Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager
A thought provoking new collection has just been launched entitled 'Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager' edited by Dr. Majella McSharry (School of Human Development) and Dr. Annelies Kamp (University of Canterbury, NZ and formerly DCU) pictured above with contributing authors Dr. Ciara Bradley (Maynooth University) and Ms. Áine Ryan DCU graduate (MA in Film and Television Studies, School of Communications, under the supervision of Dr. Debbie Ging).
The text presents original contributions from leading commentators in four key contexts: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Aotearoa New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, all sites of elevated incidence of and/or concern around what is commonly articulated as the ‘problem’ of teenage pregnancy and parenting. This collection disrupts easy assumptions of teenage pregnancy and parenting as ‘problem’. It takes up Luttrell’s (2003) question of what might be possible if one could turn questions of ‘judgement’ about teenage parents into questions of interest about their sense of self and identity-making; into explorations of the ways they assemble and re/assemble themselves at one and the same time as they are pre-assembled by others; into considerations of what support really looks like when the pregnant and parenting teenager considers themselves as a lifelong learner.
The phrase ‘teenage parent’ has come to be invested with symbolic power through the gathering of dominant (deficit) discourses, stereotypical thinking, societal concerns of child welfare, economic debates on the sustainability of social protection systems, an undervaluing of domestic labour, risk thinking and ignorance of the lifeworld of the individual. This book is bold and frank in calling for a paradigm shift. It offers a re/assemblage of what is, can be and perhaps should be known about teenage pregnancy and parenting in the context of the twenty-first century. In offering a multi-disciplinary reading of the narratives of young men and women, the volume engages with the ambiguity shared by all of us in confronting the lift transition that is pregnancy and parenting.
The collection is available to purchase through Peter Lang Publishers and each chapter is also available to download via open access. https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/78040