Teen Pregnancy and Parenting

Rethinking the Myths and Misperceptions

Keri Weed, Jody S Nicholson, Jaelyn R. Farris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781136161032
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery
• Index: Psychology

Whether glamorised or stigmatised, teenage parenthood is all too often used to stand for a host of social problems, and empirical research results ignored. Identifying core controversies surrounding teen pregnancy and parenting, this book resolves misperceptions using findings from large-scale, longitudinal, and qualitative research studies from the US and other Western countries.

Summarising the evidence and integrating it with a systems perspective, the authors explore ten prevalent myths about teenage parents, including:

• Teen pregnancy is associated with other behavior problems.
• Children of teen parents will experience cognitive delay, adjustment problems, and will themselves become teen parents.
• Better outcomes are achieved when teen mothers live with their own mothers.
• Teen pregnancy costs tax payers lots of money.
• Abstinence education is the best way to prevent teen pregnancy.

Teen Pregnancy and Parenting ends by highlighting the prevention and intervention implications for families, practitioners, and policymakers. It will be of interest to academics and advanced students from a range of disciplines and professions including psychology, public policy, nursing, social work and sociology.

1 A systems perspective on myths and misperceptions

DOI: 10.4324/9780203079607-1

With few exceptions, media stories, professional discourse, and advocacy organizations portray teen mothers as irresponsible and inept parents whose lives are forever derailed by parenting.

(SmithBattle, 2013, p. 1)

Controversy exists in both the scientific and popular literature about traits and characteristics possessed by young parents. News articles have portrayed teen parents as selfish, apathetic, and immoral (Bales and O’Neil, 2008), and as welfare dependent and coming from troubled backgrounds (Kelly, 1996). Service providers, the media, and researchers (Breheny & Stephens, 2007a; 2007b) further ascribe traits and characteristics to pregnant and parenting teens that constrain their future potential and the potential of their children. In contrast, popular culture often counters these negative perceptions and depicts teen parents as motivated and resourceful (Murphy, 2012).

In addition to controversy over personal characteristics possessed by teen parents, causes of teen parenthood have also been disputed. News media often imply that teen pregnancies result from poor choices made by teens without consideration of broader social issues that may contribute to early pregnancy (Bales and O’Neil, 2008). Advocacy groups may further reinforce the placing of responsibility for teen pregnancy and its consequences on the teens themselves by decontextualizing informative statistics in their fact sheets and brochures. For example, a recent brochure published by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy stated, “38% of teen girls who have a child before age 18 get a high school diploma by age 22” (Ng and Kaye, 2012). This pronouncement implies that dropping out of school is caused by teen parenthood. Poverty, academic struggles, family instability, and other contextual factors that preceded childbearing are glossed over as contributors to school leaving. Focusing blame on inadequacies in the characters of teen parents diverts attention from the multiple social and cultural contexts that propel teens towards a path of early childbearing (SmithBattle, 2013).

Stereotyped perceptions of pregnant and parenting teens are not limited to media stories and professional discourse. The pervasiveness of negative stereotypes extends to the general public. Our recent survey of undergraduates from two public universities in the southeastern United States, some of whom are contemporaries of teen parents, confirmed that many college students, most under the age of 25, held cold and unfavorable feelings about pregnant and parenting teens. These cold and unfavorable feelings were associated with disparaging attitudes about competencies of teen parents and their children (Weed, Nicholson, and Richter, 2013).

Stereotyped perceptions and misperceptions may lead to more generalized beliefs about the causes and consequences of teen pregnancy and parenting. To the extent that these beliefs are shared among people within a culture they become cultural myths. Cultural myths are widely held beliefs that are assumed by many to be true. However, they are unfounded, as they have not been subjected to rigorous scrutiny to determine whether they are based on an objective reality in contrast to their socially constructed meaning.

Through our first-hand experience with teen mothers, and extensive reviews of scholarly and popular literature, we identified ten cultural myths surrounding teen pregnancy and parenting that we have listed in Table 1.1. These cultural myths address the causes and consequences of teen pregnancy for the teens themselves, their children, and society more generally. We do not claim that these are the only cultural myths, or even the most important. Rather, these are cultural myths that have produced considerable discourse and debate in both the popular and scholarly spheres. After carefully subjecting each of these ten cultural myths to rigorous scrutiny, we concluded that many are based on misperceptions with little basis in reality. Some aspects of several myths did stand up to empirical analysis, suggesting that common beliefs may be founded, in part, on the reality of teen pregnancy and parenting. Our overarching goal was not to simply discredit the cultural myths, but rather to reframe each to more closely align with the lived experience of pregnant and parenting teens.

Cultural myths about teen parents have been shaped by multiple, interacting messages accumulated over many years. Although some messages may be consistent with reality, other messages have been exaggerated, or even falsified, perhaps to serve a regulatory function for society. Our purpose in writing this book is to critically evaluate evidence surrounding each of these ten cultural myths to disentangle misperceptions from the reality of teen pregnancy and parenting. Our goal is not to dismiss the idea that teen childbearing should be avoided, but rather to provide a more informed and accurate perspective on issues surrounding teen pregnancy and parenting. Only by separating the misperceptions from the realities will we be able to craft policies and programs that adequately address the underlying causes of teen childbearing and provide appropriate supports for young people who embark on this nonnormative pathway.

In the chapters that follow, we analyze both the process of social construction that frames teen pregnancy and parenting as problematic (Duncan, 2007; Macleod, 2011), and the reality of early childbearing as observed through the lens of scientific methodology. We agree with the following observation that:

It is also possible to point to the ways in which teenage pregnancy has been constructed as a problem while, at the same time, recognizing that it might be a problem but one distorted in everyday representations and magnified out of proportion. Just because something can be seen to be socially constructed as a problem, it does not necessarily mean it does not exist as a problem or cannot be problematic.

(Arai, 2009a, p. 111)

We believe the crux of the problem, and the key to the solution, lies squarely within the interplay between the social construction of teen parenting as problematic and the actual challenges entailed in teen pregnancy. The social construction of teen parenting as problematic perpetuates negative stereotypes and focuses blame on the young people themselves. This negative social construction, in turn, may become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it contributes to additional challenges and consequences for teen parents and their children. A first step towards improving outcomes may be to replace the problematic social construction with one that acknowledges the multiple, interactive contextual forces that lead to teen pregnancy and parenting. Extricating misperceptions from realities requires the consideration of the contextual elements that may be impacting teens on multiple levels. Therefore, we have chosen a systems perspective to approach our discussion of the cultural myths and misperceptions surrounding teen pregnancy and parenting.

We begin by describing the basic assumptions of general systems theory, and then apply one example of a systems perspective, Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, 1994), to a hypothetical illustration of two teen parents. Bronfenbrenner’s theory provides a framework to organize the multiple contextual factors that collectively impact teen pregnancy and parenthood. The developmental status of teens is an important core component of this systems approach, and we provide a brief overview of changes occurring during this time of life. Following our application of a systems perspective to help explain the contexts of teen pregnancy, we recycle general systems theory as a tool that helps explain the construction of teen pregnancy and parenting as a social problem. Within this systems framework, we summarize potential functions of cultural myths and suggest processes that maintain them despite evidence to the contrary. We end this chapter by explaining the importance of rethinking cultural myths and misperceptions to provide better support for teen parents and their children, with consequences extending to society more generally.

Table 1.1 Ten myths about teen pregnancy and parenting

Cultural myths	Chapter
Providing media visibility of pregnant or parenting teens will encourage others to become pregnant.	3
Most pregnant teens have behavior problems.	4
All teen pregnancies are unintended and unwanted.	4
Parenthood derails the trajectories of the teens’ lives.	5
Teen pregnancies result in poor birth outcomes.	6
Children of teen parents will experience cognitive delay and adjustment problems, and will themselves become teen parents.	6
Abstinence education is the best way to prevent teen pregnancy.	7
Better outcomes are achieved when teen mothers live with their own mothers.	7
It is better for teens and their babies if biological parents marry.	7
Teen pregnancy costs taxpayers lots of money.	8

Teen pregnancy and parenting in context: a systems perspective

The word system invokes many different images. One may picture physiological systems, weather systems, hydraulic systems, or ecological systems. What these disparate constructs share is a set of interrelated elements that work together to achieve a specific outcome. Although the outcome of a weather system (e.g., a hurricane) may be entirely different from the outcome of a hydraulic system (e.g., deceleration in a vehicle), each outcome only occurs as a result of multiple, interacting elements, each with its own set of properties. The hurricane or deceleration that results from the complex interactive processes of these systems shares few properties with the elements that combined to produce it. A hurricane would not be predicted by examining the isolated characteristics of either warm water or moist warm air, two elements essential to the emergence of a hurricane. Neither element in isolation has much direct impact on the formation of a hurricane; it is only when the two elements interact in a specific manner that a hurricane is created. Therefore, the outcome of any system is conceptualized as an emergent property of elements as they interact. Perhaps Aristotle said it best: “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Societal, family, and individual factors, if considered separately, provide an incomplete and distorted explanation of why teens become parents and how best to prevent or delay teen pregnancies. Despite the value of applying a systems perspective, teen pregnancy and parenting has seldom been examined from a holistic perspective (see Jurich and Myers-Bowman, 1998, and Pedrosa, Pires, Carvalho, Canavarro, and Dattilio, 2011, for exceptions). As an example of how a systems approach may provide a more complete perspective on teen pregnancy, we begin with a hypothetical story of two teen parents, Claire and Jeremy, as viewed through the lens of bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, 1994). Their story sheds light on how multiple interacting elements in the lives of any young person may interact to lead to teen pregnancy and parenting, but each provides incomplete information if viewed independently. This conceptualization contrasts sharply from a more traditional, mechanistic perspective that considers teen pregnancy and parenting as a result of character flaws or poor decision-making of individual teens.

Claire was the 14-year-old daughter of a fundamentalist pastor who became pregnant by the 15-year-old “boy next door.” Claire and Jeremy were forced by their families into an early marriage so their child would not be born “out-of-wedlock,” and Claire moved in with Jeremy’s family. It wasn’t long before their endearing puppy love turned into frustration and anger, followed by a chilling indifference. Claire’s vibrant, outgoing, gentle spirit gradually transformed into one of hostility and bitterness, while Jeremy became increasingly withdrawn from both Claire and the baby. The couple tried to do the best they could for their baby as their marriage crumbled. Their newborn baby was pulled between his teen mom and grandma. Although Jeremy’s mother was only trying to help, Claire often felt as though she was not given the chance to be the mother she knew she could be. As relationships with both Jeremy and his mother became increasingly strained, Claire went to live on her own when she turned 18. She took the baby, filed for divorce, and left broken hearts and a broken home behind.

Bioecological systems theory

The curious reader may be interested in the backgrounds of Claire and Jeremy that contributed to their youthful parenthood. Bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, 1994) is a framework that organizes nested causal forces into a series of concentric rings that surround a person. Rings closest to the individual represent proximal or direct influences while rings further away include more distal or indirect influences. The impact of elements with any of the systems may be both individualistic and synergistic. An individualistic impact occurs when a functional relationship can be identified between any individual element and a specific outcome. For example, accessibility of effective contraception may be related to fewer teen births. Consistent with systems thinking, however, most outcomes result from the synergistic combination of elements. In other words, rates of teen births are seldom attributed to any one factor that acts alone. Accessible contraception may not have much impact if teens lack knowledge about its use or avoid its use due to self-perceptions inconsistent with sexual activity. As this simple example shows, accessibility of contraception interacts synergistically with knowledge and personal beliefs to impact use. This interactive effect may occur within or between any of the nested levels.

The broadest, outermost ring of Bronfenbrenner’s model is called the macrosystem and includes social and gender norms, cultural expectations, and political and economic trends. Simply put, the macrosystem describes the overarching beliefs and ideals of society. Many aspects of the macrosystem have implications for understanding teen pregnancy and parenting. For example, many cultures hold implicit assumptions that young people will at some point in their lives marry and have children, typically in that order. Fertility-timing norms are basic cultural expectations that dictate appropriate ages to begin childbearing that will lead to economic and reproductive success (Geronimus, 2003). Deviation from these social and cultural norms is expected to lead to adverse outcomes, and implies, at best, an attitude of unconventionality and, at worst, lack of adherence to moral standards.

The macrosystem surrounding Claire and Jeremy contained some elements that suppressed the likelihood of a teen pregnancy, but other elements that fostered early pregnancy. Although cultural norms for the sequence and timing of role transitions are changing (Billari and Liefbroer, 2010), Claire and Jeremy were both raised with beliefs that marriage should precede pregnancy and that couples should wait until well into ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A systems perspective on myths and misperceptions
• 2 Myths and misperceptions from research
• 3 Myths and misperceptions from popular culture
• 4 Myths and misperceptions about teen pregnancy
• 5 Myths and misperceptions about teen parents
• 6 Myths and misperceptions about children of teen parents
• 7 Myths and misperceptions related to public policy
• 8 Rethinking cultural myths
• Appendix: Select studies used to investigate teen pregnancy and parenting
• References
• Index