Public Discourses About Teenage Pregnancy: Disruption, Restoration, and Ideology

Abstract

Two recent incidents in the United States generated a wealth of public discourses about a particular reproductive health issue: adolescent childbearing. As the media, political pundits, and private citizens pondered the meaning of these events, they expressed viewpoints, explanations, and possible solutions in mass-mediated outlets. We examined the discourses communicated in such outlets to understand how public discussion of teenage pregnancy reveals ideological assumptions about reproductive health, ideal family forms, and the expected lifecourse. (Coontz, 1992), though the perception that teenage childbearing is a social problem with disastrous consequences is relatively recent (Geronimus, 2004). Beginning around 1970, public concern centered on economic issues, with discourses claiming that teenage mothers and their offspring created an economic drain on society (Tapia, 2005). As welfare systems developed in the United States, the issue took shape in the political arena, where it became situated as a financial burden on taxpaying citizens (Tapia, 2005). Public outcry also framed this perceived social problem as a threat to public health, linking teenage childbearing to poor health outcomes for infants, including low birth weight and infant mortality (Geronimus 2003(Geronimus , 2004. Once established as a societal problem, teen pregnancy became part of moral discussions that situated expectant teen mothers as deviant citizens. Bolstering images of non-white and poverty stricken teens, the media perpetuated racial and cultural stigmatization of teen pregnancy (Kelly, 1996). As Geronimus (2004) noted, "well-publicized conventional wisdom continues to hold teen childbearing to be, in all cases and in every aspect, an antisocial act, and an important public health issue" (p. 157).Discourses shaping teen pregnancy as an economic, political, and public health issue have continued developing into a master narrative used by the public to make sense of this perceived social transgression (Luttrell, 2011). Yet, the prevailing linguistic resources that Discourses and Teenage Pregnancy 4 media coverage of their pregnancies unfolded, commentators, pundits, and the public at large engaged in impassioned debates about the implications of these unexpected pregnancies of young idols.We position media coverage surrounding these two events as an opportunity to examine the rhetorical shaping of teen pregnancy and uncover how pervading ideologies about reproduction, ideal family forms, temporality, and the expected lifecourse (Becker, 1997) are both reflected in and produced through discourse (Cheek, 2004; Lutpon, 1992 Lutpon, , 2003.Recognizing that meanings are constructed "in the symbolic space between reader, text, and context" (Harter, Kirby, Edwards, & McClanahan, 2005, p. 85), we offer our particular reading of these discourses and invite readers to enter into emerging conversations about women's sexual and reproductive health choices, more broadly, and adolescent pregnancy, more specifically. We begin by providi...

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