Title: Power and visibility: the invention of teenage pregnancy.

POPLINE Document Number: 266683

Author(s):

Arney WR
Bergen BJ

Source citation:

Social Science and Medicine, 1984;18(1):11-9.

Abstract:

The term "teenage pregnancy" replaced the morally loaded terms "illegitimate child" and "unwed mother" around 1970. This change in terminology marks a shift in the kind of attention society shows the pregnant adolescent, and is accompanied by changes in patterns of care which have become more "liberal" and "humanized." It is argued that assessments like these do not help us understand what is involved. From a moral problem, pregnant adolescents are now a technical one; different kinds of solutions are therefore needed, as technical problems require analysis and knowledge. Power organized around a moral discourse punishes by exclusion and brings with it a kind of freedom: the deviant is left alone by being placed on the other side of a moral boundary. Power organized around a scientific discourse on sexual desire, makes its objects of knowledge visible and subject to unending inquiry. A scientific discourse knows no boundary since it incorporates everything in the name of seeking "scientific truth." The new idea of "teenage pregnancy" is not simply a fact; it is part of the discourse on desire that organizes a practice of power that is inclusionary and relentless. This paper examines the political implications of the emergence of this new form of power which no longer calls upon punishment and obeying the law, but disciplines its subjects to become true to their own nature, a nature known by scientific experts. The truth of desire is now located in the individual nature of the woman herself. By analyzing the sexual deviant as an object of knowledge, the "challenge" she presents to herself, to her parents and to the community, disappears. The emergence of "teenage pregnancy" is traced through the treatment given pregnant adolescents in Reader's Digest and the American Journal of Publi Health from 1940 to 1980. The analysis shows that, prior to the mid 1960s, pregnant adolescents were shut away; they had no publicly visible face until the early 1970s, when they reappear in the context of a neutralized sexuality and become an increasingly visible social problem.

Keywords:

United States
Adolescent Pregnancy
Ethics
Unmarried Mothers
Illegitimacy
Sex Behavior
Premarital Sex Behavior
Social Change
Psychosocial Factors
Political Factors
Philosophical Overview
Critique
Historical Review
Changes
Social Workers
Mass Media
Psychology, Social
Sociology
Developing Countries
Developed Countries
North America
Americas
Reproductive Behavior
Fertility
Population Dynamics
Demographic Factors
Population
Mothers
Parents
Family Relationships
Family Characteristics
Family and Household
Social Problems
Behavior
Communication
Psychology
Social Sciences