Posted on 12/02/2010 at 11:44 by Dr Jan Macvarish
The notion that Britain is suffering an ‘epidemic’ of teenage pregnancy has become commonplace over the past 12 years.
Teenage mothers are talked about by the Conservatives as evidence of ‘Broken Britain’, as when David Cameron wrongly identified Baby P’s mother as a ‘teenage mother’.
New Labour tends to present them as unfortunate victims of sexual ignorance, community or parental dysfunction or individual low self-esteem.
But all sides agree that young parents are a social problem, that they are a growing problem and that ‘something must be done’.
This version of teenage parenthood and the policy priorities it has produced is increasingly being challenged by academic researchers, who are trying to understand why young parents are under the spotlight: even though the number of teenage parents has fallen dramatically fallen since the 1970s, and has remained at relatively stable levels.
The disproportionate political attention given to teenage parenthood has produced a number of profoundly unhelpful outcomes for young parents.
Despite a lack of evidence, it has allowed forceful predictions of failure to shape popular perceptions of the outcomes of teenage parenthood, stigmatising both young parents and their children.
By increasingly blaming teenage pregnancy on the ‘parenting deficit’ of the parents of young mothers, it denies the genuine concern that many parents feel about their teenage daughters’ life options and casts as ‘toxic’ the very families that will usually provide intense love and support for the teenage parents and the new grandchild.
Rather than respecting young people who have chosen to grow up through parenthood, they are treated as dysfunctional, destined to fail and in need of ‘special treatment’ that is far more intrusive than most new parents would accept.
The political focus on teenage pregnancy has encouraged the view that poverty and inequality can be explained away by individual lifestyle choices, such as the age which people become parents, and has made it acceptable once again to blame those at the bottom of society for their lot.
Putting teenage parenthood under the spotlight does not just have consequences for teenage parents.
It is part of a destructive culture in which parents of all types feel either scrutinised by, or judgemental of, others.
We have come to rely on immediate impressions of particular ‘signifiers’ to determine whether or not someone is a good parent – is that child eating too many sweets? Why does that toddler still have a dummy? Is that mother using an overly harsh tone of voice or even worse, about to smack her child?
Although teenage parents report feeling particularly exposed to public judgement while pregnant and when out and about with their babies, their rise to public prominence has coincided with an increasing amount of scrutiny being applied to a huge range of parental behaviours, not just maternal age.
Experts and ‘ordinary’ people alike now feel entitled to pass comment on a woman’s eating and drinking habits while pregnant, her decision to bottle or breast feed, her decision to work or stay at home, both parents’ choice of discipline, their degree of active support for their child’s learning, a father’s commitment to spending quality time with his children… the list goes on.
This divisive atmosphere pits parent against parent in a battle to affirm our own choices and distance ourselves from those who take the wrong path.
Ultimately, it reduces the life-affirming process of raising children to an anxious, isolating job at which we are likely to fail - if not all the time, then at least some of the time.
• Dr Jan Macvarish is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Kent. She has contributed to the book Teenage Parenting: What’s the Problem? which will be launched at the British Library on Tuesday, February 16, as part of the forthcoming conference ‘Changing Parenting Culture: Parenting and Policy’.