I will do two things in this paper. First, I examine the issue of construction in the social sciences by using “teenage pregnancy” as an example. Following Michel Foucault's genealogical studies, I show that new categories were constructed to study teenage pregnancies, but that the construction involved does not support an extreme theory of construction—a theory which allows of nothing like “reality”. Second, I study the interaction between the categories used in investigations of teenage pregnancies and those to whom such (...) categories are applied, namely the young mothers themselves. The interaction illustrates what Ian Hacking has described as a “looping effect” characteristic of categories used to study people and their behaviour. I claim that with teenage pregnancy, the looping effect is much more complex than Hacking suggests. (shrink)

Focusing on fifty girls enrolled in a model public school program for pregnant teens, Luttrell explores how pregnant girls experience society's view of them and also considers how these girls view themselves and the choices they've made. Also includes an 8-page color insert.

Feminists have argued that the association made between teenage childbearing and long-term lower socioeconomic status hides a multitude of socially constructed inequalities. I extend this position by analyzing how the association is linked in the South African literature on teenage pregnancy to economic security. I utilize Foucault's conceptualization of the method of security. Security refers to institutions and practices that defend and maintain a national population as well as secure the economic, demographic, and social processes of that population. I analyze (...) how the traits of the method of security are deployed with regard to teenage pregnancy; how reproductive adolescents are viewed as disrupting the production of the economic self and fracturing population control, thereby threatening economic security; and how the invocation of economic security allows for the legitimation of various regulatory practices. (shrink)