School of Psychology, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Cult Health Sex. 2010 Apr;12(3):307-22. doi: 10.1080/13691050903513234.
Teenage motherhood is routinely discussed in medical and nursing journals as a cause for concern and a social problem. Taking these accounts as a starting point, this paper uses discursive analysis to understand how the teenage mother is produced as an unsuitable mother. Beginning with a 'Public Health' discourse, early motherhood is understood as a disease requiring surveillance and a public health response. Using an 'Economic' discourse, teenage mothers are positioned as a financial drain on society and early motherhood as a cost to the mothers themselves. An 'Ethnicity' discourse classifies young mothers into ethnic groups and explains differential fertility rates through the resistance of appropriate reproductive technology among minority group members. These understandings are reflected in a 'Eugenics' discourse, which engages metaphors of parenting as a biological priority and highlights the unsuitability of young mothers as parents. An examination of these discourses shows that concern about teenage motherhood is as much about the wrong sort of young women becoming mothers, as mothering too soon.
少女怀孕在医学和护理期刊中经常被讨论，被视为一个令人担忧的问题和社会问题。本文从这些报道出发，运用话语分析来理解少女母亲是如何被塑造为不称职母亲的。从“公共卫生”话语开始，早期怀孕被理解为一种需要监测和公共卫生应对的疾病。通过“经济”话语，少女母亲被定位为社会的经济负担，而早期怀孕则被视为对母亲自身的一种成本。“种族”话语将年轻母亲归入不同的种族群体，并通过少数群体成员对适当生殖技术的抵制来解释不同的生育率。这些理解反映在“优生学”话语中，该话语将育儿比作生物学上的首要任务，并强调年轻母亲作为父母的不适当性。对这些话语的考察表明，对少女怀孕的担忧与其说是因为年轻女性过早地成为母亲，不如说是因为她们成为了不适合的母亲。
