Insightful, scholarly, and wonderfully readable analysis of
Americans' misconceptions about teenage pregnancy and the impact of
these beliefs on public policy. The unwed teenage mother,
especially the black unwed teenage mother, has become the symbol of
social, sexual, and economic trends that are causing increasing
anxiety for Americans. Sociologist Luker (Abortion and the Politics
of Motherhood, 1984) asserts that current welfare reforms aimed at
reducing teenage pregnancy rates are doomed to fail because they
are based on a basic misunderstanding of the problem. In her words,
"Early childbearing doesn't make young women poor; rather, poverty
makes women bear children at an early age." Luker traces ideas
about early childbearing from colonial times to the present and
demonstrates how the notion that the country is witnessing an
explosion in teenage pregnancy came to have broad acceptance among
both policy makers and the general public. Of special interest is
her argument that poor women and affluent women are choosing two
different solutions to their common problem of raising children in
a society that offers little support: Poor women adopt the
traditional American pattern of early childbearing, having babies
before they enter the work force and relying on family help,
whereas affluent women postpone childbearing until they are well
established in their careers. Given the circumstances, she says, it
makes sense for poor women to have their babies at an early age.
The real problem is the underlying social and economic forces that
compel women to make such choices. "Society should worry not about
some epidemic of 'teenage pregnancy' but about the hopeless,
discouraged, and empty lives that early childbearing denotes," she
concludes. She offers no ready solutions, but her fresh perspective
on the issue of teenage pregnancy is an important contribution to
the current debate over welfare reform. Commonsensical, timely, and
very persuasive. (Kirkus Reviews)
As her little boy plays at a day care center across the street,
Michelle, an unmarried teenager, is in algebra class, hoping to be
the first member of her family to graduate from high school. Will
motherhood make this young woman poorer? Will it make the United
States poorer as a nation? That's what the voices raised against
"babies having babies" would have us think, and what many Americans
seem inclined to believe. This powerful book takes us behind the
stereotypes, the inflamed rhetoric, and the flip media sound bites
to show us the complex reality and troubling truths of teenage
mothers in America today. Would it surprise you to learn that
Michelle is more likely to be white than African American? That she
is most likely eighteen or nineteen--a legal adult? That teenage
mothers are no more common today than in 1900? That two-thirds of
them have been impregnated by men older than twenty? Kristin Luker,
author of the acclaimed Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood,
puts to rest once and for all some very popular misconceptions
about unwed mothers from colonial times to the present. She traces
the way popular attitudes came to demonize young mothers and
examines the profound social and economic changes that have
influenced debate on the issue, especially since the 1970s. In the
early twentieth century, reformers focused people's attention on
the social ills that led unmarried teenagers to become pregnant;
today, society has come almost full circle, pinning social ills on
sexually irresponsible teens. Dubious Conceptions introduces us to
the young women who are the object of so much opprobrium. In these
pages we hear teenage mothers from across the country talk about
their lives, their trials, and their attempts to find meaning in
motherhood. The book also gives a human face to those who criticize
them, and shows us why public anger has settled on one of society's
most vulnerable groups. Sensitive to the fears and confusion that
fuel this anger, and to the troubled future that teenage mothers
and their children face, Luker makes very clear what we as a nation
risk by not recognizing teenage pregnancy for what it is: a
symptom, not a cause, of poverty.
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