Teenage Pregnancy, Parenting and Intergenerational Relations

259 Pages·2016·4.357 MB·English

by  Sally Brown

Teenage
Pregnancy,
PArenting and
Intergenerational
Relations
Sally
Brown
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN STUDIES
IN FAMILY AND INTIMATE LIFE
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and
Intimate Life
Series Editors
Graham Allan
Keele University, UK
Lynn Jamieson
University of Edinburgh, UK
David H.J. Morgan
University of Manchester, UK
Th e Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life series is
impressive and contemporary in its themes and approaches’ - Professor
Deborah Chambers, Newcastle University, UK, and author of New
Social Ties.
Th e remit of the Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate
Life series is to publish major texts, monographs and edited collections
focusing broadly on the sociological exploration of intimate relation-
ships and family organization. Th e series covers a wide range of topics
such as partnership, marriage, parenting, domestic arrangements, kin-
ship, demographic change, intergenerational ties, life course transitions,
step-families, gay and lesbian relationships, lone-parent households, and
also non-familial intimate relationships such as friendships and includes
works by leading fi gures in the fi eld, in the UK and internationally, and
aims to contribute to continue publishing infl uential and prize-winning
research.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14676
Sally   B rown
Teenage Pregnancy,
Parenting and
Intergenerational
Relations
Sally   Brown
Freelance researcher
United Kingdom
Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life
ISBN 978-1-137-49538-9 ISBN 978-1-137-49539-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49539-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937333
© Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016
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Acknowledgements
Th e research that led to this book was made possible by a grant from the
British Academy through their Small Grants scheme (BA Small Grant
SG110141), and I am very grateful for that funding for enabling me to
spend time, mostly during 2012, carrying out fi eldwork. I should also
like to thank everyone who took part in the interviews and focus groups
for the study; the young parents, their partners and parents, and the
members of staff , mostly in local authorities, who work with the young
people. In particular, I should like to thank the youth workers in local
authorities who agreed to take part and who helped to facilitate contacts
with young people, and all at a time when they were going through reor-
ganisations and restructuring of local government.
Th anks also to members of my study advisory group, Simon Forrest,
Kate Guthrie, Sue Lewis, Jane McNaughton and Gail Teasdale.
Earlier versions of some sections of the book have been presented at
a number of conferences: the British Sociological Association, the BSA
Medical Sociology Group, the European Society for Health and Medical
Sociology, and the International Qualitative Health Research conference.
I was also asked to present fi ndings at seminars at the Universities of
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Central Lancashire, Leeds and Teesside. I am very
grateful to friends and colleagues at those conferences and seminars who
made insightful comments and asked questions that have undoubtedly
helped me develop my thinking.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Although writing a book is a fairly solitary aff air, I have been encouraged
and supported by friends and colleagues, including my old ERDU col-
leagues Greg Rubin, Nicky Hall, Christina Dobson, Ingrid Ablett-Spence
and Jackie Pankhurst, friends at Trevelyan College, Durham, especially
Jon Warren, and many friends in the Medical Sociology world. Particular
thanks go to Nicky Hall, Anna Tarrant, Ken Wallis and Margaret Wallis
for reading and commenting on various sections and chapters. I should
also like to thank Denis and Elizabeth Graves of Mocha in Richmond for
the chocolate that has fuelled much of the writing.
I am very grateful to Professor David Morgan for his advice and
encouragement during the writing and editing of the book. I am in no
doubt that it is a better book for his support.
F inally, I thank my wonderful daughter Anna Feintuck, an inspira-
tion herself, for her encouragement and unfailing support. I dedicate this
book to her.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 ‘Th ey’re Not Th is Kind of Th ing Th at You Th ink Th ey Are’:
Patterns, Trends and Policy 7
3 ‘It Feels Like It’s a Cultural Th ing in Th is Area’:
Th e Study in Context 37
4 ‘I was Scared but I was Happy’:
Getting Pregnant as a Teenager 63
5 ‘I wouldn’t Swap It for the World’: Being a Young Parent 93
6 ‘It’s Bringing New Life in’: Th e Baby and the Wider Family 123
7 ‘Th ere’s a Pattern Going on Th ere’: Local Contexts of 
Teenage Parenting 157
vii
viii Contents
8 ‘It’s Mad How Much You Grow up’: Th e Future for
Young Parents and Th eir Children 187
9 ‘My Mum is a Young Mum and She’s Done Fine’:
Conclusions 211
Index 237
Editor’s In troduction

S ociological enquiry frequently addresses the contrast between public
perceptions and defi nitions of ‘problems’ and the way in which such
problems are understood and experienced by the participants themselves.
Studies of family and intimate life have provided several examples of this
contrast and, in this present study, Sally Brown explores one of these:
teenage pregnancy and parenting.
In terms of public perception and discussion, what is the nature of the
‘problem’ here? Th is study reminds us that it is no longer a question of
the marital status of the mother that is at issue. It is, rather, a question
of the youthfulness of the parents. Sally Brown presents the numerous
concerns that converge in order to show how t eenage motherhood has
emerged as a problem in recent decades. It is bound up, she demon-
strates, with issues of poverty and welfare and with understandings of
cycles of disadvantage. But perhaps, at a deeper level, we are dealing with
disruptions of normative temporal sequences. ‘To every thing there is a
season … A time to be born and a time to die …’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Th e author uses her sociological skills to present the construction of
this particular problem in historical and comparative context. But her
main concern, and the strength of this study, lies in the way in which she
gets close to the stories of the women, and men, who are the focus of,
but some distance from, these public debates. Th ese stories are not ‘bleak
and depressing’. Th ese young mothers are aware of the public stigma but
ix