The Culture of Teenage Mothers (review)

Joanna Gregson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. This book is the result of four years of working as an intern with pregnant and parenting teens at a teen center in a high school setting. The experience evolved into the author's doctoral dissertation based on qualitative research exploring teen mothers' perceptions of their pregnancy and motherhood.

While pregnancy rates have been dropping in the United States for the past couple of decades, the majority of pregnant teens in the United States who continue their pregnancies choose to become parents. Life opportunities are lost when education is terminated. Children of teen parents have increased risk of poor social and health outcomes. The subculture of teenage parents is often viewed negatively and as having a high cost to society.

Many teens describe their pregnancies as "unintentional," but what the young mothers mean is that the pregnancy is a result of choosing to have sex while not choosing to use birth control. Subsequent "unintentional" pregnancies are common. Others chose not to use birth control because they saw having a baby as exciting or romantic. Additionally, the author reports that some of the pregnancies that she conducted research about were planned.

Gregson took take a strongly ethnographic approach to her work, immersing herself in her subjects' culture; her work yields some valuable insight for those of us who work with pregnant and parenting teenagers. The methods section involves extensive journaling of the researcher's experience establishing rapport and trust with staff and the teens. There was not a clear outline of data analysis processes. A hermeneutical description of the learning process would have been valuable to the reader.

Review of relevant literature and research is cleverly woven into the story of the author's lived experience of working with this population. The majority of the literature cited is more than 10 years old, reflecting a dissertation conducted in the mid-nineties. Topics such as choices leading to the pregnancy, decisions whether to parent or adopt, entering a teen parenting culture, their perceptions of the baby's father, stigma, and personal transcendence lead the reader through themes discovered. The author found that teen mothers spend enormous effort to validate that they are making the right choices successfully moving into adulthood, even if they are doing so through often stigmatized routes.

Gregson's writing has a nice narrative flow while remaining scholarly. In-depth discussions of underlying theoretical concepts are well supported by both appropriate literature citations and quotations from the teenage mothers. The account of the complex, eclectic lives of this population is softened with a chapter on personal transcendence and actualization experienced by teenage mothers. Reflecting on their experiences of pregnancy and motherhood, these young women find themselves better off because of the experience, not in spite of it. The book ends with a scholarly summary and suggestions for policy change to better meet the needs of this unique population. The stereotypical outgrowths of teen childbearing in terms of costs to society are reframed in terms of consequences that can include personal growth, where a new identity is structured and a more mature, responsible young adult is revealed.

This book adds to the understanding of the culture of teenage mothers. The author's immersion into this culture allowed her to explore a world view that is not often seen by the professionals providing services to parenting teens. There is a thoroughness to reporting the gathering of data and the perspectives of these young parents that draws the reader into the lived experiences. Those working with this population will find articulate explanations of phenomenon seen across different ages, race, and social strata and they will have their own experiences validated.