In Indigenous culture, stories are a common repository of knowledge and facilitate the process of knowing. Māori academics (Indigenous to Aotearoa New Zealand) have developed approaches based on key principles of Māori research, oral traditions and narrative inquiry to express experiences as Māori. To extend this, a Māori approach called Kaupapa Kōrero was developed to gather, present and understand Māori experiences. The application of whakapapa (genealogy) as a relational analytical framework provided a way of identifying personal kōrero (stories) and integrating them within layers of interrelated kōrero about their whānau (family), te ao Māori (Māori culture) and society that influences contemporary experiences of being Māori. Whakapapa also enabled a cross-examination of kōrero and identification of common intersecting factors such as Māori ethnicity, age, parenting status and socioeconomic position. This Māori narrative approach revealed a more complex and nuanced understanding of the interrelatedness and influence of societal expectations, indigeneity, Māori culture and whānau.

Despite the poor outcomes of early childbearing increasingly found to be equivocal, there remains a persistent pathologising of teen parenting, which structures government response. By applying a Foucauldian analysis to the recently introduced Young Parent Payment, this article examines the political rationalities that shape government responses and welfare assistance for young parents in Aotearoa/New Zealand. A biopolitical concern for the good economic citizen and right parent is found to inform the social investment approach, and exclude those who do not conform. Discourses about being Māori, young, a parent and needing financial assistance frame young Māori parents as at risk of longterm welfare-dependency and a threat to their own children. Welfare assistance is demonstrated to be a disciplinary practice to punish young

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Young Mäori parents strategically navigate Western parenting expectations, and issues of indigeneity in their construction of early parenting. A culturally based narrative approach to research with young Mäori parents revealed personal stories of early parenting located in wider expectations from family and peers, their Indigenous community and society. The application of a Mäori relational analytical framework reveals how young Mäori parents navigate and negotiate assumptions about being young and being Mäori. They draw on Mäori understandings about raising children to resist assumptions that having a child at a young age contributes to entirely negative experiences. Furthermore, identifying with Western attributes of good parenting helps to counter the negative social outcomes often attributed to Mäori parenting. Further strengthening of positive experiences of early parenting for Mäori requires a broader approach to developing positive representations of Mäori caregiving and Mäori identity and integrating these into parenting supports.