powerful, influential and persistent and bear little resemblance to the subjects’ own rationalities, experiences or lived realities. However, in a book which brings together a body of diverse evidence, too much of the evidence presented is of a broadly similar kind; qualitative data gathered from persons, mainly mothers, who became parents at a young age recently or in the past and who shared their own views and experiences. It made me ponder as to whether there are other forms of diverse evidence, of the kind favoured by policy makers, which might be marshalled to challenge the problematization of teenage parenting. This might, in fact, be more likely to drive the kind of dramatic epistemic shift in thinking called for in the final chapter. Nevertheless Teenage Pregnancy remains an appealing and accessible book – for academics, students and others with an interest in policies and interventions directed at teenage parents.