The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy inKnocked Up,Juno,andWaitress

Hoerl, Kristen; Kelly, Casey Ryan

doi:10.1080/14791420.2010.523432

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Because both women came from well-known and well-to-do families, the public took for granted that Bristol and Jamie Lynn had the financial resources to care for themselves and their children, making it easier to celebrate each starlet's "ability to make the right choice and exercise proper moral reasoning" (Hoerl & Kelly, 2010, p. 361). Yet, in leaving such issues unquestioned, public discourses about these two cases missed an opportunity to address the numerous variables that shape women's reproductive choices, including income, educational background, relational stability, and subgroup norms that might actually promote early childbearing Hoerl & Kelly, 2010 Ideal Family Forms. By framing a reproductive health issue like teenage pregnancy in terms of family efforts to promote responsibility and bond as a cohesive family unit, public conversations about these events advanced a narrow definition of the ideal family in the United States.…”

Section: Dominant Ideologies In Discussion Of Teen Pregnancymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some scholars have suggested that media constructions of unplanned pregnancies are shifting. For instance, Hoerl and Kelly (2010) analyzed three recent films that portray unintended pregnancies, including the pregnancy of the teenager in the movie. Juno, and concluded that these portrayals emphasize the role of women's agency in reproductive decision-making while simultaneously rejecting the notion of an unplanned pregnancy as a shameful act.…”

Section: Media Constructions Of Teen Pregnancymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Bute

Russell

2012

Health Communication

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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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Section: Dominant Ideologies In Discussion Of Teen Pregnancymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Media Constructions Of Teen Pregnancymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Bute

Russell

2012

Health Communication

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“…The new language of choice proliferates in different social locations ranging from images of women whose choice of motherhood is articulated as solely a private choice (Crittenden 2001, Hoerl andCasey 2010) or women who choose to be stay-at-home moms and domestic housewives (Hollows 2003, Vint 2007, McCarver 2011, to others who celebrate choice and their femininity as an entitlement to consume (Lazar 2011) or willingly empower themselves to be caricaturized feminine sexual objects (Levy 2005, Gill 2007. These choices constitute what Elspeth Probyn views as a blend of reactionary and utopic sets of discourses.…”

Section: There Is No Choice But To Choosementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies claim that discourses of 'girl power', 'power femininity' and languages of empowerment and 'taking charge' often mask and reinforce highly traditional and conventional norms of femininity (Probyn 1990, 1993, McRobbie 2004, Tasker and Diane 2005, Gonick 2006, Lazar 2006, Gill 2007, Gill and Scharff 2011, Hoerl and Casey 2010.…”

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confidence: 96%

The Single Woman's Choice as a Zero-Sum Game

Lahad¹

2013

Cultural Studies

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THE SINGLE WOMAN'S CHOICE AS A ZERO-SUM GAMECultural scholars are paying increasing attention to the ways in which choice has become a cultural obligation deeply ingrained in neoliberal, post-feminist, therapeutic and consumerist norms. Drawing insights from this literature, this paper first charts the changing discourse on choice, and then goes on to both examine and challenge the centrality of the rhetoric of choice in contemporary discourses of singlehood and single women. In my analysis, the idea of choice is posited as a multivalent signifier dependent on changing social contexts and denoting shifting aspects of feminine subjectivity and personal relations. It is my aim thereby to problematize notions of choice and singlehood, as well as to question the cultural processes that produce them. To do so, I probe the discursive relations that produce distinctive clusters of meanings, as well as the tensions and contradictions that emerge around them. Such a reading emerges from a contentbased analysis of readers' comments and responses to an online Internet column depicting the various advantages of being 'single-by-choice'. The findings show that while choice can be a discursive force that enables single women to resist traditional family forms and establish their chosen subjectivities, the centrality of choice in the construction of intimate relations today also casts in doubt and paradoxically delegitimizes single women's option of autonomy and individuality. Some of the social interpretations of choice denote that single women are endowed with a partial and incomplete subjectivity, while according to other stances the choice of singlehood signifies a radical option for claiming singlehood as a longterm way of life. However, the aim of the critique proposed here is not merely to deconstruct the discursive mechanism that delegitimizes singlehood, but also to point out some of the potential limitations emerging from the new counterdiscourse of chosen singlehood.

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“…Narrative analysis identifies common themes across related texts that, taken together, create social and cultural meanings, norms, and values (Cloud 1992;Condit 1989;Fiske 1987;Hoerl and Kelly 2010). Narrative analysis focuses on how a story is told, and, following Hall, this study also focuses on how a story is not told.…”

Section: Theory and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brave Sperm and Demure Eggs: Fallopian Gender Politics on YouTube

Nettleton¹

2015

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The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy inKnocked Up,Juno,andWaitress

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

The Single Woman's Choice as a Zero-Sum Game

Brave Sperm and Demure Eggs: Fallopian Gender Politics on YouTube

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