Unfit Subjects: Educational Policy and the Teen Mother

Unfit Subjects Educational Policy and the Teen Mother Unfit Subjects Educational Policy and the Teen Mother Wanda S. P...

Author: Wanda S. Pillow

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Unfit Subjects Educational Policy and the Teen Mother

Unfit Subjects Educational Policy and the Teen Mother

Wanda S. Pillow

ROUTLEDGEFALMER NEW YORK AND LONDON

Published in 2004 by RoutledgeFalmer 29 W 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by RoutledgeFalmer 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk Copyright © 2004 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pillow, Wanda S. Unfit subjects: educational policy and the teen mother / Wanda S. Pillow. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-94492-9 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-415-94493-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Pregnant schoolgirls--Education (Secondary)--United States. 2. Teenage mothers--Education (Secondary)--United States. 3. Sex discrimination in education--Law and legislation--United States. I. Title. LB3433.P55 2004 373.1826v947--dc22 2003066854

ISBN 0-203-46560-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-47245-4 (Adobe eReader Format)

To Bonna Jean Seal Pillow

Contents

Dedication

v

Acknowledgments

xi

Preface

xiii

Introduction

1

Embodied Beginnings 1 Making Teen Pregnancy an Educational Policy Issue 4 Telling and Not Telling “Fit” Stories about Pregnant/Mothering Teens 5 Tracing Policy Talk—Performing New Policy Studies Methodology 8 Embodied Policy Analysis—Rethinking Educational Opportunity for Pregnant/Mothering Students 10 Overview of Chapters 12

1 Constructing Teen Pregnancy as a Problem

17

Social Historical Constructions of the Unwed Mother and Emergence of the Teen Mother 20 Emergence of the Teen Mother 26 Teen Mother as the “Girl Next Door” 28 The Teen Mother as the “Other” Girl 33 Governmental Legislation Regulating Teen Mothers 39 “Black Family” Discourse of the 1980s 41 Where Is Education? 45

2 Title IX and the Discursive Climate of Education for School-Age Mothers Laying a Foundation for Title IX—Tracing Key Arguments Supporting Education of Young Unwed Mothers 58

vii

55

viii • Contents Title IX and the Mandate to Provide Education for School-Age Mothers 61 Discourses of Contamination: Pregnancy as Dis(ease) 63 Early Decisions—Setting the Stage for “Separate but Equal” 64 National Honor Society Cases—Are Smart Girls Contaminated? 68 Discourses of Education as Responsibility 71 Concluding Thoughts on Contamination and Responsibility 73

3 Schooling Responses to Teen Mothers Absences, Colds, and Disabilities

79

Tracing Policy Absences at State and Local Levels: Evidence of Deliberate Ambivalence 85 Ambivalent Uses of Title IX 88 School Data Problems—Troubling Absences in Data Practices 92 Education Provision Models: Is Pregnancy like Having a Cold or Is Pregnancy a Disability? 97 Pregnancy as a Cold 98 Pregnancy as a Disability/Disease 101 Education as a Social Welfare Issue— The Impact of PRWORA & TANF on Implementation of Title IX 105

4 The Teen Mother as a Student Who Is She & What Do Schools Do with Her?

111

“Pregnancy Scares” and the White Girl on Family TV 114 The Teen Mother as Student: Who Is She? 115 Rethinking the Teen Mother as School Dropout: “Returning and Staying in School Due to My Baby” 117 Staying in School: School Engagement, Pregnancy, and Acculturation 120 Where Are Teen Mothers Served? Exposing Differential Service Patterns 122 Practices of Exclusion and Expulsion 123 Voluntary Practices? 129 What Does Comparable Look Like? 132

5 The “Dual-Role” Model of Schooling the Teen Mother This Is a Test. A Real Test 139 School-Based Programs and “Dual-Role” Training 141 The Florence Crittenton Homes Dual-Role Model 143 GRADS Dual-Roles Training 149 Defining Teen Mothers as in Need of Training in “Practical Reasoning Skills” 153 Schooling for Work 156 Training to Be a Responsible Mother 164 Paradoxes of “Practical Reasoning” and “Dual-Roles” 167

139

Contents • ix

6 Incitement to Discourse Talking about Sex in Abstinence-Only Education Movements

173

Lets Talk (about) Sex—Situating the Rise of Abstinence-Only Discourses 177 Discourses of Alarm 184 Sex Is Dirty 185 Sex Is Dangerous 191 Counter Testimony in Senate and Congressional Hearings— Mixed Messages Made Clear or Hidden 196 Discourses of Heteronormativity 200 Reassertion of Traditional Gender Roles: Women as Flowers, Men as the Necessary Tool 201 Marriage as the Solution 206 Discourses of Control—Norplant 209 Concluding Thoughts on Indictments to Discourse 211

7 Education for Teen Mothers

217

Interrupting Discourses of Contamination and Control 220 Making Teen Pregnancy a Fit Educational Equity Issue 221 Athletic Girls as Fit Subjects 223 Teen Pregnancy Spaces as Single Sex Spaces 224

Bibliography

229

Index

239

Acknowledgments

The research, conversations, and writing of Unfit Subjects took place over a series of years that have included moves, births, losses, growing pains, and many pleasures. Some things have remained constant—primarily the challenges of mothering while, to use Laurel Richardson’s phrase, “constructing an academic life.” I have watched two of my children grow up while doing the work for this book. Now as they are nearly adolescents I look at them with wonder, trepidation, and respect for their daily experiences. Watching Jeremy and Kimberlé, I also see and want to acknowledge the importance of other adults in their lives to listen, guide, and expose them to ideas and possibilities. I sincerely thank the extended family and “other mothers” in Columbus Ohio, Greensboro North Carolina, and currently Champaign/Urbana Illinois who have supported me, and now Larry and me, in our mothering and who have repeatedly been there for Jeremy and Kimberlé. Completing this project while pregnant has been a gift in disguise—my body growing and changing as the text grew and unfolded served as a fresh reminder of the physicality and emotions of pregnancy as well as the myriad of places I fit and no longer fit as a pregnant woman. Having given birth to this project, our family now anticipates the birth of our next new addition. Laurence Parker has been both partner and colleague. I could complete this work only by knowing there was another “mother” to take care of Jeremy and Kimberlé and all that that entails. He kept me nourished while working, read repeated drafts, and listened to my doubts and confidences. Muchas gracias Lorenzo. xi

xii • Acknowledgments

The research for this book began under and with the encouragement of Patti Lather who has continued to show support and interest in this “policy stuff.” This project would not have been possible without her support. My ongoing conversations and friendship with Elizabeth St. Pierre have also sustained this project. Her insightful feedback on many drafts of this text and her sense of humor have been integral to this book and my life. The impetus for a shift in my thinking and the historical focus of my work was brought about by many conversations with colleagues and students in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at UIUC. Thanks in particular to professor James Anderson for his interest in this project and allowance of timely leaves. Support by the Faculty Fellows program in the College of Education UIUC and funding by the Research Board, UIUC provided key time and funding that furthered this project. Obviously Unfit Subjects would not have been possible without the participation and openness of the school personnel and girls with whom I talked. Some of these “subjects” of my research became more than subjects and their lives and voices have been with me every step of this book. I hope Unfit Subjects helps create interest in and commitment to research that aids teen mothers’ full access to equal educational opportunities. Thank you also to Catherine Bernard who stepped in as editor and took on this project late in the process but guided it to completion. Once again, my gatita Pretinha, now twenty-one years old, kept me company during long writing days and nights, lying curled beside me when I ran out of lap space. Although slowing down, she has been hanging in there, I believe, to witness both births. Lastly, this book is dedicated to my mother, Bonna Jean Seal Pillow, who more than she realizes taught me about the status of mothering and women past and present.

Preface

If I’d never gotten pregnant, I would’ve never come back to school. I came back to school because of my baby. Title IX, passed in 1972, effective July 12, 1975, provides specific provision and language governing provision of education for school-age mothers. Title IX states: [A] recipient [of federal funding] shall not discriminate against any student, or exclude any student from its education program or activity, including any class or extracurricular activity, on the basis of such student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery therefrom, unless the student requests voluntarily to participate in a separate portion of the program. (106.40, b)

He called me into his office and he said, “I hear you are pregnant.” And I say “yeah, so what?” He says we don’t have pregnant girls in this school—how it was bad for the school’s reputation and would give other girls ideas. He told me I had to sign the slip and go to this other school—if you are pregnant and you wanna stay in school, this [the separate school] is the only choice. Furthermore, Title IX requires that admittance to any separate facility set up for teen mothers must be “completely voluntary on the part of the student (106.40, 3)” and the district must: “ensure that the instructional program is the separate program is comparable to that offered to nonpregnant students” (106.40, 3). xiii

xiv • Preface

Teen mothers don’t need academics they need to learn a skill . . . to get a job when they graduate so they won’t stay on welfare. I had to petition to return to my regular school to take the college prep classes because they don’t offer them here—they just have “slow track” classes here. So I go to my old school for my academic classes and then have to come back here for the other part of the day. Title IX also provides specific language on leave policy for school-age mothers: In the case of a recipient which does not maintain a leave policy for its students, or in the case of a student who does not otherwise qualify for leave under such a policy, a recipient shall treat pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, and recovery therefrom as a justification for a leave of absence for so long a period of time as is deemed medically necessary by the student’s physician, at the conclusion of which the student shall be reinstated to the status she held when the leave began. (106.40, 5)

After 3 absences you’re on probation—and they don’t let you count an absence for staying home with your sick kid, unless you have a doctor’s note. But if my kid has a fever he can’t go to daycare and I can’t take him to the doctor every time he has a fever; but the teachers don’t believe you they just think you’re being lazy.

Quotes from interviews with teen mothers attending school and a teen pregnancy teacher (author, 1997).

Introduction Bodies are maps of power and identity. —Donna Haraway, 1990 I watched one teen mother, who looked to be a good eight months, struggle to fit into her seat—it was one of those classic school seats where the desk is attached to the chair and unmovable. She tried sitting down by sliding in, that didn’t work. Then she tried backing into the seat but she had grown too wide to really fit. She stood by her desk—all the others girls were sitting down—and looked at the teacher; the teacher told her to sit down. She said she couldn’t fit into the chair. The teacher said as long as you are here you will fit into the chair and if you can’t fit you shouldn’t be here. The girl perched sideways on the seat, the desk pressing into her side for the next 45 minutes. I ached watching her . . . and found out later that she had 3 absences this month and if she had another she would be written-up; that’s why she stayed in the classroom. This was a classroom for teen mothers . . . and her body still didn’t fit. (Author’s field notes, 1994)

Embodied Beginnings The field notes from my qualitative research experiences in teen pregnancy classrooms in the mid-1990s are filled with stories similar to the one above. Looking over the worn and stain-ridden pages of my journal (memories of those veggie burritos I ate while writing my thoughts punctuated by notes made by my children), I reread incidences that describe how pregnant/mothering teens did not “fit” literally and figuratively into educational research, theories, policies, and practices.1 It seemed obvious to me at the time that teen mother’s bodies were key to how they fit and do not fit into schools.2 However, at that point, I was most interested in and attached to telling the educational stories of pregnant/mothering teens from their point of view, through their voices. I offered the girls’ stories to counter the prevalent stories about teen mothers constructed by “official” policy talk and policy discourse. I worked to show that many of the issues facing teen 1

2 • Unfit Subjects

mothers are the same ones faced by single parenting mothers and by lowincome single mothers, placing teen pregnancy within the larger constructs of motherhood and single parenting, and differentiating social expectations and definitions of such mothers based upon race. Paying close attention to bodies also opened many other questions and issues in my research: Why and how don’t pregnant/mothering bodies fit in school? Whose responsibility is it to “fit”? Whose responsibility is the pregnant/mothering teen—social welfare systems, community health clinics, vocational training programs, or schools? How are some pregnant/ mothering bodies constructed as more “fit,” more entitled to our help, concern, and treatment than other bodies? What type of education “fits” with the pregnant/mothering body? These questions repeatedly challenged and interrupted my research, most dramatically in terms of methodology and in terms of product. Succinctly, this is not the book I thought or expected I would write. As a qualitative researcher, with interests in questions of methodology and issues of representation, I had assumed I would write a book of data stories situated upon pregnant/mothering teens voices and experiences in schools. Although such a project is necessary and important, as such work on teen mothers is lacking,3 I remained dissatisfied with the continued attention in such a telling upon the teen mother as a unit of analysis. I think this is because working from the bodies and voices of teen mothers continually refocused my attention on the productions and gaps in existing research and knowledge: How is teen pregnancy constructed as a problem and for whom? Why is there so little focus in national policy debates and educational research on teen pregnancy as an educational policy issue? What impact has Title IX, which guarantees the rights of the pregnant/mothering student to an education equal to her peers, had on the education of teen mothers? What do we know about the educational experiences of pregnant/mothering students—where are they being served, in which schools, and how? What are the purposes of education for the pregnant/mothering teen? This book reflects the impetus of these questions, turning the lens of analysis from teen mothers as a site of investigation to a tracing and analysis of the discourses that construct who the teen mother is and what she then deserves and needs in terms of education. Such a tracing involves closely looking at what we think we know about pregnant/mothering teens and foregrounds what we believe the problem of teen pregnancy is, who teen mothers are, and thus deeply impacts how we define the educational needs of pregnant/mothering students. This book then is less about the stories of pregnant/mothering students than an analysis of the discourses surrounding pregnant/mothering teens and a specific look at how such discourses

Introduction • 3

impact and delimit educational policy and practice for the pregnant/mothering student. This emphasis foregrounds and acknowledges the effects of discourse upon policy, in this case educational policy. I use my qualitative research to provide a place from which to ask different questions about pregnant/ mothering teens and identify and complicate our understandings of teen mothers, specifically in relation to how we think about the provision of education to such girls. This is an analysis then that attempts to make explicit what is often implicit in social science and political discourse surrounding teen mothers. Such tracings involve looking at the stories constructed about teen mothers, identifying the metaphors and the highly racialized4 discourses used to define teen mothers, and through their exposure opening means for the “reconstruction of power.”5 Identifying the historical themes and discursive metaphors that define how teen pregnancy has been and is defined as a problem and examining what these definitions have meant for policy development and implementation are not simply causal analyses.6 Rather, tracing and identifying the metaphors teen pregnancy serves to “defamiliarize taken-for-granted beliefs in order to render them susceptible to critique and to illuminate present-day conflicts.”7 Further, this tracing shifts the lens of analysis from the teen mother, and a reliance upon her to explain herself in ways we can understand, to the arena of social and political discourses that construct and define the teen mother. For instance, such a tracing investigates how in social and educational policy some teen mothers are “good girls who made a mistake” while others are “Welfare Queens.” This tracing also identifies the historical and present-day racialized discourses embedded within such distinctions, without requiring teen mothers to explain and justify their lives to us. Thus while my qualitative research deeply influences the analysis in this book, I also examine public and political discourses on pregnant/mothering teens in the arenas of social science, legal policy, and popular culture. I use these data sources along with my qualitative research to provide the discursive tracing in Unfit Subjects.8 The time period on which the book focuses, 1972 to present day, is significant because it includes the passage of legislation that had a critical impact on the education of school-age mothers—Title IX. This period also saw an increase in public debate and media attention on social policy issues related to teen pregnancy: the moral challenges of female sexuality, including contraception availability, abortion, unwed motherhood; the decline of “family values” in the United States; the “Black family crisis”; and welfare reform. As writing is an act of inquiry in which constructing our work we come to know more than we knew before and learn to ask “better” questions, I


have also faced the gaps in my own research—wishing I had collected more discrete data on curriculum offerings and course schedules at separate schools for pregnant/mothering students, remembering stories about homebound schooling that at the time did not jump out at me, recalling practices of involuntary placement that were not my focus at the time.9 These gaps I hope are instructive for future research. My many years of living with teen pregnancy as a site of research have also uncovered several converging interests that have come about only due to my research experiences. These interests overlap in each chapter; some are more obvious, while others operate behind the scenes, yet each has helped shape Unfit Subjects. I introduce these interests here to provide a context for the chapters that follow. They include: • Situating teen pregnancy as an educational policy issue • Exploring the work of representation in qualitative research and policy analysis • Performing new policy studies methodology—feminist genealogy—a historical and present-day discourse analysis that foregrounds constructions and experiences of racialized bodies • Offering a foundation for further research to examine what equal educational opportunity looks like for pregnant/mothering students, opportunities that are not about making teen mothers fit, but about making schools fit for pregnant/mothering students.

Making Teen Pregnancy an Educational Policy Issue— Challenging Educational Silences While teen pregnancy has been understood as having implications for education, teen pregnancy has not been situated as an educational policy issue. Despite the amount of attention teen pregnancy receives, educational research is scarce, school data on teen mothers is often absent or out of date, teen pregnancy is repeatedly situated as a psychological, health, or social welfare issue not as an educational issue, and educational policy researchers have had little voice or impact on national and state level policies affecting teen mothers. Examining these lapses is key to this project. Although teen pregnancy would seem to be an educational policy issue, education has situated itself as a “low profile” service provider, implementing policy instead of taking a lead in developing educational policy for pregnant/mothering teens.10 This may be because schools and school personnel are themselves conflicted over whether teen pregnancy is really a school issue or a social issue, a moral issue, a family issue, a women’s issue, a local issue, a government issue, or a welfare issue. While public education

Introduction • 5

has been given the mandate to educate pregnant/mothering teens, there is much debate over how to do this, where to provide such an education, and what type of education pregnant/mothering teens need or deserve. When faced with the pregnant/mother student, the question: Do pregnant/mothering teens “fit” in regular public schools? remains in the fore of educator’s minds.11 Whether or not educators think teen mothers are fit educational subjects, Title IX, passed in 1972, guarantees the right of pregnant/mothering teens to an education equal to her peers and specifies that practices of separation and exclusion are illegal. Despite this explicit protection of access to an education under Title IX, there is evidence, as this book will reiterate, that discriminatory school practices continue. Yet, at present there is no case law challenging such practices or determining implementation guidelines for the education of pregnant/mothering students under Title IX. The lack of case law is linked with societal attitudes and educator’s ambivalence toward the education of teen mothers. For instance, the lack of data available from schools on the teen mother makes it difficult to determine the school experiences of pregnant/mothering teens and limits questions of school accountability under Title IX. Despite the lack of educational research and input on teen pregnancy, school personnel are involved in making daily decisions that impact the educational lives of pregnant/mothering teens. Understanding why education has been absent in national policy discussions, how schools track pregnant/mothering students, and how school personnel make decisions about the educational needs of pregnant/mothering students is integral to situating teen pregnancy as an educational policy issue.

Telling and Not Telling “Fit” Stories about Pregnant/Mothering Teens What is a representative story of a teen mother? One of the main challenges I have faced as a researcher of teen pregnancy is how to discuss and represent an already overrepresented, hypervisible subject like the teen mother? Paradoxically it is the hypervisibility of the teen mother in social welfare debates and diagnoses of sexual immorality in the United States that reproduces stereotypical knowledge about teen mothers and masks potential other knowings. Hypervisibility not only masks the gaps in our knowledge about teen mothers but also reproduces such gaps, structuring what is intelligible about the subject. How do we tell stories that do not easily fit into existing, hypervisible, narrative structures? Would telling “unfit” stories of teen mothers work? How are our stories as qualitative


researchers reproduced? What was the impact of my representations particularly in relation to educational policy and practice? Talking and thinking with others who were also questioning what it means to do qualitative research within the posts of our times (e.g. poststructuralism; post-feminism; critical race theory; queer theory), I was further challenged to rethink the role of qualitative research and ethnography in educational policy research. While working against structuring stories of teen mothers as feminist victim (teen mother as victim of her circumstances) or feminist victory (teen mother who overcame against all odds), I continued to meet the limits of my data stories. For instance, I had hoped that telling the educational stories of teen mothers through teen girls’ voices, from their experiences, would disrupt simplistic and hegemonic constructions and understandings of the teen mother. However, I also began to experience the effects of the sureness of existing discourses surrounding teen mothers. I found that whether I was speaking to an audience of academics or practitioners, my stories remained easily organized into one of several discursive ideological structures: teen mother as good girl who made a mistake; teen mother as bad girl who later overcame her deficient background to succeed; teen mother as resistant—girls who just know too much; and the teen mother to be pitied because she is beyond the realm of help from society and the school. These ideological narrative themes continue to ignore and silence the centrality of race, gender, sexuality, and class to the experiences of teen mothers, except when these “identities” fit into cultural explanations as causal factors for teen pregnancy. Further, these narrative themes continue to emphasize the pregnant/mothering teen as the problem, always keeping her as the target of analysis and ignoring social and structural inequities that construct teen pregnancy as problematic. Overexposure to information and images about pregnant/mothering teens, combined with the lack of information about pregnant/mothering teens, led listeners to want to hear overexposed stories, the tragic and epidemic stories, about teen mothers, and to rely upon such tellings in order to be comfortable. Perhaps this is because what is at stake in debates about who the teen mother is and what the problems of teen pregnancy are is a reinstitution of control over female sexuality and the reminder that women are ultimately responsible for not only their own sexual purity but societal sexual morality as well. A presentation about pregnant/mothering teens in school then can easily collapse into heated discussions and polarized debates about family structure and dysfunction, sex education versus abstinence education, birth control, abortion, social welfare, and national morality. These debates often then lead to questions such as: Do teen mothers even belong in school? Are schools responsible for teen mothers? If so, to what extent? Furthermore these debates

Introduction • 7

contain barely coded racialized constructions of the teen mother and the problems of teen pregnancy, with the teen mother variously but consistently described as “poor,”“urban,” from a “single-parent family,” who “grew up dependent upon welfare,” with “no moral guidance,” and “culturally deficit.” The racialized discourses constructing teen mothers make possible further representations of the unwed teen mother as deficient and allow the development of social and educational policy based on the racial formation of teen mothers in these discourses. I repeatedly faced situations where the girls I interviewed were constructed as outliers because their lives were not tragic enough or did not fit with existing assumptions about who teen mothers were. I attended meetings where the discussion of education for teen mothers collapsed into mourning the loss of “traditional family values.” I continually faced the limits and reproductions of my stories. These experiences forced me to broaden my scope; to turn my lens of analysis away from the teen mother herself and toward the discourses that construct and represent her. Exploring metaphors like “working the ruins,” I attempt to think about what it means to do our work in “troubling” times, to foreground power/knowledge relationships, and to acknowledge that questions of what to do when our representations “fail,” often lead to an unleashing of other forms of questions and knowledge.12 As Deborah Britzman asks and challenges: “[What] can our ethnographies not bear to know?” What is both intelligible and unintelligible to our constructed narratives? And specifically in the case of Unfit Subjects, what is intelligible and unintelligible in the policy arena? Such questioning is not a retreat from telling stories, but attention to qualitative research or ethnography as a “site of doubt.”13 This site of doubt need not operate as a form of poststructural paralysis or a retreat from action, from, for example Daphne Patai’s admonishment, “to get on with our work.”14 Rather it is an acknowledgment of the discursive workings of power present when attempting to discuss and represent the already overexposed and hypervisible subject, in this case the pregnant/mothering teen. In this way, ethnography is resituated as Britzman suggests to: Trace how power circulates and surprises, theorize how subjects spring from the discourses that incite them, and question the belief in representation even as one must practice representation as a way to intervene critically in the constitutive constraints of discourses.15

Here then the stories of teen girls are woven within analyses of the discourses, the power/knowledge discursive structures, surrounding and constructing teen pregnancy. The voices and narratives of the teen girls I have worked, as Ruth Linden notes of her subjects, with “permeate my life” and


while their narratives are not the only focus of this text they always inform its analysis.16

Tracing Policy Talk—Performing New Policy Studies Methodology Unfit Subjects seeks to identify where the discourses about teen pregnancy are being formed, how they work, and what educational opportunities these discourses open up or delimit for teen mothers. This line of questioning focuses attention on who gets to name and define political needs, how this process affects the types of policy developed, and how such definitions are localized in the interpretation and provision of services.17 These questions and emphases require a rethinking of policy studies methodology.18 In addition to my own research, I am fortunate that I can draw upon an important body of work providing social histories of the unwed mother and of social policy in the United States to establish a foundation for my analysis.19 These works foreground the gendered, racialized, and ideological constructs through which unwed mothering has been defined. They also help identify the ways in which policy discussions and outcomes are influenced by the varying discursive locations of the problems of unwed mothers and the pregnant teen, and how whose bodies in which the problem of teen pregnancy is located, lead to very different policy discussions and outcomes. This work provides the evidence and impetus to trace the development of policy at the macro- and micro-levels, from legislative policy and executive decisions, to specific program development and local implementation. Further, this focus identifies the interconnections between historical macro discourses surrounding, teen pregnancy, and policy development and implementation at the macro and micro level. It also examines the assumptive discourses present at all levels and questions what these discourses mean for the provision of education to teen mothers. In conjunction with the above feminist social welfare histories, I use Michel Foucault’s examples of historical, discursive tracings of state interests performed through power and bodies, and my own refiguration of his methods through what I term a feminist genealogy, to trace not only what is said about teen mothers, but how teen mothers are said and what this means for development and implementation of educational policy affecting school-age mothers.20 Genealogy as a form of analysis interrupts simple reversal strategies of displacement. As Kathy Ferguson states, “genealogical reversals do not restabilize cause/effect relations in the opposite direction so much as they unsettle any effort to conceptualize singular or linear relations between events and practices.”21 Instead of a search for

Introduction • 9

order, genealogy exposes how what is taken for order is characterized by “flux and discord.”22 Genealogy is useful to the policy analyst as it incessantly questions the conditions under which policy is produced. This is not to say that I understand policy as a one way arrangement or that somehow social and educational policies singly define for the teen mother who she is and how she should be. Rather, this study emphasizes that educational policy does not develop in a vacuum, but is affected by beliefs, values, and attitudes, situated in discourses, which in turn affect school policy by creating or limiting educational policy options. Genealogical tracings acknowledge “that there are serious political implications in many of the everyday decisions individuals make” and that such analyses offer “a framework for acting as intersectional agents within various institutional settings” providing “grounds for creative and unconventional forms of political organizing and struggle.”23 Feminist genealogy is immersed in the work of feminist and race theorists leading to a commitment to conduct analysis in such a way that the “agency” of teen parents, while troubled, is not silenced. Thus the analysis utilized in this research is not simply resistant but is meticulous in its search for the discursive strategies of power as they are camouflaged in the assumptive discourses and practices of policy theory, implementation, and evaluation. Furthermore genealogical analysis, including feminist genealogy, traces not only presences in policy discourse and practice, but also absences. This analysis acknowledges that “policy is as much constructed by denials of needs as by meeting them.”24 Identifying absences and gaps, however, is not to simply proclaim what has been silenced or unsaid as the right knowledge, the true discourse. It is not feminist victory stories of silences that are revealed in Unfit Subjects. Instead, tracing the constructions of absences reveals a proliferative relationship between what is produced and what is absent in discourses constructing teen mothers and teen pregnancy as a social problem. That is what is said and what is unsaid in debates about teen pregnancy produce each other in binary relationships and as Stephen Ball points out such dualisms are never neutral but are “always both oppositional and hierarchical.”25 Understanding the proliferative relationship between binary discourses is key to tracing racialized discourses locating teen pregnancy. For instance, the status of mothering, unwed mothering, and women’s sexuality has been and remains linked with racialized constructions of who is a good woman, who is a good mother, who is worthy of pity, or who is deserving of scorn. While these binary discourses may be recognizable—good mother versus bad mother—what has not been explored is how these binaries are dependent upon and proliferative of each other. In the case of


unwed teen mothers for example, constructions of black female sexuality as deviant and black unwed mothers as deficient are necessary to locate and allow punitive ideological constructions of and policy responses to such mothers as well as to affirm historical constructions of the problems of white teen mothers as recoverable errors in judgment or errors related to their social situation and thus treatable and fixable.26 Exposing the proliferative relationships between racialized discourses constructing teen pregnancy begins an unraveling of the power relationships embedded within teen pregnancy discourses. In this way, “genealogy as critique reveals the contingency, even arbitrariness, of what appears natural and necessary, and thereby it serves to open possibilities.”27

Embodied Policy Analysis—Rethinking Educational Opportunity for Pregnant/Mothering Students Feminist genealogy emphasizes that the formation of policies are about regulating, reproducing, and surveilling certain bodies, in this case pregnant/mothering teen bodies. The body of the teen girl, the sexually active, pregnant teen girl—and its constructions literally, metaphorically, and narratively—are key to the development of educational policy and practice for teen mothers. Bodies—how we talk about them, proliferate them, racialize, exoticize, and seek to control and contain them are key to the analysis in this text. Bodies cannot be ignored. Here an analysis of teen pregnancy is a story of the hypervisible gendered, sexualized, and racialized body, the body that does not fit, literally and figuratively, into social, legal, and educational policy. The pregnant teen body challenges ideologies and morals surrounding female sexuality, heightens fears and desires of and for the reproductive body, yields racial distinctions on the status of femininity and role of the female body, engenders a nostalgic yearning for the days of an innocent adolescence, and raises debates about the purpose of public schools. The pregnant teen body exposes both the fact of teen female sexuality and the fears we have of such bodies. The pregnant teen body is a site of debate, alarm, fear, scorn, and shame. This body is used as a symbol of all that is wrong in America and is thus also situated as a body in need of regulation, control, surveillance, and reformation. Unfit Subjects traces and identifies the discourses, ideologies, policies and practices that define unwed teen mothers as unfit, while seeking to expose who within these discursive arenas is deemed more or less unfit. Which teen mothers are worthy of an education and which are worthy only of regulation and training as low-income workers? Which teen mothers are fit education subjects and which are not? The analysis in this text reveals a historical and

Introduction • 11

present-day conflation of highly racialized ideological discourses that have at key moments resulted in legislative acts impacting educational policy and practice for teen mothers, from the passage of Title IX in 1972 to the passage of the Welfare Reform Act in 1996 and its recent reauthorization in 2002. As the following chapters indicate these legislative acts relate to one of the primary findings of this book—that the education of teen mothers has been and remains a racialized story. Teen mothers bodies and the location of the problem of teen pregnancy have historically been and continue to be differentially defined according to the race of the teen mother. These differential racial definitions of teen pregnancy have deeply influenced the development and implementation of a two-tiered system of education. Understanding the racialized discursive structures that construct teen pregnancy resituates it as an equal opportunity educational policy issue and further situates the educational treatment of teen mothers, prior to, during, and after pregnancy, as a gender and race educational equity issue. Unfit Subjects argues that the education of pregnant/mothering students cannot be separated from debates of equal education opportunity and questions of gender and race equity in schools. However, what equal opportunity means for pregnant/mothering students remains largely unexamined: Does it mean placement in regular school settings or removal to separate schools? Does it mean placement in regular curriculum tracks or vocational job training? To date, such questions have only been addressed in discourses that foreground what the public defines as the educational needs of the teen mother. Such discourses are most often based upon what we think the teen mother deserves rather than through questions of what equal educational opportunity could look like and should be for pregnant/mothering students. Questions of what equal opportunity looks like for pregnant/mothering teens are related to tensions and debates over what constitutes equal opportunity for any pregnant woman. As a society we have had difficulty determining what equal treatment means for pregnant women and mothers. At times equal treatment may include protection from work environments that are harmful, at other times equal treatment means access to work environments. Unfit Subjects traces and locates how schools reinstitute societal attitudes and confusion toward pregnancy and mothering, utilizing discourses of inclusion or contamination to determine whether pregnant/mothering students need such amenities as chairs they can fit into, bathroom breaks during the day, or excused absences during pregnancy, whether they should be placed in regular schools with no support or removed from the regular school setting. Certainly all teen mothers need help and support. They may need additional counseling and medical services to meet their specific needs, but they also need the support that any mother parenting as a single-parent with limited income needs—they need access to health care, childcare


options, flexible schedules, transportation, and a livable income. As Kristen Luker’s research reminds us it is not as simple as saying all teen mothers will be bad or incompetent mothers, rather it is the economic and social conditions that we parent in that impacts our abilities to mother.28 While debates will continue about what teen mothers need and do not need, what they deserve and do not deserve, there is one thing that all pregnant/mothering teens are legally entitled to—that is, an education equal to their peers. I hope that this book, through its analysis of how the shifting definitions of teen pregnancy have led to inequitable programmatic practices and outcomes, lends itself to further exploration of what education for pregnant/mothering students can be and to arguments and actions in support of the right of all pregnant/mothering teens to receive equal educational opportunities.

Overview of Chapters In order to understand and situate teen pregnancy as a social and educational policy problem, I begin by tracing the shifting historical, social construction of teen pregnancy and link this construction with macro-level policy initiatives. This tracing provides a framework for the remaining chapters, layering discursive analyses that move from a macro-political analysis of teen pregnancy to a micro-analysis of how teen mothers experience school-based programs. This organization reveals the interconnections between historical macro discourses surrounding teen pregnancy and micro-level policy development and implementation, while exposing the assumptive discourses present at all levels. Each chapter progressively provides a more specific look at what we know about how pregnant/mothering students are receiving an education, which teen mothers are receiving an education, and how they are receiving it. Chapter 1 provides a foundation for the book by tracing the historical, social construction of teen pregnancy from early social and policy concerns about the unwed mother. This chapter also traces how varying definitions of the problem of teen pregnancy and shifting locations of the target of teen pregnancy from white female bodies to black female bodies influenced executive and legislative decisions and helped to reinforce and establish differential treatment of unwed and teen mothers by race. Finally this chapter provides an understanding of why the education of teen mothers has not been defined as an educational policy issue, but rather as a social welfare issue. Chapters 2 and 3 offer an in-depth look at what the passage of Title IX has meant for the education of pregnant/mothering teens. Although Title IX guarantees equal education to all teen mothers there is evidence that

Introduction • 13

schools treat teen mothers differentially by race, treating some young mothers as entitled to education and other teen mothers as responsible to society for their mistakes. However as these chapters also reveal, all pregnant/mothering teens are subject to barriers preventing them from accessing equal educational opportunities. Chapter 2 reviews the history of Title IX and identifies two discourses that impact the provision of education to teen mothers. These two discourses—a discourse of contamination and a discourse of education as responsibility—offer a lens through which to address the questions of the absence of case law under Title IX and the continuation of discriminatory practices toward pregnant/mothering students regardless of Title IX. Chapter 3, building from the analysis in chapter 2, explicitly traces education’s role in developing policies and programs for pregnant/mothering teens. Specifically what is notable in this analysis of state and local policy is the absence and ambivalence in the educational arena. Despite this lack of involvement, schools and educational personnel are the frontline service providers for teen mothers making daily decisions that impact the educational experiences of pregnant/mothering teens. Given the lack of data and policy guiding implementation decisions for teen mothers, how do school personnel decide how to provide pregnant/mothering teens with an education? I identify two prominent thematic discourses that school personnel use to determine how to provide education to pregnant/mothering teens, noting the problem and absences in both. Chapter 4 specifically looks at who the pregnant/mothering teen is as a student. The reader will find that the pregnant/mothering teen most likely to stay in school or to utilize school-based teen parent programs contrasts with the teen for whom Title IX was developed. This analysis sheds further light on why there has been no case law under Title IX to determine what educational opportunities for school-age mothers looks like and why schools continue to be ambivalent to providing education to school-age mothers. The second half of the chapter examines the barriers this ambivalence creates for pregnant/mothering students attempting to access an education. In chapter 5, I focus on the development of school-based programs that have emerged out of Title IX and other legislative mandates. I examine both the programs that place pregnant/mothering teens in separate schools and the programs that place them in a separate classroom at a regular school. I provide information on the development and implementation of a nationally disseminated school-based teen pregnancy program. Analyzing this program offers a way to identify how educator’s have addressed questions such as, what kind of an education should teen mothers get? and what do teen mothers need? The “dual-role” emphasis of this program focuses upon orienting and retraining the teen mother for her dual


role as mother and worker. Given that education for teen mothers has been situated as a social welfare policy issue, I suggest that these programs tell us more about what we think teen mothers deserve than what an equal education would look like for teen mothers. Chapter 6 may strike some as moving away from the above discussions about education for pregnant/mothering students, but I chose to include a chapter specifically on the sexuality of teenage girls because controlling or redeeming the sexual behaviors of teen girls (and certain teen girls in particular) has an important effect on teen pregnancy discourse and policy. Mindful of the questions Ken Plummer says we must ask about sexual stories: the nature of stories; the making of stories; the consuming of stories; the strategies of storytelling; and the work of stories in wider world,29 I ask these same questions of the stories told about teen sex in abstinence-only educational programs and in Congressional and Senate hearings on teen pregnancy and abstinence education. This chapter specifically traces the rise of abstinence-only education and identifies the narratives such programs tell about sex and the potential for extreme regulatory control, including enforced control of fertility and motherhood of certain girls, based upon an “incitement to discourse” and “epidemic logic” perpetuated in abstinence-only discourse. Chapter 7 returns to the impetus for the analysis in this book—What could education for teen mothers be? Building from the previous chapters discussion and analyses, and utilizing the language of equal educational opportunity found in Title IX, I raise questions concerning what “equal education” means for the school-age mother—does it simply mean access to regular public schooling or does it mean something else, some additional support or programs in order to receive an equal education. I argue that we cannot discuss this question without understanding and situating the education of pregnant/mothering students as an equal opportunity educational policy issue that is linked with issues of gender and race education equity issues. Consideration of separate teen pregnancy classrooms or separate schools as single-sex spaces yields further questions about the ability of such settings to provide equal educational opportunities to teen mothers. This chapter reaffirms the responsibility for equitable education for pregnant/mothering teens within the educational arena. Whether school personnel and the public like it or not, public schools are mandated to provide equal education to pregnant/mothering teens and educators have the responsibility to ensure that this occurs.

Notes 1.

In this book, I use the terms pregnant/mothering teen and teen mother to refer to schoolage girls from eleven to nineteen years old who are pregnant and/or parenting. I use the

Introduction • 15

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

phrase “pregnant/mothering teen” when specifically talking about provision of education and use the phrase “teen mother” as the phrase commonly used to represent the young unwed mother. However, the phrase “teen mother” is often used to describe pregnant teens. I counter this usage with the phrase “pregnant/mothering teen,” in order to differentiate between the pregnant teen and the teen mother and also to disallow a discourse that names the pregnant teen as a teen mother thereby slipping into language that supports an origin of life at conception. My use of the terms “mother” and “mothering” versus parent or parenting is to name the emphasis not upon unwed, teen parents, but upon teen mothers in policy and practice. Further, it should be noted that the needs, educational, psychological, and physical, of very young teen mothers (typically considered age thirteen or fourteen and under) are often differentiated from the needs of the older teen mothers (typically high school age, fourteen and above). Most of the research I cite including my own research is focused upon the older teen mother. Thus my discussion and analysis in this paper is most applicable to the older or high school teen mother. Pillow, Policy Discourse and Teenage Pregnancy. Pillow, “Decentering Silences/Troubling Irony,” 134–152; Pillow, “Exposed Methodology,” 349–363. Only a handful of such books exist and of these only a few focus explicitly on the education of teen mothers. See Kelly, Pregnant with Meaning; Lutrell, Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds. Throughout this text I use the term “racialize” to refer to the structural, discursive, and epistemological processes of race and racism. I rely upon David Theo Goldberg’s understanding of race, racism, and racialization with Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s development of “racial formation theory.” Goldberg points to the “fluidity” of race and the “masks of race” in order to trace figuratively how “race is a discursive object of racialized discourse that differs from racism. Race, nevertheless, creates the conceptual conditions of possibility, in some conjunctural conditions, for racist expression to be formulated.” See Goldberg, Racist Culture, 44. Correspondingly, Omi and Winant trace how political and social ideology structures racial formation. Racial formation theory suggests “a new conception of racial time, one which combines genealogical and contingent temporalities,” which acknowledges the discursive shiftings of racial formation in the form of racialized discourses to meet state needs. Omi and Winant. Racial Formation in the United States, 267. As quoted in Parsons, Power and Politics, xi. For discussion of the power of metaphor in policy analysis see Parsons, Power and Politics. For discussion of policy as discourse, see Allan, “Constructing Women’s Status,” 47–49. Fraser and Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency,” 310–11. Data sources for this book include: archival materials related to the social and historical construction of unwed and teen mothers from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota; policy documents—including legislation, executive orders, state and district policies; case law; program curricula; statements and publications by interest groups and research organizations; including new articles of media campaigns to prevent teen pregnancy; and data from my qualitative research, which included observing programs and conducting interviews with teen mothers, teachers, and school administrators across two states 1992–1994 and 1998–2000. One state I researched in had a statewide program implemented for teen mothers, the other state did not. I observed and interviewed pregnant/mothering students and school personnel at regular and separate school settings, spending one full year at a separate school setting. See Richardson, “Writing,” 516–529. Weatherly, et. al., Patchwork Programs. I use “regular” throughout this text to refer to traditional public school settings versus special alternative school settings developed for students requiring removal from the mainstream school setting. See St. Pierre and Pillow, eds. Working the Ruins. Britzman, “‘The Question of Belief,” 32. Patai, “Response,” 61–73. Britzman, “ ‘The question of Belief,’” 38. Linden, Making Stories, Making Selves, 8. Fraser, Unruly practices. For critiques of positivistic methods assuming political neutrality in educational policy studies see Ladson-Billings, and Tate. “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education,” 47–63;


19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

Marshall, ed. Feminist Critical Policy Analysis I. For explorations into recent critical social educational policy methodologies, see Ball, Politics and Policy Making in Education; Griffith, “Educational Policy as Text and Action,” 415–428; Hargreaves, “Transforming Knowledge,” 105–122; Scheurich, “Policy Archaeology,” 297–316. Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women; Gordon, ed. Women, the State, and Welfare; Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls; Mink, The Wages of Motherhood; Lawson and Rhode, eds. The politics of pregnancy; Nathanson, Dangerous Passage; Solinger, Wake up little Susie. Michel Foucault’s use of genealogy is methodologically central to this project, as his work has reconceptualized history, power, subjects, and political discourse, see e.g., Foucault, The Foucault Reader. In earlier work, I describe what I term feminist genealogy, which builds upon Foucault’s work by focusing analysis upon historically and culturally situated decision-making with particular attention to how gender, race, sexuality, and class shape the policy process, see Pillow, “Exposed Methodology,” 349–363; Pillow, “Decentering Silences/Troubling Irony: 134–152; and Pillow, “ ‘Bodies Are Dangerous.’ “ Ferguson, The Man Question, 4. Ferguson, “Interpretation and Genealogy in Feminism,” 327. Mann, Micro-Politics, 32. Gordon, Women, the State, and Welfare, 11. Ball, “Some Reflections on Policy Theory,” 171. I use the terms “black” and “white” (lower and upper case) to denote the structural and institutionalized racism evident in the discursive climate surrounding unwed motherhood and teen pregnancy. By using the term black instead of African American, I am acknowledging an ongoing and persistent racial categorization of individuals as “black” based upon skin color (i.e., not white) regardless of an individual’s racial or ethnic background. In this way, “black” unwed mothers would historically have included “black” Puerto Ricans as well as other “black” Latinas and “black” American indians. Furthermore, incidence rates of teen pregnancy initially were based only on two racial categorizations “black” or “white” and only recently has data on additional racial and ethnic groups (including “Hispanic” and “Asian”) been gathered. When quoting from historical records and reports I use the terms of the author, which may include “Negro,” “Caucasian,” and “Hispanic.” When referring to present-day research I use the terms African American and Latina or the terms used by the author or report. For the young women I interviewed, I use the term they chose to identify themselves racially and ethnically. Mahon, Foucault’s Nietzschean Genealogy, 14. Luker, Dubious Conceptions. Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories, 29–30.

CHAPTER

1

Constructing Teen Pregnancy as a Problem She is assured that it does not matter what the past has been, the future may be all that she desires to make it, if only she is faithful in her resolves and is willing to be guided by the friends that she has now found. —Dr. Kate Waller Barrett, 1903 Unintended pregnancy . . . is happening to our young women, not only among the poor and minority groups, but in all socioeconomic groups . . . (It’s happening) . . . to ‘our daughters.’ —Alan Guttmacher Institute report, 1976 Out-of-wedlock teen birth is driving every single rotten outcome in our city. —Krista Ruth, social policy advisor, Indianapolis, 1996

Proclaimed a “national scandal” and cited as an indication of “a failure of American society,” teen pregnancy has been at the forefront of national debates and policy legislation about single motherhood, welfare, and the decline of morality and family values in the United States.1 The phrase “teen pregnancy” is so engrained into U.S. political discourse and public sentiment that it may be surprising to note that this commonly used phrase has a relatively short history. Prior to the mid-1970s, the phrase was not used and the attention of the public and of policy makers, albeit scant, was focused upon the issue of unwed mothers of all ages. While we have always had “teen mothers” in society, we have not always had focused research, policy, and media attention on teen mothers. Indeed, adolescent pregnancy was not seen as a specific problem to study until the 1960s but soon 17


caught popular media attention with the now oft used phrase “Children having Children.”2 The phrase “teen pregnancy” has further become symbolically linked with the economic and moral character of U.S. society and the problems associated with unwed teen pregnancy are assumed by policy makers and the lay citizen to be commonly known. However, as the quotes at the beginning of this chapter indicate, a close look at the construction of teen pregnancy as a social and educational problem reveals that the problem of teen pregnancy, even in its short history, has been defined differently at precise moments for varying political and social needs. What the problem of teen pregnancy is, who it is a problem for, and how government should intervene and on whose behalf (the teen mother, her child, or society) has always occured within a shifting social context—a social context that defines and at times redefines the problem of teen pregnancy.3 This chapter provides a tracing of how the problem of teen pregnancy is located and what this location means for policy development affecting teen mothers. This analysis pays close attention to shifts in how teen pregnancy is defined, how the pregnant girl is defined and symbolized, and what policy responses are seen as appropriate or necessary. A close analysis of the discursive shifts defining teen pregnancy makes apparent that how we think about teen pregnancy, how teen pregnancy is located, cannot be separated from the economic, political, racial, and moral climate. The problem of teen pregnancy is always constructed in a highly politicized context. Tracing the discursive climates surrounding teen pregnancy is key, for as Nancy Campbell notes in her insightful analysis of gender and drug policy in the United States, “definitions themselves do not determine the directions of policy, but political contestation over their meaning does.”4 Tracing contestations over meanings highlights the paradoxes and contestations in defining: What is the problem of teen pregnancy? When is one a teen mother? Who is teen pregnancy a problem for? And what should the roles of schools be in serving the school-age mother? In this analysis, I locate the emergence of the problem of teen pregnancy, and the contestations over the meaning of teen pregnancy, as occurring through what Linda Singer characterizes an “era of epidemic.” Singer argues that “epidemic logic” often prevails in political and policy discussions, particularly in regulatory practices that affect women, including contemporary discourses on bodies, pleasures, sexualities, reproductive rights, legal determinations of what a family is and the juridical construction of bodies in relation to the state.5 Singer extends an understanding of Foucault’s historical accounts of sex as a political issue and affirms and

Constructing Teen Pregnancy as a Problem • 19

furthers understandings of policy as discursive social, regulatory, and disciplinary actions. Modern regulatory power as Foucault demonstrated is “less likely to rely on force, but more likely to be comprised of disciplinary regimes, systems of surveillance, and normalizing tactics” that impact our ideologies and actions just as effectively, perhaps even more effectively.6 Foucault and others understand that power in this way is not simply located in positional power, but evident as “bio-power” in our everyday practices, and interpreted and reinforced in educational and legal institutions and discursive arenas such as the media.7 Policy enacts and reinforces modern regulatory power and is most regulatory when a social problem, like teen pregnancy, is defined as being of epidemic proportions. When a social problem is defined as epidemic it is “already a situation that is figured as out of control” and thus evokes a form of “panic logic” which “seeks immediate and dramatic responses to the situation at hand.”8 However, Singer also argues that “epidemic logic depends on certain structuring contradictions, proliferating what it seeks to contain, producing what it regulates.”9 In the defining and controlling of the problem, the problem is also (re)produced. As Singer states: Because epidemics justify and are in fact constructed in order to necessitate a complex system of surveillance and intervention, epidemic situations often provide occasions for the reinstitution of hegemonic lines of authority and control.10

In this way, epidemic logic provides “access to bodies and a series of codes for inscribing them, as well as providing a discourse of justification.” Singer’s conceptualization of epidemic logic allows an in-depth tracing of the work of “bio-power” in policy discourse and practice and a corresponding tracing of the use of language that marks, defines, and locates teen pregnancy as a target for intervention and how such discourses work to reproduce “the power that authorizes and justifies their deployment.”11 Here is it also vital to pay close attention to who is defining the discourses surrounding teen pregnancy, who, using Nancy Fraser’s term, is engaged in “needs talk” for teen mothers. Fraser points out that in welfare-state societies, talk about people’s needs is an important component of political discourse. Fraser views “needs talk” as “institutionalized as a major vocabulary of political discourse” through which “political conflict is played out and through which inequalities are symbolically elaborated and challenged.”12 Foucault also concisely stated this: “need is also a political instrument, meticulously prepared, calculated and used.”13 “Needs talk” takes on and produces many of the characteristics and dilemmas of crisis talk and epidemic logic by defining what the subject of the epidemic needs and what society needs in order to be protected from the epidemic. I utilize “needs talk”


not only to describe what has been defined as the needs of teen mothers, but also to focus attention upon the “politics of need interpretation.”14 Epidemic logic and needs talk is evident in teen pregnancy discourse and policy development and in educational policy development and implementation. However, I expand upon Singer’s and Fraser’s insights to expose the paradoxes of epidemic logic and needs talk when they are applied to differentially defined and racialized teen bodies. This exposure points out what is present as well as what is absent in policy discourses. While I certainly acknowledge a history where all women’s bodies and teen women’s bodies are discussed and regulated, I also trace differential discourses and outcomes based upon the race of the pregnant body. I present evidence that shows epidemic logic being used to argue for entitlement and access policies for certain teen mothers, while also being used to severely control, restrict, and regulate the bodies and lives of other teen mothers. These differential histories and discourses continue to impact how teen mothers are represented and what we think they need or deserve.

Social Historical Constructions of the Unwed Mother and Emergence of the Teen Mother Several excellent social histories detail the gendered and raced ideological framework of the U.S. welfare state, provide insight into the processes by which unwed motherhood in the United States has been socially constructed, and make linkages to resulting social policy responses.15 These works clearly link the problem of early parenting to the status of unwed motherhood and also begin to link differences in treatment options available to the unwed mother to the race of the unwed mother. For example, several works point to the construction of white unwed motherhood in the early 1900s as a psychological problem and thus treatable, while black women’s illegitimate pregnancies were viewed as a morality problem innate to their race, and thus untreatable.16 Key to analyzing the problem of unwed motherhood is to consider the role of homes for unwed mothers, the most influential and prevalent being the Florence Crittenton Homes for Unwed Mothers (F.C.). The F.C. homes and association, established in 1883, not only participated in defining and locating the problem of unwed motherhood, but also influenced public opinion and established treatment patterns for unwed mothers. From the late 1800s to the 1940s, unwed mothers were recharacterized from wanton vixen to “fallen women,” females who found themselve in dire circumstances, often for reasons beyond their control or due to their own mistaken judgment of a male. The F.C. Association was instrumental in


Fig. 1 Florence Crittenton Mission Papers, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota, 4:12.

shifting public perception about the unwed mother, from wanton prostitute to victim. As Otto Wilson, founder of F.C., wrote in 1933, It was startling indeed to have her [the unwed mother] presented as a victim—as an innocent girl of tender years, trapped, abducted, forcibly ravished, perhaps, or drugged, and then held prisoner through four of five years of utter degradation until excesses of disease wore her down into an ignominious grave.17

This characterization of the unwed mother as a girl, as a victim, was further fed by rumors and fear about “white slave traffic,” whereby a self-respecting white woman would be stolen from her home and forced into prostitution.18 Another characterization of unwed mothers as victims was based upon the young unwed mother’s limited life chances due to her economic and social living conditions. F.C. spokespersons and publications described such “girl’s” whose “misstep is not simply a deliberate sin, to be punished by God and man, but is in most cases the result of bad social conditions, of which she is more or less innocent victim.”19 F.C. homes were set up specifically to serve women who were victims, the unwed mother of little means, the “unfortunate” unwed mother, and offer her a safe place to stay during pregnancy and childbirth. This unfortunate unwed mother was repeatedly depicted in F.C. literature as a good girl, a respectable girl who just needed help, and was always Caucasian (see figure 1). She would be provided with


training and support until she was able to make her way on her own (with her child) in a respectable trade suitable to her class, typically as a housekeeper or washerwoman. While the F.C. Association strongly believed and only worked with unwed mothers who were planning to keep their children, their goal for these mothers (ranging in age from thirteen to late thirties) was ususally not marriage (because marriage to the men available to her would not be a suitable marriage) but self-sufficiency. It is important to recognize that despite being a proto-feminist foundation the F.C. Homes’ philosophy was based upon Christian ethics of caring for all, especially those beneath you. A basic ideology of the homes was one of rescue–rescue from one’s situation, which for the suitable unwed mother was one of hardship and squalor, and rescue from the unsuitable persons of one’s situation, in this case from males who were lazy and unscrupulous and took advantage of young women, and from females who had given into vice. Unwed mothers who were victims were a social responsibility and deserved the “full benefit of enlightened handling.”20 The unwed mothers accepted into F.C. Homes were seen as demonstrating the beginnings of recognition that they needed to change their life circumstances. From these beginnings, the F.C. Homes would instill a different set of values in the unwed mother that would in turn benefit society. The “new” values—including an emphasis upon Christian ethics, hard work, responsibility, wholesomeness, simple living, cleanliness, and economic independence by learning a vocation suitable to the unwed mother’s status—would ensure that the woman could redeem herself and make the best of her life situation for herself and her child. This retraining in values began with creating a world of cleanliness and order for the unwed pregnant female—household order, personal order, moral order, and spiritual order. This ideology viewed many unwed mothers as being victims of their circumstances, they were referred to as “inmates,”21 and assumed not to have had the benefits of exposure to moral and decent living. The homes ran according to a strict schedule and systemized routines for everything from the running of the home, to personal hygiene and health, to prayerful reflection.22 Thus F.C. Homes were not only a place to be while the woman was pregnant, but a place to be exposed to clean living. The matron of the home was to be a role model in all ways to the young “inmates,” providing counseling, guidance, and chastisement as necessary. Holding to the adage of “busy hands, pure heart,” women in the homes were expected to follow strict daily schedules and were assigned chores necessary to the running of a smooth household. Not only did such activities retrain the inmates mind, body, and soul but also provided the unwed mother with the experience she would need to be employable. Thus, the philosophy, organization and management of the F.C. Homes reinforced


that this unwed mother, the unwed mother in the F.C. Home, is a victim of her circumstances, a woman to be pitied, not reviled, a woman to be helped and retrained, not turned away. However, the homes were set up only for those whom F.C. found capable and worthy of rescue and reformation. Unwed mothers who were not suitable for the homes were turned away. As Dr. Kate Waller Barrett states, in her 1903 Some Practical Suggestions on the Conduct of a Rescue Home, “it is better to admit girls temporarily, and if, after the girl has been in the home for a few days, she is found to be an unworthy object, the only harm is that she has received a few days board that she is not entitled to.”23 Although Dr. Barrett reminded her matrons to “remember that Florence Crittenton Homes are for bad girls just as much as they are for good girls,” the F.C. Homes did help establish the beginnings of an ideological and pragmatic definition of which unwed mothers are treatable (and worthy of treatment) and which are not—providing a way to distinguish the “good” unwed mother from the “bad.”24 These discourses were deeply influenced by ideological and structural racism and established not only which unwed mothers were worthy of redemption, but also which infants were so worthy. For instance, Caucasian babies were repeatedly used in advertising campaigns to change societal attitudes toward and garnish support for the plight of unwed mothers and their children. A healthy, glowing, well-fed, smiling infant would be depicted with captions calling for sympathy and support for the white “illegitimate” child and his/her mother. A 1915 Detroit News article depicted such an infant with the caption, “Does His Smile Appeal to You?” and continued: It does to the nurses and doctors of the Florence Crittenton Home. It does to his grief-stricken, care-worn mother. He is only one of many who are cared for at the home. To see that smile grow on the face of a once wan, sick baby, to see a mother made comfortable, to see her saved from the anguish of desolation—that is the inspiration of those who are fighting to solve the problems of the institution.25

Such advertisements while a strategic attempt to play upon the generosity of a public sympathetic to an infant’s face also reinforced a commitment and social responsibility for the care and second-chance for white infants, children, and unwed mothers. F.C. ads also made an early linkage between the unwed mother and an economic drain upon the taxpayer using messages of sympathy and “pocket-books” to garnish support for the role of F.C. Homes. Consider the following plea made by a six-week-old infant: Won’t you please help . . . By helping me today, I will not be a burden to my community (and your pocket-book) later on, because your kindness and generosity now will help me be a good citizen when I grow up. You give my mother

24 • Unfit Subjects another chance to make good and your community and state is that much richer for her higher standard of living. (see figure 2)

While the philosophy of F.C. Homes claimed to provide care to all unwed mothers, and thus all their children, it is clear that the homes reflected prevalent racial segregation and racism of the time.26 Although the future for white unwed mothers was stated promisingly in 1933, black unwed mothers were described as problematic, as in this statement by Wilson: in the not too distant future it is easily possible that every white girl who need their [F.C homes] help can be received with the aura of their protecting care . . . the colored unmarrried mother is still a problem to be reckoned with.27

Thus, although there is evidence that some of the northeastern urban homes may have had integrated facilities at certain moments, most F.C. Homes routinely turned away black unwed mothers and homes in the southern states had policies to explicitly deny admittance to black unwed mothers. In the South, this led to the development of separate homes for the unwed “Negro” mother.28 In their respective works, Solinger and Kunzel each argue that separate facilities based upon race for the unwed mother fostered more than segregated settings. They link these separate services to differential definitions of the problem of unwed mothering dependent upon the race of the unwed mother. Further, these differential definitions of the origin of the problem of unwed mothering led to differential treatment of the unwed mother and her child. For example, Solinger points out how “social workers and other human service professionals claimed repeatedly that black single pregnancy was the product of family and community disorganization” and thus not treatable in the way white women’s unwed pregnancy was.29 This two-tiered system of treatment was further reinforced by a growing field of social science research. Research defined and situated white women’s unwed pregnancy as a “problem relocated from her body to her mind” and she was situated as a “treatable neurotic.”30 In contrast, black women were characterized and portrayed in research, practice, and policy as “unrestrained, wanton breeders, on the one hand, or as calculating breeders for profit on the other.”31 Thus while white unwed mothers were capable and worthy of rehabilitation, black women were rendered untreatable because their problems of unwed pregnancy were inherent and instilled in their culture and community.32 The immorality and incapacity for morality situated within the construction of black womanhood also continued and reinforced ideologies of idolization and protection of “white womanhood” which were particularly prevalent in the South. If black women were constructed as immoral, as


Fig. 2 Florence Crittenton Mission Papers, Social Welfare History Achives, University of Minnesota, 1:3.


untreatable, then contact between black women and white women could lead to the contamination and moral decline of white women. Recognition and acknowledgment of how racial segregation of services for unwed mothers continued to “protect” white women is necessary to understand the power of racialization in the diagnosis and provision of services to unwed mothers not only in the past, but how the vestiges of such ideologies impact present-day policies and practices. The differential definition of, characterization of, and location of the problem of unwed motherhood by race remained prevalent in social science research, treatment options, and political discourse. That the problem of unwed motherhood was different for white women than for black women was so ingrained it was never questioned. This differential definition affected the unwed mother’s access to treatment options, including counseling, placement in a home facility, health care, contraceptive information and availability, abortion, and adoption. Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act clearly called for an end to segregated service provision, F.C. Homes, still the most common option for unwed mothers at the time, continued separate provision of services for unwed mothers based upon race through the mid-1970s. At the same time, U.S. political and social culture experienced many changes. Women’s rights, sexual revolution, and access to the birth control pill contributed to major shifts in thinking about women’s sexuality. Yet the differential discursive climate surrounding the sexuality of white women and black women, as well as political and economic factors, meant that white women had access to and benefited from the changes during the late 1960s and 1970s. It was also during this time period that the focus shifted from unwed mothering to teenage pregnancy. As detailed below, the emergence of the teen mother and the problem of teenage pregnancy cannot be separated from this history of differentiated definitions and treatment of the unwed mother by race.

Emergence of the Teen Mother One of the most significant and surprising facts about the emergence of the problem of teen pregnancy, is that it occurred during a time period, from the late 1960s to the 1980s, when birthrates to teens were at their lowest.33 So what explains the emergence of the specific problems of the teen mother? One fact often overlooked is that while birthrates were stable or declining during this period, the teen population was at its highest, meaning there were just more teen girls than ever before, and adolescence emerged as a separate developmental stage of childhood.34 In 1959, the title of the F.C. Association’s annual conference was “Teaching School-age Unmarried Mothers in Maternity Homes” and the following year their an-


nual reports used the term “adolescent unmarried mother,” reflecting this change in thinking.35 In August 1962, the executive director of F.C. spoke specifically about the increase in young mothers in the homes. However, she was also clear that this increase was due not to a higher rate of teen births, but to the number of girls of this age: We are deeply concerned about this group since many of the girls we serve are very young. 71 percent last year were under 21, and 40 percent were in high school or college when they became pregnant. . . . We may expect an increase in the number of school-age girls needing services in this problem simply because there will be a tremendous increase of this age group in the next ten years. And I should like to emphasize here that this is not because the rate of out of wedlock pregnancies is increasing among teenagers. Actually it dropped in the last five years and the vast majority of our young people are not caught in this predicament—public opinion not withstanding.36

If birthrates to teen girls were declining, what was the problem and the public’s perception of the problem based upon? As Maris Vinovskis describes, by 1978, the political climate surrounding teen pregnancy was reaching a crisis level: Almost everyone in Washington believed that the problem of adolescent pregnancy constituted a very serious social and health crisis that necessitated an immediate response—whether from the federal, state, and local governments or from private citizens and organizations. Both the policymakers and the news media emphasized the “epidemic” nature of adolescent pregnancy. Many members of the Carter administration and the 95th Congress assumed that Americans faced a new and growing crisis and that drastic steps dealing with this threatening situation had to be initiated at once.37

Yet as Vinovskis demonstrates this “crisis” and “epidemic” occurred at the same time when teen birthrates were actually declining after reaching a high in 1957. Vinovskis argues that a series of events and situations led policymakers and the pubic to buy into the myth of an epidemic of teen pregnancy, including a lack of historical perspective on teen birthrates, the rising costs of early childbearing, the humanitarian approach of President Jimmy Carter and his administration, a more open attitude toward female use of contraceptives, a positioning of the discussion of teen pregnancy as an “alternative to abortion,” the role of interest groups like the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), and a lack of social science research and policy-oriented studies on teen pregnancy.38 Annette Lawson and Deborah Rhodes argue that it was the socioeconomic context in which the births occured and the “cultural ideology they challenge[d]” that led to increased attention on teen pregnancy.39 While birthrates overall were at their lowest during the 1960s and 1970s, several other factors had changed:


• More teens, particularly white teens, were sexually active outside of marital or committed relationships • After 1972, there was an increase in pregnancies resulting in abortions, particularly among white women • There was a cited increase in unplanned pregnancies, particularly among white women • There were higher rates of birth to unmarried women and a significant rise in single parenting, again particularly by white women and teens.40 What is apparent from this information is that the beginnings of defining the problem of unwed teenage pregnancy initially rose out of concern about the increase in unwed sexual activity, pregnancies, unwed births, and unwed teen pregnancy among white women. While black women’s rates of unwed pregnancy were linked with inherent cultural weakness and thus yielded, at least initially, little attention, a rise in white unwed pregnancy was cause for concern and policy response. Contrary to current public opinion and policy focus, the initial symbol and focus of teen pregnancy was the white teen mother. This focus occurred within a highly racialized discourse of the problem of unwed mothers—a discourse that within a short time span defined the pregnant teen as the “girl next door” then redefined the pregnant teen as the “other girl.” While I discuss these discourses separately, they are not so distinct. Constructions of the “girl next door” are dependent upon contrary depictions of the “other girl,” and both discourses occur at the same time. However, each discourse yields its own possible policy options and the broad discursive and symbolic shift from “our girls” to the “other girl” has had a dramatic impact on the development of programs and services for teen mothers. Teen Mother as the “Girl Next Door” Although it is difficult to conceptualize in today’s political climate, the emergence of the problem of teen pregnancy was linked to the young white, middle-class, all-American, unwed mother. During the initial emergence of teen pregnancy, rates of sexual activity, pregnancy, abortion, and birthrates increased only among Caucasian teens.41 Although teen pregnancy and birthrates remained below mid-1950s rates, the number of teens particularly white female teens engaging in premarital sexual activity increased. The Allen Guttmacher Institute (AGI), a major research group influencing policy, published a 1976 pamphlet entitled 11 Million Teenagers: What Can Be Done About the Epidemic of Adolescent Pregnancies in the United States. This “epidemic” was situated as an one of white teens.42 The discursive shift involved in defining the teen mother as a poor unwed working-class white girl or as the irresponsible unwed black to


defining her as the girl next door is subtle but visible. As early as 1958, at the 8th annual F.C. conference, in Washington, D.C., Mary Louise Allen, director of F.C. Association stated: [W]e are seeing a different kind of unwed mother. They are not the little girl wronged by a heartless man as a rule or the trade woman of the red light district. They are any average American girl or woman, high school girls, college girls, professional women, secretaries, factory girls who simply got caught in a game where the majority of her contemporaries are engaged in the same game but without the dire consequences of illegitimate pregnancy.43

This “game” was the game of sexual activity before marriage and although associations like F.C. did not approve of such immoral conduct, the idea was circulated that such young women, the “average American girl,” who were “caught” were not to be reviled, but to be helped. For example, the F.C. Association became involved in developing films to influence public perceptions about unwed mothers and in 1960 developed and put on a play in New York City called “The Sweet Potato Vine.” The production notes for the play state: This play has a teen mother who is attractive, wholesome, and competent. Having grown up in a relatively large community in the Midwest as the daughter of respectable middle-class parents, she fits very well the description of “the girl next door.” Liked both at home and college, she is to all appearances well-adjusted to society and her group. She fabricates an excuse for coming to New York because of her humiliation brought on by her situation and her desire to shield her parents from disgrace. Despite her immense self-reliance she shows great intelligence by turning to a trained professional when the pressures brought on by her situation become too great. The actress playing Carol must be aware of the acting traps of self-pity and bitterness. While anxiety and fear are constantly at work in Carol, the audience must be aware at all times of her struggle to cope with and her effort to control these emotions. Only in specifically designated instances are these emotions allowed to break through unrestrained.44

Thus the unwed, white teen mother is a young wholesome girl, from a respectable family. She is caught in this situation, and does not wallow in self-pity or bitterness, but protects her family and herself by seeking professional help. This same year, 1960, a popular women’s magazine ran a “True Confessions” series depicting the lives of “normal, middle-class, respectable” women who were at one point in their lives unwed mothers. The magazine received an overwhelming response from readers in support of and with sympathy for this image of the unwed mother as the girl next door.45 F.C. Association sought to build upon the interest brought about by the “True Confessions” series and sent suggested radio scripts, newspaper ads, and publicity photos to its member homes.46


By the mid-1960s the idea that the unwed teen mother was “one of us” was making its way into political discourse and by the mid-1970s this discourse was established. Some note that it is not coincidental that this concern with and focus on white unwed motherhood occurred at the same time that public services for unwed mothers, like the F.C. Homes, could no longer legally operate as segregated institutions.47 Certainly there was much alarm and resistance within the F.C. Association membership about desegregation of the F.C. Homes. Fear of integration and comingling of black and white unwed mothers led to concerns that black mothers would be a bad influence upon white mothers. Although by the early 1960s some homes had officially changed their admission policies, many southern homes resisted such changes and continued to resist until Civil Rights laws found them in noncompliance. In 1963, F.C. Executive Director Mary Louise Allen noted, “There is a growing unrest in the southern Homes about integration of facilities but a new awareness of the needs of Negro girls for the services.”48 By August of the same year, Mrs. Allen sent a special memorandum to members of the F.C. board of directors: Lexington:–Following the Governor’s order regarding desegregation of all state licensed agencies, the Lexington FC Board is reviewing its intake policies. A word of encouragement to them from you would probably be welcomed. They are anxious that they will be deluged with applications. Experience does not bear this out—as a matter of fact, we have to reach out for Negro girls. Your experience will help them to move into a new service more comfortably.49

The idea that black unwed mothers would overrun public services available previously only to white mothers was a fear based upon historical conceptions of high rates of fertility and unwed mothering and intrinsic immorality of black women. Furthermore, black unwed motherhood at this point remained linked with what was characterized as an inherent immorality and irresponsibility in black culture, marking the problem of black unwed pregnancy virtually untreatable. The 1965 publication and debate over the Moynihan Report on “the Negro family,” and corresponding rise of a “culture of poverty” thesis provided support for those who believed that black individuals and families were inherently inferior.50 Further, it was strongly felt that white unwed mothers would be harmed by placement with black unwed mothers and that such inter-racial mixing even among women might increase the number of biracial births.51 These beliefs likely contributed to and reinforced a refocus of attention on the white unwed mother, while still relegating the black unwed mother as untreatable. A public and policy focus on white unwed mothering would work to differentiate the white unwed mother from the black unwed mother, even under forced desegregation of services.


For this to work the white unwed mother could not be just any white unwed mother, but one who would make a sympathetic subject. Media and policy makers found that sympathetic subject, proclaiming that “our girls” (white, middle-class girls) were at risk of becoming pregnant and that something must be done.52 1975 marked teen pregnancy’s “official” emergence as a social problem when Congress held its first hearing on teen pregnancy and Senator Edward Kennedy introduced his “National SchoolAge Mother and Child Health Act,” which did not pass but served to bring teens and their behavior to public attention.53 In 1976 the First Interhemispheric Conference on Adolescent Fertility was held in Virginia, attended by almost 160 people representing 39 nations. The conference report echoing AGI’s epidemic language, issued the following statement: Close to 13 million of the 60 million women who became mothers in 1975 became parents before they became adults . . . Early childbearing is increasing everywhere, is emerging as a serious problem in many countries, and has reached alarming levels in others.54

This report further not only drew attention to the number of U.S. teens becoming pregnant but focused attention upon who was getting pregnant. An AGI spokesperson put it succinctly in a 1978 hearing: “unintended pregnancy . . . is happening to our young women, not only among the poor and minority groups, but in all socioeconomic groups . . . (It’s happening) . . . to ‘our daughters.’”55 As Jennifer Mittelstadt notes by “the mid1970s, the previously socially ostracized pregnant teenager became the object of concern and compassion among policy makers.”56 Policy makers responded with legislation and funding for preventative measures including major legislation dealing with expanding access to birth control. The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade established legal access to abortion counseling and procedures. With the recharacterization of the problem of teen pregnancy as a white, middle-class problem, pressure mounted not only to develop preventive programs but to also change existing conditions for unwed mothers. Similar to earlier constructions of white unwed mothers as women who had “fallen” but were worthy and capable of redemption through treatment, the white, middle-class teen mother of the 1970s was constructed as a young woman who had made a mistake—a mistake that should not be held against her or ruin her whole life. Not only should this teen mother be shown compassion, she was also entitled to certain rights. Up to this point, pregnant/parenting teens were excluded officially and unofficially from participation in school and social-based activities, associations, and organizations. One of the primary conditions that needed changing in the 1970s was the middle-class white pregnant girl’s access to a


public school education. Certainly such girls were not only deserving of an education, but were entitled to receive an equal and quality education and policy makers set out to protect this right, and did so in 1972 with the passage of Title IX. Prior to Title IX school-age mothers were routinely dismissed from school. Title IX clearly established the right of the school-age mother to receive an education and not just any education but an education equal to her peers. Title IX established specific provisions for governing schooling for teen mothers. It states: [A] recipient [of federal funding] shall not discriminate against any student, or exclude any student from its education program or activity . . . on the basis of such student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery therefrom, unless the student requests voluntarily to participate in a separate portion of the program.57

Furthermore, Title IX requires that any separate facility set up for teen mothers must be “comparable to that offered to nonpregnant teens.”58 Title IX is clearly the most significant legislation impacting and protecting the provision of education to school-age mothers. However, when tracing the impact of Title IX from 1972 to the present, it is vital to situate the passage of Title IX as occurring under and in response to a representation of teen mothers as “our girls.” After the passage of Title IX, immediate access to schooling for school-age mothers increased dramatically between 1975 and 1986 for white teen mothers, while decreasing for black teen mothers.59 In effect, Title IX increased access to schooling differentially by race of the teen mother enacting the prevalent political ideology of the time and providing evidence of Title IX’s initial conception as an entitlement policy focused upon the white teen mother. Further policy responses during the 1970s clearly focused on the white middle-class unwed mother, guaranteeing her access to health services and further establishing her entitlement to education. By 1978, the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs had been established under the Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act, overseeing development and implementation of programs, both preventative and treatment, for teen mothers. Attention to “our girls” and girls who were victims focused policy discussion on comprehensive services for teen mothers, including education, health, and social services available from pregnancy until at least two years after delivery. This is not to discount that there still were prevalent ideas about the teen mother as a “bad girl,” but for the most part policy discussions in the 1970s focused upon helping the teen mother linked with constructions of teen mothers as “our girls.” While there was concern and debate over making teen pregnancy too “attractive” and specifically debate around issues like abortion counseling, the


majority discourse during this period was on providing comprehensive services to the teen mother, even though policy makers still knew little at this time about which comprehensive services really mattered or how to implement such services.60 An emphasis upon middle-income white teen age girls kept policy makers focused upon provision of equal access for the teen mother and a continuation of focus upon “our girls” was consistent across research reports and articles as evidence in a 1979 Phi Delta Kappan article which noted: “despite the traditional portrayal of increased early sexual activity among minorities and the poor, recent evidence points toward increasing sexual activity at earlier ages among middle- and upper-class white teenagers.”61 The focus upon white middle-income unwed, teen pregnancies has continued to be used specifically to draw attention to teen pregnancy as a policy issue in order to garnish funding and support for policies, specifically policy initiatives that provide services to teen mothers. For example, a 1986 Children’s Defense Fund brochure states in bold print “Teen Pregnancy is Epidemic” with smaller print explaining that this epidemic occurred “across all races and classes of American youth today.”62 Further the brochure admonishes the reader that, again in bold, “Teen Pregnancy Affects You” explaining “it could happen to your child, your niece, your grandchild, your friend’s child, or your school or Sunday school pupil unless you begin to think of ways to help children avoid tooearly sexual activity, pregnancy, and parenthood.”63 This construction of teen pregnancy as epidemic and of the potential teen mother as a “child” intimately connected with ourselves is a continued attempt to get the issue of teen pregnancy upon the policy agenda through an “our girl” discourse. However, while the use of the discursive image of “our girls” continued through the 1980s and is still sometimes present in teen pregnancy discourse, (see figure 3), this construction of the teen mother as a compassionate and entitled subject was short lived in the policy arena. By the mid-1980s, discourses of the “other” girl worked their way into, existing beside, and differentiated from discourses of the teen unwed mother as “our girl” opening a new wave of policy response to the problem of teen pregnancy. The Teen Mother as the “Other” Girl By the mid-1980s teen pregnancy had become linked with social welfare policy and reform (specifically Aid to Families with Dependent Children, AFDC) and the teen mother became synonymous with the welfare mother. Furthermore, a new discourse of welfare dependency linked with prevalent discourses about a cycle of poverty was closely linked with racialized assumptions about who was poor and who was most at risk to be dependent upon welfare.64 In this portrait of welfare dependency, the teen mother became the welfare dependent mother, the “welfare queen” as President


Fig. 3 “Multiply/Subtract: Adolescent pregnancy isn’t just a problem in America, it’s a crisis.” Copyright Children’s Defense Fund. Used by permission.

Ronald Reagan dubbed her, and was also assumed to be and symbolized by the black unwed mother.65 Teen pregnancy during the 1980s was again described as an epidemic, not, however, as a sympathetic epidemic but one redefined as a social ill, linked with poverty, immorality, and promiscuity. The most cited reasons for high rates of young, unwed pregnancy included, changing societal values that make sexual activity and out-of-wedlock childbearing more acceptable, changing family structure, the portrayal of sex in the

Constructing Teen Pregnancy as a Problem • 35 media, the earlier maturation of teenagers today, and the ready availability of methods of birth control.66

This focus on the societal and cultural causes of teen pregnancy led to an increase in moral discussions of teen pregnancy and female sexuality as well as the negative impact of feminism on gender roles in society and families. Backlashes to the feminist movement, which was characterized as turning women into men and making women feel guilty about being housewives, encouraged a return to married motherhood for white, middle-class women. Correspondingly, the image of the teen pregnant girl shifted in the political and public mind. She was no longer “our girl next door” but the “other girl.” Several discourses were present in making the teen pregnant girl the “other.” They included: • Teen pregnancy was again marked as an epidemic, but this time as a “brown” epidemic • Teen pregnancy was linked with a cycle of poverty and resituated as a social welfare issue • The teen mother was represented not as the “[white] girl next door” but as the “[black] welfare mother” and this phenomena was linked with “the decline of the black family” • Teen mothers were identified as “children having children,” as irresponsible and promiscuous, often the result of lenient social policy and a decline of the responsible family unit These discourses, which are still recirculated today, create a different discursive environment for policy development and implementation than the early 1970s emphasis on funding for program development and services to aid teen mothers. Creating policy for the “other” girl is very different for making policy for “our girls.” Further the policies and initiatives created under an ideology of “our girls,” were viewed by many as being too lenient, too approving of the sexually active unwed woman, and too accommodating of the unwed mother, allowing for a linkage of such policies with a decline of family values and disruption of gender roles. All of the discursive structures above depend upon constructing teen pregnancy as an epidemic. The marking of teen pregnancy as an epidemic during the 1980s is ironic given that teen birthrates were at their lowest level in twenty years and on the decline. For example, in 1985 the Children’s Defense Fund wrote that “birth rates for all but the very youngest teens, those younger than 15, have dropped significantly since 1970.”67 What did rise in the 1980s were the number of births to unmarried women.68 Further, close analysis of the so-called epidemic of the 1980s reveals that it occurred within a racialized context.


The policies and programs of the 1970s provided access for women to health care, contraceptive choices, and abortions. However, due to the effects of societal and institutional racism, women’s access to the benefits of such policies and programs varied according to their race. During the 1970s white women experienced and benefited from shifting attitudes toward women’s sexuality and had increased access to information about female sexuality, birth control options, and abortions, while black women did not experience this increased access. Such access to information, products, and services alongside white women’s increased access to higher education and careers, led to a decrease and delay in marriage and childbearing to white women overall, with the result that by the 1980s early childbearing began to be concentrated among poor and black women.69 Teen pregnancy birthrates tend to follow national trends for birthrates to women overall. By the mid-1980s, birthrates to white women, including white teens, were declining, while birthrates to black women, including black teens, remained the same.70 At the same time Latinos were gaining attention as one the largest immigrant populations in the United States and Latina teen pregnancy began to be monitored. So, although birthrates to black women had not dramatically increased during the 1980s the birthrates of white women, particularly middle-income white women, declined. What these trends in birthrates meant for the “changing face of America” was made clear by a cover story in Time magazine in 1990 depicting a “browning of America.” As young women embody the “problem” of teen pregnancy literally and figuratively, Nancy Lesko observes of the Time article: Girls of different colors, shapes, ages with babies in their arms or on their laps stare out from the pages of Time. . . . Young women with extended bellies or small children both represent and are the problem of sexual irresponsibility and failure to delay motherhood.71

Yet the Time story went further noting that given present trends in lower birthrates to white middle-class mothers and higher birthrates to black mothers, U.S. society would move from white to brown to black. As black mothers and the black community were assumed to be impoverished, culturally and economically, a “browning” of America raised fears about creation of a predominant lower-class in the United States. In 1986 a special issue of Education Week projecting the school-age population for the next twenty years proclaimed, “A country without a middle-class majority will simply not be the America we have known.”72 These symbolic demographic representations provide a context for situating (minority) teen pregnancy as a “crisis” specifically when the number of births to white middle-class Americans is slowing and many


middle- and higher-income Americans regard “their own position vis-ávis increasing numbers of immigrants and minorities in a shrinking economy, as well as concern for the U.S. economic viability.”73 Could it be that white women’s birthrates would continue to decline as white women gained access to education and career paths previously not open to them? Is it possible that the white middle-class could shrink, while a Black and Latino middle- and lower-class grows? Is it possible that “minorities” will outnumber white Americans? And is it further possible, that specifically black and brown Americans will become a majority in the United States? These questions and the pictorial display of a “brown to black” America caused fear and alarm and situated the issue of teen pregnancy as primarily a concern over who was having children as a national social concern. The sense of crisis surrounding the above questions led to a shift in how the problem of teen pregnancy was popularly thought. Although the beginning of the 1980s focused upon “children having children” and upon teens becoming sexually active at “too young” an age emphasizing the belief that teens should not be engaged in such behavior, attention soon shifted to asking who was fit to have a child.74 This shift should be viewed not as naturally occurring, but used strategically and purposefully to support and limit certain political and public discourse.75 Such a shift also allows for highly racialized and recognized discourses to predominate without the speaker or listener having to acknowledge the presence of racism. A sense of crisis and a discourse of epidemics brings out highly coded language and phrases that stand in for race, yet the exact sense of crisis limits questions of such usages. These discursive shifts around a social problem, like teen pregnancy, have a dramatic impact upon the development of social and educational policy.76 For instance, Linda McClain identifies three rhetorical models of irresponsibility that defined unfit mothering during this time—”the single mother, the welfare mother, and the teen mother.” She also identified three corresponding aspects of irresponsibility “immorality, unaccountability, and incapacity.”77 Embedded in the discursive debate over teen pregnancy were questions such as, what age is too young to have a child? and who is to poor, and thus too irresponsible to have a child? Teen pregnancy became the link and explanation for a whole host of other social problems, including poverty, premature birth, low birth rate, an increase in dropout rates for high school, skyrocketing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) costs, and a high rate of fertility among African Americans. Cultural poverty arguments returned to the forefront of public and political discourse locating the epidemic of teen pregnancy within a range of social problems, all of which were specifically attributable to black communities and families.


Constance Nathanson links the construction of teen pregnancy as a “black single mother problem” to its “dazzling” rise to crisis level.78 Fear and alarm over the construction of teen pregnancy as a problem based upon a manipulation of birthrates yielded a “statistical formulation of the teenage pregnancy ‘problem’ and its commonsense ‘solution’” as “neutral and objective,” while as Bonnie Trudell argues, “it actually embodies particular economic and social interests as well as normative assumptions about cultural meaning and what constitutes legitimate sexual expression.”79 Understanding teen pregnancy as a problem of cultural deficiency within the black family remains a prevalent and assumed discourse today and continues to evoke epidemic logic supporting increased surveillance of all female sexuality and regulation of specifically black female sexuality. The epidemic and crisis of teen pregnancy in the 1980s, was grounded in concerns about declining white birthrates and steady or rising black birthrates and resulted in two overarching discourses that impacted policy development. The first, as mentioned above, established a linkage of teen pregnancy as a major cause of poverty. Thus teen pregnancy became a social welfare issue and the problem of teen pregnancy was resituated from an entitlement policy concern, prevalent in the 1970s, to a concern of the taxpayer. The second prevalent discourse situated within a discursive climate of institionalized racism located the black family as culturally deficit, incapable of passing on (white) American values of responsibility and morality. Additionally, due to higher rates of abortion and adoption among white teens, the increase in sexual activity in this group yielded lower rates of birth than those of black teens and became a focus of the new Moral Majority in the United States. Increasing rates of sexual activity among white teens, whether such activity resulted in a pregnancy or not, was a point of concern and attributed to what broadly became referred to as a “decline of family values.” This discourse barely masked a racial concern—that black girls seemingly inherent sexually active nature and their irresponsibility and immorality not “rub off ” on white teen girls and that births to white women occur in stable, married, economically viable relationships. Consider the following quote attributed to a family life teacher in the Washington Post, “the sexual mores that used to be attributed to lower-class kids from public housing are now rampant among affluent whites.”80 Note that while the race of the “lower-class kids from public housing” is not specified, it is not necessary for the author to identify these kids as black. The reader knows who the teacher is referring to through code words like “public housing” and the demarcation of the “affluent white” kids. Such commentaries insidiously reproduce discourses that place the blame for a decline of family values within the understood deviancy of the black family and the black fe-


male. Further embedded within this discourse is a renewed interest and concern about unwed mothers. Single parents (meaning single mothers) were situated as inadequate family units and single parenting was associated with a range of social and educational problems for the child. Single-parent families and poor families became constructed as unsatisfactory environments for creating self-sufficient, rational, life-planning, optimistic, upwardly mobile children. Lesko argues that “the problem of teenage pregnancy is part of a social logic and politics that discredits single mothers (who are overwhelmingly poor) by blaming their economic and family traits on bad values.”81 “Single-parent,” “one-parent” and “low-income” households represent discourses that define the teen mother and signal rampant negative social ramifications not only for the individual experiencing these categories but for society. These categories also locate blame. The assumed problems linked with teen pregnancy and the containment and control of teen girls’ sexuality are justifiable because pregnant girls are deemed irresponsible, and place a burden upon taxpayers, social services, and the U.S. economy.

Governmental Legislation Regulating Teen Mothers The overarching discourses surrounding teen pregnancy yielded a twopronged policy focus that began in the late 1970s and has continued to the present day. The two-tiered approach is about controlling and regulating who has children and under what circumstances. Since it seemed white women in particular had responded to health and reproductive policies and legal decisions of the 1960s and 1970s by increasing their unwed sexual activity, it was deemed necessary by the early 1980s to repeal easy access to services that may promote sexual activity. In particular, teen girls were seen as easy targets to restrict access to information, availability, and services. After all, by this point, the teen mother was situated as irresponsible and incapable. The Hyde Amendment of 1976 began an initial repeal in public funding for abortion counseling clinics and placed restrictions on what adult health care workers, teachers, and counselors could say to teens about sexual contraception and abortion availability. The 1978 Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act focused upon teen pregnancy prevention and community and citizenship responsibility.82 With a Republican president and Republican control of the senate a platform was created to reduce federal domestic programs, while endorsing funding to promote sexual abstinence in teen programs.83 In 1981 Orrin Hatch sponsored the Adolescent Family Life Act, commonly known as the “chastity bill,” which superseded the 1978 Act, spurred


“Just say no,” campaigns, and put chastity into policy as a primary means of preventing teen pregnancy. During the Reagan era, the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy promoted sexual abstinence and one program to come out of this was the idea of school-based “Chastity Centers.” Chastity Center programs firmly established sexual abstinence as an official policy response to problems of teen sexuality and childbearing.84 Chastity Centers focused upon single teens and firmly defined the problem as unmarried teen sex. As Connaught Marshner, a leading New Right spokeswoman stated “they [liberals] begin with the premise that teenagers should not have babies. We begin with the premise that single teenagers should not have sex.”85 Liberals who attempted to counter such policies often appeared to be promoting teen sexual activity. Although in 1981 representative Toby Moffet, Democrat, predicted to the New York Times that implementing the chastity centers would mean, “we’ll be laughed out of every junior high school in America,”86 the political climate was such that anything other than abstinence was situated as promoting teen sex. At the same time that legislators were active in decreasing teen’s access to reproductive services and information while increasingly pushing for abstinence, social welfare legislation increasingly targeted the pregnant teen, specifically the black female teen. Social welfare policy has historically been focused upon controlling and regulating female sexuality, particularly black female sexuality.87 In tracing policy regulation it is important to understand how earlier constructions of white women’s bodies and sexuality as differed from constructions of black women’s bodies and sexuality, and how these differences impact present-day policy discourse and policy decisions.88 Three welfare polices passed in the mid-1980s that restricted income support, choice of living arrangements, and options for education and employment, specifically for low-income teen mothers reflected a perspective of irresponsible parenting. In 1984, changes in federal law affecting AFDC instituted a “grandparent deeming” clause which mandated that all of a household’s resources be counted as available to support the child for whom AFDC eligibility is being sought. Thus responsible parenting was not only aimed at the teen mother but at her family in an effort to fix and place responsibility on families that were seen as being irresponsible, in this case low-income families. The second policy change, the development of the Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA) allowed states to require that the minor teen parent live with her parent(s) in order to receive AFDC. While most minor parents do live with their parents or guardians, this policy meant that if teen mother wished to live on her own, she must demonstrate why she should not live with her parent(s) or guardian. This act focused upon the issue of “welfare


dependency.” If the teen mother is allowed to set up her own separate household on welfare, she is more likely to develop a long term dependency upon welfare, a dependency facilitated by social policy. The combination of these two provisions makes it difficult for the teen mother to take on responsibilities and establish herself at the head of a household. A third policy change embedded within the FSA, focused upon education and employment training for welfare recipients. Teen mothers under this provision are treated separately and differentially more harshly than other unwed mothers receiving welfare assistance. In a form of “tough love” programming for teen mothers, FSA deemed that each state require welfare recipients who are teen mothers and have not completed high school to return to school full time immediately after the birth of their child (previous to the passage of this policy most mothers were exempt from a forced return to school or workforce if their youngest child was under age 3 or in some state under 1 year of age). Additionally, FSA determined that if the teen mother at age eighteen or nineteen was failing to make appropriate progress in school, than the state could require her to participate in whatever work/training programs the state deemed appropriate. These policy changes clearly situate society’s interest in ensuring that the low-income teen mother will become economically self-sufficient. At the same time these policies work to take decision making away from the teen mother, and as the following section emphasizes, were particularly aimed at fixing the black family in the United States.

“Black Family” Discourse of the 1980s Key to policy debates and initiatives of the 1980s was a national focus on “the decline of the black family.” As noted previously crisis discourses and a culture of poverty ideology focused government attention—in the form of regulation and surveillance—upon the black family. The discursive construction of “the decline” and the “crisis of the Black family” yielded public and political discussions, and similar to epidemic talk surrounding teen pregnancy, called for government intervention in the black family. Prior to and during Reagan’s executive terms, he was highly influential in focusing public and policy attention upon the black, unwed mother through his construction of the “welfare queen.”89 Reagan’s depiction of the black, unwed mother who abuses the tax payer by cheating on and abusing the social welfare system became iconical. It did not matter that Reagan grossly overstated the case he initially based this image on, there did not need to be any specific proof of abuse, Reagan’s metaphor captured and reinforced public belief and sentiment. Although factually a myth, the image of the black welfare queen drove social welfare policy


discourse and further situated the black family in the United States as deficit.90 Amid heated social welfare policy debates of the mid-1980s and the airing of a Bill Moyer television show on the “vanishing” Black family, Ebony published a 1986 issue devoted to “the crisis of the Black family” calling it “perhaps the biggest crisis blacks have faced since slavery time.”91 The editors of Ebony noted that attention to the black family, dominated the Black and the Black/White dialogue in 1986, pushing all other issues to the side . . . day after night after day, the controversy raged, making 1986 the year of the Black family or, to be precise, the year of public discussion of the Black family.92

While the editors of Ebony clearly argued that the controversy “reflected the fears and misconceptions that have always surrounded discussions of Black sexuality”93 and linked a mourning of the “death of the Black family” to endemic and historical racism, they also stayed within national discourse about the problem of teen pregnancies and unwed mothering asking, “What can be done about children having children? How do we stop the alarming increase in the number of female-headed households?”94 Articles by Maya Angelou, Marian Wright Edelman, Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., and Alex Haley attempted to rewrite a racialized and sexualized history for black Americans, but the articles and editorial comments remain focused upon mainstream sentiment noting the problems of unwed mothering and finding solutions in strengthening the presence of the two-parent heterosexual family unit in the black community. However, it is important to note that while the discourses around the problems of teen pregnancy and unwed mothering in this issue of Ebony are similar to popular ideology (e.g., that unwed mothering is bad and marriage is the solution), the authors in Ebony do propose different methods to achieve the solution of decreasing teen sexual activity and increasing marriage. While political social welfare policy discourse and public sentiment during the mid-1980s was focused upon the lack of responsibility of the (black) unwed welfare mother and the need for stringent controls and a reduction in support services that yield co-dependence, Ebony editors and authors call for means, such as improved access to quality education, mentoring, job training, livable wages, adequate housing, and health care. Yet, proposing different means to achieve the same goals was lost in the predominant crisis mode of political and public discourse. Further, a focus within Ebony upon the problems of the black family in language similar to that in mainstream media and political discourse continues to keep “The Black Family” as continually the focus of analysis, the lens through which to analyze and name the problems of unwed pregnancy


and social welfare abuse. The black family, and specifically the black woman, remains the visual image and discursive portrait of what is wrong in America. Although several researchers continued to point out that “teenage sexual activity, pregnancy and childbearing are not confined to poor, innercity populations” and that “rates of sexual activity among white teens have increased faster than rates among black teens, and the increase in births to unmarried teens is entirely attributable to whites,”95 public perceptions and policy discourse remained focused upon black unwed pregnancies. The strength of the discursive structure of the “crisis of the black family” is evidenced in how it has been attributed not only to low-income unwed black mothers but also to the now increasing rise of black female professionals, who similar to white middle-income women of the 1970s, often delayed marriage and childbearing. Consider the attention and debate created around Liz Walker, a prominent Black female anchorwoman in Boston, and her decision in 1987 to continue her pregnancy as an unwed woman and become a single mother. Ms. Walker, surprised at the amount of negative attention her decision caused, found herself located within and representative of a “new” crisis in the black family. Regardless of the fact that Liz Walker, who at that time was thirty-six and made over $500,000 annually, was not the unwed mother targeted by social policy, she was upheld as a symbol of the effects of shifting gender roles and lenient morals and policies that were leading to a decline of family values in the United States. The fact that she is black only added to the visibility of her downfall. Liz Walker was placed alongside the fictional Murphy Brown, the difference being she is black and thus accountable to and responsible for a crisis in the black family. 96 As a pastor from a church in east Boston summarized, “She is very attractive, very articulate and she is black.”97 Walker’s case also led to divided feminist responses, leaving feminist spokespeople talking about class and means as an indicator of responsible childbearing, noting that Liz Walker “knows she has enough to have a child” and citing the differences between “a mature, financially capable woman making a decision and an immature, financially incapable woman making a decision.”98 Thus while media coverage sought a black response that focused upon the problem of Walker’s (black) unwed mothering status, feminist responses ignored Liz Walker’s race, focusing solely upon her class status. This feminist construction of unwed mothering not only allowed a continued focus upon defining and naming “bad,” “incapable,” “irresponsible” unwed mothers as simply low-income mothers, but reinforced existing conservative political discourses that opened the way for sanctioned control of certain women’s sexuality and mothering.


Such polemical and emotional debates situate the discourses surrounding teen pregnancy as always occurring within debates around the role of women and the problems of unwed mothering. The linkages of the problems of unwed mothering with teen pregnancy continue today, allowing for assumptive discourses to prevail in descriptions and definitions of the teen mother as in the following statement: “given that the attributes ‘poor’ and ‘single-parent’ do a good job of describing the typical teenage family arrangement.”99 We, the public and policy makers, understand without having to be convinced that teen mothers are more likely to be abusive parents, neglectful, irresponsible, and less competent. The 1996 congressional hearings on teen pregnancy continued to situate the problems of teen pregnancy upon a “decline of the American family” with one witness noting “our current teen pregnancy crisis evolved over several generations when the social fabric became worn and tattered and began to unravel.”100 The teen mother in the hearings is described as “more likely to be uneducated, unskilled, unmarried, and caught in a cycle of poverty.”101 In these hearings, the linkage of this decline of family values remains firmly situated within the problems of the black community with several witnesses calling for bringing morality through “abstinence” into “public housing developments.”102 Dr. Foster, advisor to former President Clinton stated.“I tried to look at what might be considered middle-class values that were good” and he describes how he has taken kids to airports, Disney World, Washington D.C., and the “office of a multimillionaire in Atlanta.” When describing the impact of his programs he recalls the effect of a visit to an airport, But for those kids to see these marvelous machines glistening in the sun that can weigh 400,000 pounds at takeoff, to hear them, to see them, to see black pilots, to see women pilots, to see all these people going and coming, that creates a sense of excitement.103

The ideological construction of the black family and community as dysfunctional drove social policy talk in the 1980s and continues today. In this way, the black unwed mother continues to be linked with a host of social problems. However, attention to the black mother and the black family is not occurring out of some primary (white) national concern for the well-being of the black family, but rather has everything to do with the linkage of unwed mothering with economic costs to the United States.104 Citing the extensive economic costs of unwed teen mothers, a 1994 article makes a connection between teen parenting and “a weaker less-competitive economy,” noting that “given that our chief economic rivals, Japan and Western Europe, have much lowered teenage birthrates . . . teenage childbearing could also be viewed as a liability to America’s global economic competitiveness.”105


Thus while discourses of “declining family values” and “cultural breakdown” in the United States have been and are situated as a crisis for white America, debates about the causal factors of this crisis are located within the assumed dysfunction of the black family and community. Epidemic logic in response to this crisis yields interventions or regulation and control of the black family not simply because, as Dinesh D’Souza pointedly notes the “effects of cultural breakdown are particularly harsh and bitter when it comes to African Americans in general, and poor blacks in particular,”106 but to protect white families and communities from the unhealthiness of black families and communities. Epidemic logic reinforces strategic and regulatory interventions aimed at keeping the problems of black families from seeping into white culture. D’Souza further feeds epidemic logic when he situates the problems of the black family as attributable to all African Americans themselves citing their “very heavy and perhaps excessive reliance on government” and “a sometimes virtual paranoia that racism is to blame for all problems.”107 Such comments work to continually support an ideology of black families as dysfunctional and black individuals, particularly unwed black mothers, as lazy and irresponsible. The black community is not the only “minority” group presumed to be culturally inferior as evidenced in repeated remarks about Hispanics in the United States. In example, Dr. William Archer III, the health commissioner in Texas who has worked with President George W. Bush, and served under the President Bush Sr. as deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in 2000 that “Hispanics lack that cultural belief that getting pregnant is a bad thing.”108 In this way, Latino/a communities, particularly immigrant and Mexican-American families, are situated as over-reproductive, producing large families, over-crowding and overwhelming schools with their specialized language “problems.” As the U.S. Latina/o population continues to grow and Latina teen pregnancy rates gain more public and policy scrutiny it is likely that further constructions of the Latina teen mother will be featured in public and political discourse. The implications in terms of policy and practice of the persistent racialization of teen pregnancy are explored throughout the remaining chapters. In the last section of this chapter I provide an overview of what the discourses structuring teen pregnancy have meant for education.

Where Is Education? The 1980s discursive focus upon a culture of poverty and a lack of morality and corresponding emphasis upon the black woman and black family, saw a clear shift away from a focus on educating the school-age mother, a shift that allowed other political initiatives to flourish. Indeed, funding for


agencies serving the educational needs of pregnant teens was cut in half during Ronald Reagan’s administration and the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy was refigured to provide information on and support to the promotion of sexual abstinence as official policy.109 The Reagan and Bush eras saw heightened attention to who should or should not be having sex, affirmed that such attention was our rightly moral concern, and increased focus and funding on preventing teen pregnancy through abstinence education, further portraying the pregnant teen girl as immoral, irresponsible, and a drain on society.110 Before assuming however that this shift in teen pregnancy as a social welfare problem was a partisan issue, we need only to look at what was said about teen pregnancy during the Clinton administration (1992–2000). Indeed, President Clinton named teen pregnancy as one of the “seven great challenges” facing the United States in his 1996 State of Union Address and that same year initiated a National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy.111 In a weekly radio address in 1996, President Clinton emphasized, “We have to make it clear that a baby doesn’t give you a right and won’t give you the money to leave home and drop out of school.”112 Clinton clearly linked “illegitimate births” with poverty, and situated the problem of teen pregnancy with welfare reform and the economic stability of the United States: “we want to talk about teen pregnancy, because it is a moral problem and a personal problem and a challenge that individual young people should face and because it has reached such proportions that it is a very significant economic and social problem for the United States.”113 Although in his speech announcing the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy Clinton did mention education, it was linked to making “the most of their [teen parents] own lives in the work force or to succeed themselves as parents.”114 It is notable that of the twelve “leaders in the field of helping our young people” who would first run the campaign, only one came from the field of education, and this person was a university president.115 It is interesting and important to note that at the same time teen pregnancy was in the political and media limelight, education had become a noteworthy political and executive issue. Similar to the issue of teen pregnancy, the “failure” of U.S. public education was situated as a crisis in need of immediate and drastic response by four consecutive presidents. However, even amidst this heightened discussion of education for all, schoolage mothers did not become education subjects. Despite massive political and executive level attention to the status of education in the United States with publications such as A Nation at Risk, Goals 2000, and No Child Left Behind, discussions of educational policy affecting teen mothers had been effectively removed from the educational arena. Although the metaphor of


“crisis” referred to both the failure of education in the United States and the “epidemic of children having children,” the discourses defining teen pregnancy firmly situated teen pregnancy as a social welfare policy issue and thus outside of the education crisis. The emphasis and linkage of teen pregnancy with welfare reform led to dramatically decreased funding and attention to educational policy and educational programs for school-age mothers and further supported the practice of legislators, policy makers, and policy analysts outside the field of education to be the ones developing policy determining the purpose of education for school-age mothers, a trend that continues today.116 In this way, when education of teen mothers is discussed it is linked with training teen mothers to be economically self-sufficient. The teen mother’s sexual activity and pregnancy, particularly the low-income teen mother’s, make her first and always a welfare subject and an unfit subject for education. No where is this discourse more prevalent than in the Republican-sponsored “Contract with America” and the ensuing welfare reform act of 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The discursive emphasis in the Contract for America is clearly on protecting the tax-paying American citizen who is tired of paying for the irresponsibility and immorality shown by unwed mothers: Have an illegitimate baby and taxpayers will guarantee you cash, food stamps, and medical care, plus a host of other benefits. As long as you are single and don’t work, we’ll continue giving you benefits worth a minimum of $12000 a year. It’s time to change the incentives and make responsible parenthood the norm and not the exception. So we commit to under the THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-andout provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.117

The regulation of unwed teen pregnancy was by this time firmly situated as a legitimate social concern and more emphatically as a societal right. As a citizen I have the right to have my interests, fiscal and moral, protected by decreasing irresponsible unwed teen pregnancies. An Emmett, Idaho, prosecutor, concerned over high rates of teen pregnancy in his district, sought to bring charges against teen mothers (note that only women were the target of his prosecution) in 1996 using a 1921 Idaho law banning sex by unmarried persons, stated: “It is absolutely inarguable that the state has a compelling interest in preventing the transmission and spread of sexually transmitted diseases as well as preventing teen pregnancies”118 This “inarguable” interest became key to the passage of the most restrictive welfare reform package to date, the PRWORA of 1996, fostered under the tutelage of a Democratic president and a Republican congress.


PRWORA established a welfare block grant program, Temporary Assistance to Need Families (TANF), which specifically requires pregnant/parenting teens to live with a parent/guardian/approved adult and enroll and attend school. If teen parents do not meet these requirements they are not eligible for welfare assistance. Until TANF, under the 1988 FSA, states could individually decide whether to require and enforce educational activities for the school-age mother. Under TANF, states no longer have this choice; they must require school or training for the unmarried school-age mother (up to age eighteen or nineteen, although states may include older mothers in this requirement) who receives welfare assistance. TANF does allow for states to decide how to implement this requirement, including provision for the use of sanctions, typically in the form of reducing the family grant for school-age mothers who do not meet the school/training requirement. TANF also includes provision for states to further implement sanctions against out of wedlock births and set “family caps” that would deny assistance for additional births to an unwed teen mother already receiving TANF. PRWORA is also the first welfare reform policy to combine the twotiered approach to the problem of teen pregnancy in one policy. On the one hand, PRWORA through TANF regulates the low-income teen mother, while on the other hand PRWORA also includes policy and funding (nearly 500 million in federal and state funds) for an Abstinence Education Program, under the Maternal Child Health Block Grant, targeting all teens. Prior to 1996, abstinence education was handled under the Adolescent Family Life Program, as described above. The new 1996 program links social welfare funding with abstinence and legislates a set of themes for funded abstinence programs. States are not required to participate, but only one state did not participate in 1998.119 It is important to note that the funding for abstinence education available under PRWORA is for a specific type of abstinence education, that is abstinence-only meaning abstinence from unmarrried sex throughout life, and cannot be used in conjunction with other programs in a school that provide any information about contraceptives to unmarried teens. This law was passed even though there was and remains no research “providing clear evidence that abstinence-unless-married education helps reduce sexual activity or birth rates.”120 More dramatic to note is that 1996 legislation and funding came at a time when teen pregnancy rates were continuing to decline.121 What all of the welfare reform packages fail to acknowledge is that the burden of parenting with little resources—whether economic, health, or education—remains whether the low-income single mother is a teen mother or mother of twenty-four years. Some researchers have recently begun to question easily held assumptions between the causal effect of


teen pregnancy and poverty, arguing instead that more than 80 percent of teen mothers are living in poverty or near poverty long before they became pregnant.122 If these women just waited a few more years before having children, then they and society would be better off is an unfounded assumption. What if teen pregnancy does not cause poverty in single mothers but the social and structural inequities of single mothering overburdens all mothers? How do recent policies open access to opportunity for young women and low-income mothers? Caught up in epidemic discourses and logic, such questions have not been popular or even viable. The present administration’s “compassionate conservatism” does not look different from the previous two decades in its characterization of the unwed teen mother as irresponsible, culturally deficit, and in need of regulation and surveillance. At the same time it seems that access to and funding for contraceptive and abortion counseling will continue to be cut. President George W. Bush’s budget plan proposed ending a requirement that national health care programs provide reimbursement for multiple forms of contraceptives, including the birth control pill, the IUD, and the diaphragm.123 Further, President George W. Bush’s recent executive order to provide health care to all low-income women who are pregnant sets a tone for continued policy changes affecting the teen mother. Close examination reveals that President Bush’s plan, administered under the Children’s Health Insurance Program and seemingly compassionate in its attention to the lowincome woman, is not focused upon care of the unwed mother, but is focused upon the “unborn child.” Under Bush’s plan, in order for low-income mothers to receive health care during pregnancy, the definition of “child” would have to be expanded to include the unborn fetus, thus marking the beginning of “childhood” at conception, not birth. Such a move obviously opens the door for challenges to access and provision of abortion in the United States and this policy ignores the dearth of health benefits for low-income Americans. Further this move once again situates the unwed mother as not worthy of treatment herself—the state’s interest is not in her but in her innocent unborn child. Deborah Brake refers such polices as “fetuscentric” noting an increased focus on “fetuscentric” policy and case law.124 As Lynn Paltrow, director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women told a New York Times reporter, this maneuver to create insurance for unborn children both personifies the fetus and accentuates the fact that women themselves are neither full persons under the law, nor valued enough to be funded themselves.125

Thus, it seems the construction of the problem of unwed and teen mothers as unfit subjects and as a social welfare and taxpayer issue will continue. While the late 1990s saw a plethora of articles announcing a “steady drop


in teen birth rates” with Planned Parenthood, social welfare reform advocates, and abstinence-only groups each claiming victory for the results of their public messages and policy interventions, the “drop” is not so convincing when examined closely.126 While African-American teen girls’ birth rates did decline in the early 1990s, Caucasian birthrates decreased little, and Latina teen birthrates rose significantly. Further, part of the decrease in rates can be attributed to a smaller group of adolescent girls than in earlier decades meaning the myriad of social and welfare policies implemented in the early to mid-1990s cannot be effectively linked to any decrease in teen pregnancy birthrates. Given the current political climate, with a focus upon “homeland security” and the looming specter of war and “reconstruction,” and the Bush administration’s previous regulatory and limiting policies concerning women’s health and access to birth control, it seems unlikely that attention, time, and funding will be provided to analyze the decrease of teen pregnancy rates in the late 1990s. What seems more likely is that in a time of caution and fear, facing a stagnant economy and budget deficits, which in the past have led to increased rates of teen births, the public and policy makers will continue to rely upon epidemic ideology to determine what teen mothers need and deserve and which teen mothers are deserving and which are worthy only of control. The ramifications of thirty years of developing policy for unwed and teen mothers differentially by the race of the mother as a social welfare issue and a morality issue will be evident in the following chapters tracing what these shifting and highly racialized characterizations of teen pregnancy have meant for the education of pregnant/mothering teens.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

See National Center for Health Statistics (1992). Vital statistics of the United States. Time. “Children having Children.” December 9, 1985. Lawson and Rhode, eds. The Politics of Pregnancy; Nathanson, Dangerous Passage. Campbell, Using Women, 42. Singer, Erotic Welfare. Rushing, “Sin, Sex, and Segregation,” 168. See Foucault, The Foucault Reader; Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Lugg, For God and Country; Rushing, “Sin, Sex, and Segregation,” 167–179. Singer, Erotic Welfare, 28. Singer, Erotic Welfare, 29. Singer, Erotic Welfare, 31. Singer, Erotic Welfare, 117, 118. Fraser, Unruly Practices, 159. Foucault, The Foucault Reader, 26. Fraser, Unruly Practices, 160. See Abramovitz, Regulating the lives of women; Gordon, Women, the State, and Welfare; Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls; Lawson and Rhode, The Politics of Pregnancy; Mink, The Wages of Motherhood; Nathanson, Dangerous Passage; and Solinger, Wake up Little Susie.

Constructing Teen Pregnancy as a Problem • 51 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

See specifically Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls; and Solinger, Wake up Little Susie. Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls, 22. By 1906 an American National Vigilance Committee was formed to investigate and prohibit white slave traffic. See Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls for full discussion. Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls, 71. Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls, 70. The “girls” at F.C. Homes were referred to as “inmates” by Barrett, Some Practical Suggestions on the Conduct of a Rescue Home, 13; and Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls, 508. For details on philosophy of F.C. Homes and details on how F.C. Homes should be managed see Barrett, Some Practical Suggestions. Barrett, Some Practical Suggestions, 19. Girls may also be dismissed from the home for revealing during pregnancy their intention to give their child up, “to put her child away and go back into sin” (Barrett, 49), then she is “not sincere in her heart” and “it would be purgatory to her to have to stay and hear the girls planning for their future with their children” (Barrett, 49). Barrett suggests that in such cases the girl herself “will come to you and say that she has decided to go somewhere else (Barrett, 49). Barrett, Some Practical Suggestions, 100. Florence Crittenton Mission Records (hereafter cited as NFCM papers), Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota (hereafter cited as SWHA), Detroit News, February 16, 1915, “Does His Smile Appeal to You?” Box 20, Folder 5. See Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls; and Solinger, Wake up Little Susie. Wilson, Fifty Years’ Work with Girls, 89. It is important to note however that similar to the history of black education in the south (see Anderson, Education of Black in the South), many of the “negro” homes were controlled by local white boards. A July 1954 F.C. Field Reporter, noted: “the now independent organization of Little Rock’s Negro Florence Crittenton Home is in the process of developing an organization separate from that of the White Home. Previous to this time, it has been an Extension of the Little Rock Home [the white F.C. home]. This is being done with the assistance and cooperation of the “White Board,” who hold title to the property which will continue to be used for expanded services to Negro girls.” Florence Crittenton Association of American Records (hereafter cited as FCAA), SWHA, Field Reporter, July, 1954, Box 48, Folder 5. Solinger, Wake up Little Susie, 7. Solinger, Wake up Little Susie, 8–9. Solinger, Wake up Little Susie, 9. This situation also led to the prevalent belief that the black community is more accepting of unwed pregnancies. Because black unwed mothers could not avail themselves of programs for unwed mothers available to the white unwed mother, they were necessarily more visible and reliant upon family and community members. Although Solinger Notes in Wake up Little Susie that “it is striking how the black community organized itself to accommodate mother and child while the white community was totally unwilling and unable to do so,” (7) this “accommodation” was/is due to a history of institutionalized racism in the U.S., and should not be read as proof that the black community is more accepting, less concerned about, unwed pregnancies. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? The developmental stage, termed adolescent, and later known as “the teen years” also gained in study and popular perception. Now it would be hard to imagine educating, parenting, or providing consumer products and advertising without the teen in mind. For critical analysis of the construction of adolescence and our society’s dependency upon it see Lesko, Act Your Age. FCAA, SWHA Ninth Annual National Conference, 1959, Box 41, Folder 3 and by 1960 the F.C. Association was using the term “adolescent unmarried mother” in their annual reports, see Executive Director Reports, 1959–63, Box 35, Folder 6. FCAA, SWHA, Executive Director speech, 1959, Box 35, Folder 4. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy?, 24. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? Lawson and Rhode, The Politics of Pregnancy, 3. Lawson and Rhode, The Politics of Pregnancy, 3–7; 244–48. Lawson and Rhode, The Politics of Pregnancy, 3–7; and Nathanson, Dangerous passage, 145–166; and Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy?, 29–37.

52 • Unfit Subjects 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

Alan Guttmacher Institute, 11 Million Teenagers. FCAA, SWHA, Eighth Annual National Conference Report, 1958, Box 40, Folder 8, p. 14. FCAA, SWHA, Public Relations, “The Sweet Potato Vine,” 1961, Box 52, Folder 5, p. ix of the productions notes. Kunzel, “Pulp Fictions and Problem Girls,” 1465–1487. FCAA, SWHA, see for example Public Relations Box 51 Folders 1–12 and Box 52, Folders 1–7. Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘our girls’ and ‘welfare mothers,’ “ 326–353; and Solinger, Wake up Little Susie, 65–76. FCAA, SWHA, Executive Director Report, 1963, p. 10, Box 35, Folder 6. The F.C. Association while focused upon the white mother also began to attempt to focus F.C. member homes on the “Negro” unwed mother. This may have been due to the ethic that underlied the program of serving all teen mothers, but this emphasis also foreshadowed a later need for F.C. to seek black mothers to serve when rates of white unwed mothers seeking home placement declined. An October 1954 Field Reporter ran a feature titled “Where are Negro unmarried mothers?” noting that several F.C. Homes provided service to all races, the article read, “There are three special services for Negro girls. We know the incidence of unmarried motherhood is reported to be higher among Negro girls. We know further that many of these girls are of a very high type and surely would benefit by a high type of service. Kansas City, Little Rock, and Topeka could well serve a larger number of girls who need positive assistance.” FCAA, SWHA, Field Reporter, October, 1954, Box 48, Folder 5. FCAA, SWHA, Executive Director Report, 1963, p. 3, Box 35, Folder 6. For report see Moynihan, The Negro Family. For ensuing debates about the report see Ryan, Blaming the Victim; Valentine, Culture and Poverty. While biracial births to black women were not tracked in F.C. Homes, biracial births were noted with alarm. The few cases where white mothers were not forthright about “the nature” of their child’s origin before birth, resulting in the “surprise” of a brown/black baby born in a white home, the mother was moved out of the home as soon as she was physically able. For history of fear of interracial sexual activity see Hodes, White Women, Black Men; Hodes, Sex, Love, Race. I am relying upon Mittelstadt’s insightful characterization of “our girls” in this analysis. See Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘our girls’ and ‘welfare mothers,’ “ Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy?, 22–46. For a thorough overview of this bill and others leading to the development of the 1978 Adolescent Health, Services, Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act, see Vinovskis An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? As cited in Hendrixson, “Pregnant Children,” 663. In 1976, the U.S. ranked fourth in rates of teen pregnancy among women aged 15–19, resulting in one million teen girls getting pregnant “59% carried to term (38% legitimate, 21% illegitimate), 27% had abortions, and 14% had miscarriages.” At that time East Germany, New Zealand, and Romania were ranked one thru three in number of teen births. Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘our girls’ and ‘welfare mothers,’ .” Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘our girls’ and ‘welfare mothers,’ “ 326. Stamm, “A skeleton in the closet,” 1203–1237. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet.” Upchurch and McCarthy, “Adolescent Childbearing and High School Completion in the 1980s,” 199–202. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? Hendrixson, “Pregnant children,” 663. Children’s Defense Fund, “Preventing Children Having Children,” 1. Children’s Defense Fund, “Preventing Children Having Children,” 1. For overview of race and class and social policy in the U.S. see Conley Being Black, Living in the Red. “ ‘Welfare Queen’ becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign,” New York Times Feb. 15, 1976. Kenney and Orr, “Sex education,” 491. Children’s Defense Fund, “Preventing Children having Children,” 3. The Center for Population Options,“Adolescent Sexual Behavior, pregnancy, and Parenthood.” Furstenberg, Jr., Brooks-Gunn, and Morgan, Adolescent Mothers in Later Life; and Luker, Dubious Conceptions.

Constructing Teen Pregnancy as a Problem • 53 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

Furstenberg, Jr. et. al, Adolescent Mothers in Later Life. Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption,” 121. Education Week, “Here They Come, Ready or Not,” 3. Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption,” 122. For further detail see Luker, Dubious Conceptions; and Lawson and Rhode, The Politics of Pregnancy. Lugg, For God and Country. For analysis of racial and racist discourses and impact upon social policy see: Omni and Winnant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s; and Schram, Words of Welfare. McClain “Irresponsible’ Reproduction,” 339–372, 342. Nathanson, Dangerous Passage. Trudell, Doing Sex Education, 15. Welsh, “High School Confidential ‘91,” C1; C4. Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Age Mothers,” 183. Luker, Dubious Conceptions. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? Marshner, The New Traditional Woman, 9. In Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy?, 83. See e.g., McClain, “Irresponsible’ Reproduction,” and Mink The Wages of Motherhood. See Thomas, “Race, Gender, and Welfare Reform,” 419–446. “ ‘Welfare Queen’ becomes Issue in Reagan campaign,” New York Times, 1976. For discussion of the myth of the “welfare queen,” see Zucchino, Myth of the Welfare Queen. For discussion of linkage of black female with welfare, see Schram, Words of Welfare. Ebony publisher’s statement, “The Crisis of the Black Family,” 33. Ebony publisher’s statement, “The Crisis of the Black Family,” 33–34. Ebony, special issue, “The Crisis of the Black Family,” 30–78. Ebony publisher’s statement, “The Crisis of the Black Family,” 33. Kenney, “Teen Pregnancy,” 730. For articles on Liz Walker, see Cohen, “Significant Mothers,” W3; and Longcope, “Liz Walker is Expecting,” 9–10; Newsmakers, “Black Boston TV Anchor Goes Public on Pregnancy,” 32; and Trescott, “The War over motherhood,” C1, C10, C11; and For those who are not familiar with or do not recall Vice President Dan Quayle’s remarks about the unwed mothering status of fictional television character Murphy Brown, see “Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown,” Time, 20. Trescott, “The War over Motherhood,” C10. Trescott, “The War over Motherhood,” C11. Caldas, “Teen Pregnancy,” 403. U.S. Congress. Subcommittee on Human Resources and Intergovernmetnal relations. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 20, 42. U.S. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 7, 14, 16, 45, 58. U.S. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 26. U.S. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 57. This would be a case of what Derrick Bell describes as “interest conversion”—when white America pays attention to issues affecting African Americans only when these issues impact upon white, dominant interests. Bell, “Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-convergence dilemma,” 518–33. Caldas, “Teen Pregnancy,” 404. D’Souza, “Improving Culture to End Racism,” 789. D’Souza, “Improving Culture to End Racism,” 789. As quoted in Herbert, “GOP ‘Big Tent’ Is Shrinking.” See e.g., Joffe, “Sexual Politics and the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Worker in the United States,” 284–300; and Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘Our Girls’ and ‘Welfare Mothers.’ “ At the same time abstinence became official policy, funding for programs providing birth control information or availability were not only limited but cut out entirely, antiabortion activity, including often violent means, was at its height, and several initiatives were passed limiting adolescent’s access to birth control and abortion information through a so-called


111.

112. 113. 114. 115.

116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126.

“gag-rule” forbidding adults at, for example, Planned Parenthood to discuss such options with teens even if the teen requested such information. For analysis of discourses of abstinence education, see chapter 6. For text of the state of the union address, see New York Times, “Prepared Text for the President’s State of the Union Message,” A9; A14. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is made up of a unique bipartisan mix of politicians, researchers, medical personnel, celebrities, and organizations typically on opposite sides of debates about teen pregnancy. The campaign sought to lessen the debates between groups and create a coalition that could agree on one issue: the goal of decreasing teen pregnancy in the U.S. The campaign has been active in producing media targeted toward teens and in promoting a “pregnancyfree adolescence.” As quoted in, Vobejda, “President Limits Teens on Welfare,” A1. Clinton, “Remarks Announcing the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy.” Clinton, “Remarks Announcing the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy.” The members included: a former Surgeon General; a Carnegie Corporation representative; a former governor, two former senators, and a mayor; a representative from a pharmaceuticals company with a major interest in birth control products; a medical doctor active in teen pregnancy prevention; a representative from the Urban Institute; two members from the entertainment sector including the then president of MTV and Whoopi Goldberg; and as mentioned the president of Drew University. See Burdell, “Teen Mothers in High School,” 163–207; Weatherly, Perlman, Levine, and Klerman, Patchwork Programs; and Vinovskis, An “Apidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy? For overview of PRWORA see Weinstein, “The Teenage Pregnancy ‘Problem’,” 117–152. July 6, 1996, www.aclu.org. State Policy Documentation Project, Summary of Policy Issues, 12. Levin-Epstein, Teen Parent Provisions in the New Law; see also, Weinstein, “The Teenage Pregnancy ‘Problem’,”117–152. Between 1991 and 1995 teen birth rates decreased 8 percent; birth rates to all women decreased 6 percent, Levin-Epstein, Teen Parent Provisions in the New Law. See e.g., Luker, Dubious Conceptions. Farmer, “NOW Challenges President Bush to Abide by Federal Court Ruling on Contraceptive Coverage.” Brake, “Legal Challenges to the Educational Barriers Facing Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents,” 141–155. As quoted in Herbert, “Sneak Attack,” A27. For a sampling of such articles and suppositions, see “Steady Drop in Teen Birth Rate Has Many ‘Proud Parents’,” A12:1; Lewin, “Birth Rates for Teen-Agers Declined Sharply in the 90s,” A27:4; Terry, “Fewer Teen-Age Mothers? Maybe,” A18:4; Stolberg, “Birth Rate at New Low as Teen-Age Pregnancy Declines,” A26:3.

CHAPTER

2

Title IX and the Discursive Climate of Education for School-Age Mothers On this important day, President Bush and I join in celebrating the success and the spirit of Title IX that says, “Open to all.” —U.S. Secretary Rod Paige You show, you go. —Principal Stevens, Boston Public

In July 2002, U.S. Secretary Rod Paige announced the thirtieth anniversary of Title IX noting that “Title IX has opened many doors of opportunity to generations of women and girls to achieve, to compete, and to pursue their American Dream.” Secretary Paige’s comments lacked a celebratory tone for women’s rights groups as his statement was followed by an announcement of a committee of experts to look at the “explosive growth” in women’s sports and evaluate what is currently “fair” under Title IX for those “facing the difficult issues in athletics every day.”1 Couching a review of Title IX under a discourse of “fairness” and “open to all” justifiably makes many civil rights advocates nervous given President Bush and his administration’s interpretations of fairness and equal opportunity. However, of equal importance in Paige’s announcement was the absence of any attention to the educational gender equity components of Title IX, including the protection of pregnant/mothering students. While press statements noted that Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, no media coverage in press, television, or radio ever mentioned the 55


protection of the right of the teen mother to equal educational opportunity. It seems that even on the anniversary of Title IX teen mothers remain the unmentionables and unknowns of Title IX. Does “open to all” include pregnant/mothering students? Compare the politicized introduction to Title IX with the above statement made by principal Stevens, a character on the television show Boston Public (which depicts the daily lives of students and adults in an urban public high school) to a white honor-student, who after fainting during an interview with representatives of Yale University, found out she was pregnant. The student who was applying to Yale seemingly was forced to have to choose between an education and a future or having her child and dropping out of school. In this episode, the student under the stress of this polemical decision had an abortion. Principal Stevens, although grieved by her decision, sticks to his belief that teen mothers do not belong in regular public school settings. Principal Stevens’ sentiment of “you show, you go” is reminiscent of a long-standing practice of dismissing pregnant girls from their regular school regardless of Title IX.2 This episode of Boston Public not only captures this sentiment but also reinforces beliefs that teen mothers do not have a right to an education and that such decisions are left up to a local school administrator. Compare this modern story of the unwed, pregnant teen to an actual case of a pregnant teen in 1971. In 1971, Fay Ordway, an honor student and yearbook editor, was expelled from her high school because she was unmarried and pregnant. The basis for the schools decision was that she would “contaminate” other students. Ordway challenged her school’s decision and at the district court level won the right to attend school but was banned from the National Honor Society and lost a college scholarship she had been promised.3 The legacy of the Ordway decision continues as many school-age mothers find that while public schools cannot deny them access to an education per se, they can and do limit their educational opportunities, by restricting or barring their ability to participate in a range of educational activities. These practices continue, and are dramatized in our media as standard behavior, despite being thirty years into Title IX mandates of equal educational opportunity for all female students, including pregnant/mothering teens. How does this occur? Why have schools not been more compelled under Title IX to provide an equal education to teen mothers? Addressing these questions includes once again understanding teen pregnancy as a historical, social, economic, and moral issue in the United States and situating the education of teen mothers within the discourses surrounding teen pregnancy. Although Title IX clearly requires that pregnant/mothering students have access to equal education, what this entails has not been

Title IX and the Discursive Climate of Education for School-Age Mothers • 57

determined under case law, leaving the interpretation up to individual schools. Presently, beyond forbidding expulsion, there is no case law to enforce or guide the provision of educational services for teen mothers at the local or state level.4 Schools and school communities, working in the discursive climate surrounding schooling for teen mothers, continue to question and challenge whether teen mothers fit in public schools and which teen mothers are fit for an education. Analyzing the impact of Title IX on the education of pregnant/mothering teens cannot be separated from societal and politicized views on the problem of teen pregnancy. This chapter addresses the broader questions and issues of what has influenced the implementation of Title IX’s call for the education of school-age mothers. Here I am interested not only with the impact of Title IX as it might be measured in terms of numbers of pregnant teens attending and graduating school. I am also interested in the discursive impact of Title IX—that is how the implementation of Title IX is impacted by what is said and what is presumed about pregnant/mothering teens as students and how the language of Title IX affects how we think about and characterize equal education opportunity for pregnant/mothering teens. This focus builds from the discussion in chapter 1 and foregrounds how the provision of education to school-age mothers occurs within a social, political, economic, and moral climate. This climate not only discursively constructs the pregnant/mothering teen, but also shapes the development, interpretation, and implementation of educational policy for the pregnant/mothering teen. A discursive analysis of the climate surrounding the education of pregnant/mothering teens reveals two prominent themes in the provision of education to school-age mothers. These themes are prevalent in the language of existing court decisions that affect the provision of education to pregnant/mothering students and contribute to a discursive policy climate surrounding teen mothers and schooling. Presences and absences within these themes are equally important to identify as policy is impacted by both what we think we know and what we do not even acknowledge, what “we cannot bear to know.” The first theme I call “discourses of contamination,” discourses that justify removal of the school-age mother from the school setting based upon the fear that her sexual immorality will spread to other students. The second theme, “differentiated subjects,” involves a division and shift between discourses and policies that view education for the pregnant/mothering teen as a right and those that view it as a responsibility. Together these themes organize a discursive climate affecting interpretation and implementation of case law and educational policy under Title IX. Common to both themes is a shifting construction of the problem of teen pregnancy


based upon the race of the teen mother that has yielded a two-tiered system of educational policy and practice. However, this chapter also demonstrates that even the most entitled pregnant teen—the white, high-achieving mother—has had severe limitations placed upon her educational opportunity. In later chapters, I take up what this means for the “other” teen mother, the African Americans and Latinas, who utilize school-based teen pregnancy programs at a higher rate than white teen mothers. Yet it is important to note that in this chapter low-income and racialized teen mothers are also clearly marked by their absence as subjects in case law, an absence that defines who the racialized teen mother is and thus what education she deserves and is capable of.

Laying a Foundation for Title IX—Tracing Key Arguments Supporting Education of Young Unwed Mothers As early as 1929, a decision was made in the Kansas Supreme Court ordering a school district to allow a married school-age mother to continue her education at the public school.5 By 1969, the fourteenth amendment guarantee of equal protection had been used to defend the right of the unwed school-age mother to attend school.6 Key to these decisions and a key issue of debate was the status of the teen mother as single, as unwed, and a protection of the right of the school-age mother to receive an education regardless of her marital status. However, not until Title IX was the teen mother’s right to an education, regardless of her marital status guaranteed. Prior to the passage of Title IX, the F.C. Association was actively involved in supporting the necessity of the unwed teen mother to receive an education during her pregnancy, either at an F.C. Home or day school, and to return to her regular school after the birth of her child. By the late 1950s, F.C. Homes were noting an increase in the number of “young unwed mothers,” thus focusing the attention of the association upon the educational needs of these women.7 However, as early as 1929, one F.C. Home superintendent reported sending her young girls to public school to “finish their eighth grade at least.”8 At the 1960 Annual Meeting of the F.C. Homes Association several papers focused upon the debates surrounding whether to offer young unwed mothers continuing education and if so, how to offer it. These papers noted the benefits of providing education to the unmarried teen mother, including “profound health, mental health, and educational influences upon her mother, her family, and future family” and a lessening of “community problems when unmarried mothers are encouraged to continue in school.” Speakers also commented upon the observance that “many unmarried mothers are exceedingly receptive to educational needs” and that


“unmarried mothers rarely create special school problems by returning to regular classes in public schools while relatives or others take care of their babies during the day.”9 This shift from separating the unwed mother from society to promoting her integration into public schools (at least after the birth of her child), was partly influenced by “rapid changes in attitudes toward morals.” As the Executive Director of F.C. noted in 1968: The old concept of a maternity home, which essentially through its insistence on confidentiality denied the pregnancy, is disappearing, and while confidentiality is still needed for a comparatively small number of unmarried mothers, the need for secrecy is decreasing. The winds of change are bringing new concepts and the necessity of agencies to rethink their programs, so they can use their resources most effectively to meet the needs of local communities.10

During the late 1960s other advocacy groups such as the National Council on Illegitimacy (NCI) had become involved in changing societal attitudes toward the unwed mother and in supporting the right of education for the young unwed mother. NCI personnel offered nationwide inservice training for public school teachers and administrators on how to retain and offer continuing education to the pregnant/mothering teen.11 By 1968, NCI adopted a “Policy Statement on Continued Schooling for Pregnant Girls and Young Mothers” that advocated “the right to continued public education for all pregnant girls and young mothers.” NCI’s policy contains language that is similar to what is introduced in Title IX four years later and is thus worth quoting at length: Recognizing that educational opportunities are part of the value system of a free society, and recognizing further that education in our increasingly complex and technological society is a prerequisite for the opportunity to lead a full and productive life, NCI advocates the right to continued public education for all pregnant girls and young mothers. The pregnant girl and young mother has or should have the legal right to continued schooling in regular school classes. In the event that an individual pregnant student wishes to withdraw from her home school during pregnancy, the public school system alone, or in conjunction with other community institutions, has an obligation to furnish her with separate facilities, educationally centered, and enriched through health and welfare services.12

What is unique in NCI’s statement is the focus upon the right of the unwed pregnant girl to remain in a public school during her pregnancy and the right to continued provision of educational services should she decide to withdraw. NCI’s policy required substantive changes to the public school system. NCI outlined eight substantive changes needed in school policy in order for the unwed pregnant/mothering student to gain access


to education. These changes included a dramatic shift in school responsibility for the teen mother: School systems will accept responsibility for pregnant girls and young mothers beyond the statutory limit of school attendance. They will seek these girls out and attempt to motivate them to complete schooling.13

NCI’s policy notes the growing difference in the practices at the F.C. Homes and at the public schools. The pregnant teen mother was removed from the public school while she was pregnant, had her child, and then returned to her home and regular school “ready to return to her uninterrupted life.”14 This model of service provision to the unmarried young mother continued to separate the pregnant girl from the school environment while she was at the height of her pregnancy, and only returned her to school when she was “regular” and “fit” again. However, the barriers to public school attendance for the unwed teen mother, who has already given birth and either kept or put her baby up for adoption, cannot be underestimated. The F.C. Association worked to challenge such barriers. Although F.C. notes provide evidence that the association supported education for the pregnant young mother, education that took place either at an F.C. home or in day school, the association’s emphasis was initially upon gaining access to education for the unmarried young mother. The roadblocks encountered by a young unwed mother trying to access education were identified in a paper presented at the 1960 F.C. Annual Meeting are similar to many present-day attitudes toward pregnant/mothering teens. Consider the following comments identified as prevalent in 1960 even by “generally substantial and intelligent persons”: “Why award them for the problems they have brought upon themselves and society?” “I would not want them to attend school with my daughter.” “Let them spend their time taking care of their babies.” “They’ve had an opportunity to go to school and will have plenty of opportunity for future education through correspondence courses, and adult night school classes.” “Very few of these girls have placed any real value on school work.”“Some of these girls have become mothers deliberately for the purpose of escaping school.” “The school budget does not allow for special education services for them.” “A mother can no longer be considered a school child.”15

Such comments and the ideology behind them can be heard throughout this book identifying the discourses that continue to affect and impact pregnant/mothering students’ access to education. Despite such roadblocks, organizations such as the F.C. Association and NCI continued to stress the benefits education provided for the young unwed mother and for society. Speaking of the problems and challenges


facing unwed young mothers and acknowledging the threat and disruption society feels, as well as public schools history of “a continuing barrage of criticism” leading to a “schoolman who is harried and beset,” the presenter of a 1963 speech to NCI still argues for the “uninterrupted education of unwed mothers” as a way to reduce “the amount of fumbling and to suggest ways of working together more effectively.”16 Education for teen mothers was situated as a cure for the young unwed mother herself, for her child, and for society: This problem [young unwed mothers] grows out of social disorganization and individual maladjustment. If we neglect it, it will continue to fester and spread contamination. The healing process will call for better social organization and the development of more adequate individuals. And, fortunately the process of healing is also the process of prevention.17

Were the hopes and expectations of associations such as F.C. and NCI realized? A review of what Title IX says about the education of pregnant/mothering students reveals the influence of such associations on the development of policy affecting the education of teen mothers. However, a closer look at the implementation of Title IX policy also makes apparent the limits placed on the access to equal educational opportunity for teen mothers and continues to raise questions about whether schools have enacted the substantive changes necessary for pregnant/mothering students to access equal education opportunity or, whether it is the teen mother herself who remains the target of change, requiring the teen mother to make herself fit for an education.

Title IX and the Mandate to Provide Education for School-Age Mothers Title IX specifically addresses the right of the school-age mother to equal access to an education equivalent to her peers. Although few are aware, Title IX, passed in 1972 and effective July 12, 1975, provides specific provision and language governing schooling for school-age mothers. Title IX states: [A] recipient [of federal funding] shall not discriminate against any student, or exclude any student from its education program or activity, including any class or extracurricular activity, on the basis of such student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery therefrom, unless the student requests voluntarily to participate in a separate portion of the program.18

Furthermore, Title IX requires that any separate facility set up for teen mothers in addition to being voluntary must be “comparable to that offered to nonpregnant teens.”19 Additionally Title IX provides specific language regarding the handling of absences for the pregnant teen, noting


that the pregnant teen must be treated the same as any student with a medical condition or disability.20 If a school does not have a policy in place for such students they must abide by the doctor’s orders for the student. This means the teen mother should have excused absences, access to make-up work or tests, or in the case of long-term absences, be given a grade based on what she did complete of the school semester instead of failing the student and requiring her to repeat the class. Similarly, accommodations must be made for the pregnant student to participate in the school day without discrimination based upon her condition. For example, such accommodations may include extra time to get to classes, the provision of appropriate seating, and access to bathroom breaks as needed.21 It seems given the explicitness of Title IX that case law determining the intricacies of what it means to have access to equal education opportunity, what constitutes “voluntary,” what “comparable” or “equivalent” education is, and which daily practices of schools are discriminatory, would be prevalent. However, at present there is no case law addressing implementation issues under Title IX. While there have been several recent cases on the access school-age mothers have to extracurricular activities and National Honor Society membership, no cases concerning their access to an equal education during the school day have been heard in federal or district court. Anecdotal evidence suggests that challenges by students may be settled at the school district level, however, complaints to the Office of Civil Rights remain low.22 Legal challenges are lengthy, time consuming, and costly, and many teen mothers may not be aware of their educational rights or have the support to challenge local district practices. Monica Stamm also notes that the “temporary nature of pregnancy” may be a reason for the lack of legal decisions around teen pregnancy. As she states, “by the time a suit could be brought and won, not only is the case moot because the student can return to the regular school program, but the student is more likely to lose interest in pursuing a law suit when she is dealing with pregnancy and motherhood.”23 Stamm assumes in this statement that all teen mothers do gain access to their regular school program upon birth of their child, an assumption that does not hold for all teen mothers. Regardless, the absence of case law on the education of school-age mothers speaks loudly about the status of education for teen mothers and means that decisions on what to do with pregnant/mothering students continue to be left up to individual school districts. A lack of case law under Title IX should not be taken as an assumption that schools are adhering to Title IX.24 As with other school equity issues, it is often difficult to gather evidence to pursue a suit and as Stamm notes the temporary nature of pregnancy makes pursuing a case even more difficult.


Public rights groups such as the ACLU and the Women’s Rights Project have been gathering and tracking anecdotal facts concerning discrimination toward school-age mothers. Sources at these groups note that their involvement has caused some policies to change without going to trial.25 However, for all of the situations they do hear of, it is likely there are many more cases that are not pursued or are settled “quietly” within the school district.26 Why have pregnant/mothering students remained so silenced as legal and educational subjects? Two themes have shaped the discursive legal climate surrounding education for teen mothers and have impacted the development and implementation of educational programs for them. These discourses work to define responses to the question of what education for teen mothers should look like under Title IX. Although I discuss the two themes separately below, it will become apparent that they work together to shape discourses about the problem of teen pregnancy and the role of education plays in addressing it.

Discourses of Contamination: Pregnancy as Dis(ease) Historical and present-day debates on the education of school-age mothers contain a common theme of contamination. This theme circulates the idea that the presence of a sexually active female student (as a pregnant student or as a mother) will contaminate the student body leading to an epidemic of immoral and promiscuous behavior. Contamination discourse inscribes pregnancy as an illness and females as the contaminators. Fear and control of women’s sexuality has a long history. Women’s sexuality and reproductivity have been described as pathological, as mystical, but in either case women’s sexuality and sexual activity is to be regulated and controlled.27 While arguably sexual mores have changed in the United States, female sexuality remains paradoxically both apparent and hidden. Apparent because female sexuality remains at the forefront of marketing and consumption and hidden because knowledge of much of women’s lives and sexuality in terms of physical functioning and pleasure remains underresearched, and taboo. While talk of male functioning and pleasure is prevalent in popular culture and sex education curricula, marking this knowledge as important for both females and males, there is no corresponding discussion of female sexuality, particularly in U.S. sex education curricula—female sexuality remains hidden, mysterious, missing.28 Teen girls are caught in this mire of confusing and conflicting images and messages about female sexuality and women’s roles and a “good girl/bad girl” discourse still pervades teen talk.29 Adolescent sexuality is confusing not only for adolescents but also for adults. Teen sex raises fear


in parents, school personnel, and policy makers. Teen pregnancy in its embodiment is evidence that adolescent sexuality has not been contained and the pregnant teen body causes discomfort, morally and viscerally.30 The very term “teen pregnancy” indicates a pregnancy that is marked as wrong and teen pregnancy carries a heightened sense of surveillance with it. To state the obvious, the pregnant body of the teen girl is visual evidence of what we fear and her changing, swelling, leaking body becomes the target and repository of these fears and beliefs. Thus it is this body, the pregnant teen body, which we seek to control and contain, because the evidence of this body is literally in front of us. Discourses of contamination are one form of containment of the pregnant teen body. As noted in chapter 1, one key discourse of contamination, an epidemic discourse created out of a climate of crisis, has surrounded teen pregnancy from the passage of Title IX. Title IX and other federally funded education initiatives for teen mothers occurred under a climate of crisis—an epidemic of “children having children.” Although at the height of this climate of crisis births to teen mothers were at their lowest since the 1950s the discursive image of an epidemic of teen pregnancy was accepted and recirculated by policymakers, media, and the public. As noted in chapter 1, what had shifted during the 1970s and 1980s was the increasing rate of unwed teen mothers—specifically white unwed mothers, a growing sense of a lack of family values, fear of societal changes affected by Civil Rights, and conservative responses to the crisis of education.31 However, regardless of the lack of an “epidemic” in the rate of teen births, epidemic logic prevailed in the public mind and social welfare policy. Here I trace how epidemic logic, fed by contamination discourses, which support practices of separation and containment, made necessary practices of “separate but equal” in educational policy and practice for pregnant/mothering teens.

Early Decisions—Setting the Stage for “Separate but Equal” Epidemic logic and the fear of contamination have been effectively used in case law and school practice. Despite the language of Title IX, discourses and practices of contamination pervade development and implementation of educational policy for school-age mothers. Contamination was a prevalent theme in cases prior to Title IX, thus laying a foundation for this discourse and its ensuing practices to continue. The cases and issues traced below point out how insidious contamination discourse is; one cannot shake off contamination, it pervades and often overrides policies like Title IX. A 1969 decision, Perry v. Grenada Municipal Separate School District, upheld the school board’s “fear that the presence of unwed mothers in the


schools will be a bad influence on the other students” and granted the board’s discretion to determine “whether an unwed mother has requisite moral character to be readmitted to school.”32 While in 1971, Faye Ordway won her case, affirming her right to attend her own public school, with the court stating “it would seem beyond argument that the right to receive a public school education is a basic personal right or liberty,” a year later, a Decatur, Georgia student was expelled from attending day classes in her public school.33 The school district successfully argued that the student’s presence in school during the day would “contaminate the other students” and that the pregnant student could receive an equal education by attending nighttime GED classes.34 Key to the Court’s decision was an acknowledgment of the school board’s compelling interest in maintaining a “safe environment” for other students. The Court decided based upon an ideology of “contamination” that the pregnant student presented such a threat to the student body as a whole that the school district was justified in removing the student from attending school.35 Furthermore the Court concluded that “there is no dispute that some students who marry or who become parents are normally more precocious than other students. . . . Because of their precociousness, it is conceivable that their presence in a regular daytime school could result in the disruption thereof.”36 An article by Donald Warren in the October 1972 issue of Phi Delta Kappan provides details of a case in Indiana of a student “poor, white, and eighteen years old,” who attempted to challenge local school policy which stated, “an unwed expectant mother shall report her condition to the girls’ counselor and withdraw from school when the fact is known and before it becomes obvious.”37 The policy further detailed that although the teen mother “may reenter school following the birth of the child” and that school staff would work to “rehabilitate her toward a successful life,” her attendance at school would be allowed only as “her conduct is acceptable and her presence is compatible with the welfare of the group.”38 This Indiana policy existed to protect the student body at large from contamination by the unwed pregnant teen and night school was considered a suitable and reasonable alternative for girls who were pregnant. However, in the case of this student, Donna, the night school was located far away, and she could not afford transportation costs, the night school also did not offer the courses she needed for graduation. Donna and her mother fought for her right to continue to attend her regular school during the day, beginning with hearings with the local school superintendent. Warren succinctly described the 1972 meeting: a young woman and her mother, not as nervous as one might expect, trying with limited vocabularies and poise to convince the officials, all male, educated

66 • Unfit Subjects and articulate, that they did not wish to undermine the values, order, and majority needs of the school but only to protect the young woman’s right to an education. That objective, commonplace and patently acceptable when stated abstractly, challenged long-accepted definitions of American public school roles and functions because the student involved was pregnant and unmarried.39

Warren identifies the key question to be asked in these hearings: “Does pregnancy constitute a valid reason for excluding a student from school?” and notes that instead the discussion centered around Donna’s capabilities as a student (“mediocre . . . with a poor attendance record”), her affect on other students, and concerns for her own safety. This last concern came in spite of testimony by a doctor that she was in “good health” and that “the regular activity involved in attending classes would be beneficial to her and the fetus.”40 Looking at such cases provides a glimpse of the narrative reasoning used to justify practices of dismissal for pregnant/mothering teens. These cases are also important because they lay a foundation for and lend support to practices of separate but equal in the provision of education for school-age mothers. Further these cases support an ideology of contamination that requires separation of the school-age mother for the protection of the student body as a whole. The most common provision of education to teen mothers is through placement into separate classrooms or separate schools.41 I explore the question of how voluntary such placements are in chapter 4 and address what these separate settings may offer the teen mother in terms of pedagogy and curriculum in chapter 5, but it is important here to understand that placing pregnant teens in separate schools has reflected the public school’s desire to keep them out of sight rather than sound pedagogical reasoning. Discourses of contamination continue to be prevalent in present-day discourse surrounding teen pregnancy. Barbara Whitehead in a 1994 article in The Atlantic Monthly called for a “return” to policies that would “‘uglify’ unwed teenage motherhood and reestablish some of the disincentives that worked in the past; including separation of the girl from her peer group.”42 The argument, although misinformed, is popular. That somehow there were “disincentives” in “the past” that worked, is not supportable— what is different is that school-age teen mothers are more visible now and have a right under Title IX to continue in their regular school. Ignoring the presence of Title IX, Whitehead elaborates what she means by “separation of the girl from her peer group”: [P]erhaps teen mothers should attend special high schools, as they do in some cities, rather than mixing with the general high school population. This contemporary version of being “sent away”—although it would not interrupt education—would segregate teenage mothers from nonpregnant teenagers.43


Whitehead’s recommendation, reinforcing contamination logic, is made without reference to either the legalities of Title IX or the lack of any evidence that the presence of teen mothers spreads the problem of teen pregnancy. What is important here is that a discourse of contamination is more powerful than what we know or what we think we know. I found that discourses of contamination to be most prevalent in schools that have programs for teen mothers, despite that the data from these very schools does not indicate an increasing number of teen girls getting pregnant.44 Rather, what did change in such schools were the increased number of teen girls who stay or return to school when they are pregnant, thus making teen pregnancy more visible. Discourses of contamination are a response to a conflicting desire within education—we want teen mothers to be responsible and get an education but we do not want them to do it where we can see them. However, while discourses of contamination certainly create the justification and necessity of separate schools and classrooms for teen mothers I have argued that while teachers and students at separate school settings are more able to set their own climate, teachers and students within the regular school feel that they are under constant surveillance. For instance, it is not only adults who identify and participate in discourses of contamination, but teen mothers also identify discourses of contamination.45 Contamination discourse yields practices of control, separation, and surveillance within the regular school. The regulatory control of surveillance perpetuates the idea that teen mothers do not belong in this school and that teen mothers are “dangerous.” For example, one teen mother who served in a teen pregnancy classroom in a regular public school notes: they treat us like we’re different and you get watched twice as closely. Mrs. (her teacher) says we have to set a good example, that some people think we should not even be in school.

A teacher for a school–based teen pregnancy class in a similar school supports the above student’s characterization, stating: we have to keep it very quiet that we are here. I am not allowed to hang a banner or flier up saying this is a teen pregnancy classroom. Some of the teachers (in this school) do not even know I am here. I cannot go into other classes and talk about the program to the kids—so the girls really have to find me.

Such comments by pregnant/mothering students and teachers who work with them acknowledge that contamination discourses impact local practices when pregnant girls are “allowed” to remain in regular school settings. Schools often attempt to handle the visibility and contamination of teen girl’s pregnancies by encouraging removal of pregnant girls from the school setting. Some entitled students will return to the regular school setting as mothers, however, as discussed below, such girls have recently been


found to be continually infectious due to their pregnancy and mothering status.

National Honor Society Cases—Are Smart Girls Contaminated? Present-day discourses of contamination are also found in the recent attention to cases of teen mothers’ access to extracurricular and club activities. For instance, some school districts have been challenged on policies prohibiting pregnant/mothering students from membership and participation in cheerleading squads, National Honor Societies, student councils, and debate teams. What is interesting about these cases is that they focus upon “high-achieving” white teen mothers—teen mothers who are “good” students and active in school organizations. Yet, a discourse of contamination is also found in these cases. While a 1984 seventh circuit court decision held that a student’s dismissal from the National Honor Society (NHS) on account of her pregnancy violated Title IX, recent decisions have found otherwise.46 Consider for instance a 1990 decision by the third circuit court, that upheld a local NHS chapter’s discretion to terminate a pregnant/mothering student’s membership, while teen fathers are thus far exempt from such limitations.47 The court’s decision was based on the finding that the local NHS chapter had dismissed the female student not due to her pregnancy (and was thus not pregnancy/sex discrimination), but due to her engagement in premarital sexual activity, behavior regarded as not upholding the high standards required by NHS.48 The court found it within NHS “discretion to determine that a student’s premarital sexual activity was ‘contrary to the qualities of leadership and character essential for membership’ which includes upholding ‘high standards of moral conduct.’”49 Although this NHS chapter was able to determine this student had been sexually active due to her pregnancy, it could not determine if other students (male and female) had also been sexually active. Still the court decided that such factors did not matter in this decision.50 Although her pregnancy had made her sexual activity apparent, the school district and the court continued to state that the student was dismissed for her premarital sexual activity not her pregnancy. This decision paved the way for other school districts to exclude pregnant/mothering students due to their sexual activity, and thus avoid charges of discrimination. After this case made the news, the ACLU had numerous reports of other such dismissals.51 A 1998 case brought in Williamston, Kentucky, also involved the dismissal of two white students from the NHS due to their premarital sexual activity, not their pregnancies, which would be discrimination under the law.52 Thus in the 1990s, the pregnant/mothering teen, even the high-achieving (white) student, is still seen as immoral, and morally infectious. The


above court decisions point to a continuing discrepancy between how sexually active girls are treated versus sexually active boys. While a boy’s sexual activity is not apparent, a pregnancy makes apparent and visible a teen girl’s sexual activity, thus exposing her to regulatory consequences. These cases suggest the legal decisions surrounding teen pregnancy are influenced more by societal morality and beliefs surrounding female sexuality than by case law.53 In response to these cases, the ACLU ran an advertisement campaign to draw attention to such inconsistencies affecting these “high-achieving” teen mothers (see figure 4). The full-page advertisement ran in the New York Times and The New Republic in 1998 with the headline, “Should the Government be allowed to investigate your teenager’s sex life?” The ad detailed the case of Somer Chipman and Chasity Glass both from Williamstown, Kentucky, who were excluded from National Honor Society membership due to the schools charge that they had had premarital sex. The ad stated, “How did Grant County School officials know that these young women were guilty of forbidden sex acts? Easy—they became pregnant and had their babies.” The ad further questions “What about girls who don’t get pregnant, or have abortions? And what about boys?” The ad concluded by asking “Who is more immoral, two young women who took responsibility for their conduct and still managed to earn top honors, or government officials who want to probe into students’ private behavior and deny them the honors they earned through hard work? Think about it.” This ad clearly attempted what had been successful in the early 1970s—to link the plight of these girls who were pregnant to “your teenager,” your daughter, “our girls.” The ad also situated these teen mothers as responsible teen mothers, hard working and moral, and worthy of full educational opportunity. The ads garnished little response, created no public outcry about the lack of rights for teen mothers. The attention the ads did receive was mainly negative.54 So entrenched is the ideology of the teen pregnant mother as a drain on society, as immoral, that by this time the public could not view her differently even when she was a white, honor student. In the public mind, these girls were the exception, and to afford any pregnant girl more rights would send a message that teen pregnancy is okay; or worse that law and policy were condoning teen pregnancy by going “soft” on teen mothers. Although Title IX guarantees teen mothers access to school activities, the courts and the public continue to view such activities as a privilege—a privilege that teen mothers do not deserve because they embody what we most fear, female teen sexuality and sexual activity.55 The white, high-achieving teen mother is still contaminated and contaminating, daring to make visible what we cannot bear to see or know. Thus, while under different circumstances these girls are described as responsible, treatable,

Fig. 4 American Civil Liberties Union


and entitled teen mothers, the public still does not accept them or want them to be “our girls” or “my daughter.”56

Discourses of Education as Responsibility While discourses of contamination do affect all pregnant students it does not represent all pregnant students similarly—some students are seen as more dangerously infectious than others. Evident in the above review of cases is an absence of African-American or Latina teen mothers as legal subjects. Is this because African-American and Latina teen mothers are receiving equal education with no problems? Research indicates otherwise, so why aren’t the educational concerns, issues, and needs of African-American and Latina teen mothers represented in case law? Key to addressing this question is a return to the historical tracing of the different definitions of the problem of teen pregnancy presented in chapter 1. As I argued in that chapter, differential definitions and corresponding differential treatment patterns of the unwed mother linked to race were established by the 1950s. By the 1980s black teen mothers were effectively defined as the “other” teen mother. This “other” teen mother is one who is inherently deficit, morally and culturally. Lisa Ikemoto describes these “other” mothers as “unwed adult women, teens, welfare recipients, and/or women of color” who are “too fertile.”57 These “too fertile” women are identifiable as a group, “because there were already stories and images attached to these identities;” as a group they are constructed and identifiable and their fertility is situated as a social problem.58 Linda McClain identifies three additional rhetorical models of irresponsibility assigned to the “the single mother, the welfare mother, and the teen mother” those being, “immorality, unaccountability, and incapacity.”59 While all teen unwed mothers are subject to these constructs, as evidenced in the NHS cases, race and class further inscribe some teen mothers as inherently deficit. These teen mothers, the “other” teen mothers, cannot even be imagined as legal subjects, as subjects entitled to education. What rights does a teen mother who is “too fertile,” immoral, unaccountable, and irresponsible have? While the language of Title IX includes this pregnant female, she has to this point not been included in policy or case law that grants any sense of entitlement to teen mothers. Consider for example, that the teen mothers in the NHS cases were not filing suit for access to equal education opportunity in terms of access to their schools, or access to a certain curricula. They already had access to their regular public school and to the school curriculum they studied before becoming teen mothers. These teen mothers, white, mainly middleclass, high-achieving students were exactly whom Title IX was developed for and in these cases the teen mothers benefited at least initially from Title IX by being able to continue their education at the same level they worked


at before becoming pregnant. A study by Dawn M. Upchurch and James L. McCarthy supports this claim, noting that white teen mothers made their greatest gain in graduation rates between 1975 and 1986. In contrast, black mothers made their greatest gains in graduation rates between 1958 and 1975, before the implementation of Title IX.60 This startling finding reinforces the ideology of Title IX as developed out of a sense of entitlement for “our girls” traced in chapter 1 and white teen mothers certainly benefited from this ideology. At the same time, recall that black teen mothers, by the late 1970s, were being further constructed not only as immoral and irresponsible, but also as welfare mothers, welfare subjects. For these mothers education was certainly not viewed as a right but came to be constructed as the responsibility of the teen mother. The benefit of an education is not for this teen mother, but pursuing education is what she owes to society for the benefit of her child and relief of the taxpayer. The NHS cases work to further differentiate between good and bad teen mothers, white and black teen mothers, and what they are entitled to. One of the girls bringing suit herself states: “not all teen mothers are bad.” However, such a discourse even in its attempts to interrupt stereotypes, recirculates and accepts the idea that there indeed are some “bad” teen mothers. Further, if the “good” teen mothers can be excluded from the NHS based on their “immoral” behavior; if the “good” teen mother does not garnish public support or sympathy, what chance does the “bad” teen mother have to make her case for equal education opportunity? Although schools may not like serving the “good” teen mother, they do know more about what to do with her—leave her alone, return her to her normal classes, and let her graduate. In fact there is evidence that schools place teen mothers into different programs by race, with white girls most often being served in the regular public school or offered tutoring at home until the birth of their child at which point they return to school, while African-American and Latina teens are overrepresented in separate school placements, an issue explored further in later chapters.61 However, what does education in these separate settings mean for the “bad” teen mother? What is the purpose of education for the “bad” teen mother? While these questions have seldom been asked or researched thoroughly, linking education for these girls to welfare reform acts, including the PRWORA, does firmly situate education as a responsibility for these girls. Here then linking teen pregnancy to a social welfare issue shifts the major question from “What is the purpose of education for the school-age mother?” to “What is the purpose of education for the teen mother on welfare?” The latter question lends itself to the development of programs for teen mothers not based on entitlement to education but on education as a


responsibility to society. Education in this way for racialized teen mothers, who are assumed to be irresponsible, is a responsibility that the girls must meet for society. Further, it is assumed that teen mothers in need of education would not seek it on their own, as they are irresponsible, and must be forced (through social welfare legislation) to get this education. This attitude became prevalent in welfare reform measures requiring school attendance and a high school degree in order to qualify for social welfare support. As Mittelstadt notes, “the very purpose of education was reconfigured from a guaranteed entitlement to an enforced requirement.”62 A discourse of education as a responsibility has helped to determine what the goals of such an education should include: economic self-sufficiency through high school completion with an emphasis on job training; prevention of a repeat pregnancy; and retraining in values and responsibility. Thus, schools under this discourse find themselves in the business of much more than providing access to academics or graduation. They necessarily are involved with tracking the teen mother on welfare, linking her with local community health and social service agencies, and often involving her in programs to prevent a repeat pregnancy which will emphasize values retraining.63 Curricula and programs developed for schools have proliferated, including one popular welfare/school/job training program “Learnfare,” which comes with a corresponding “how-to” guide, “How to implement a mandatory stay-in-school program for Teenage Parents on Welfare.”64 Research on these separate programs further suggests that a key role of the teen pregnancy program is for teen girls to redeem themselves and learn to make responsible, “morally defensible actions.”65 These special programs, developed under a discourse of education as responsibility, are not developed with the white, middle-class girl in mind. These programs are focused upon the low-income, unwed, and assumed “minority” teen mother. Such girls are not deserving or capable of a regular education; instead such a girl has a responsibility not to become a burden on the taxpayer.

Concluding Thoughts on Contamination and Responsibility Certainly vestiges of both contamination and responsibility discourse remain prevalent in the provision of education to teen mothers today. While these discourses affect all teen mothers they affect teen mothers differentially by race. Although all teen mothers are situated as morally infectious, white teen mothers have been historically situated as entitled to an education and the gain in graduation rates for white teen mothers after Title IX supports the impact of this ideology. In this way, white teen mothers have


been good legal subjects under Title IX, even if they were unsuccessful in the cases they brought against it. At the same time, racialized teen mothers have been situated as infectious, and linked so strongly with inherent immorality, irresponsibility, and social welfare dependency that education for them has been redefined, not as an entitlement, but as a social responsibility. Here education operates under an ideology of “equal to what they deserve” and further situates these girls’ education as not for their benefit, but a responsibility to society. Under discourses of contamination black and Latina pregnant/mothering teens are contaminated and by their invisibility in case law regarded as unfit legal subjects. Through discourses of education as a responsibility, such girls are further situated as unfit and unentitled educational subjects in need of separation, enforcement, and control. This analysis demonstrates how pregnant teens are differentially treated although all school-age mothers are guaranteed equal education opportunity under Title IX. The logic of the discourses of contamination and responsibility override concerns about meeting the intent of Title IX and allow public and political ideology to continue to impact the education provided to teen mothers. What these discourses specifically mean in terms of how teen mothers are educated and which mothers are provided what kind of education is discussed in detail in the chapters that follow.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

All quotes taken directly from the Statement of the Honorable Roderick Paige before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, June 27, 2002. See e.g. Brake, “Legal Challenges to the Educational Barriers Facing Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents.” Upchurch and McCarthy, “Adolescent Childbearing and High School Completion in the 1980s”; and, Weatherly, et.al., “Patchwork Programs.” Ordway v. Hargraves, 323 F. Supp, 1155 (D. Mass. 1971). For a discussion of Ordway, see Brake, “Legal Challenges to the Educational Barriers Facing Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents”; and, Luker, Dubious Conceptions. Brake, “Legal Challenges to the Educational Barriers Facing Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents”; and, Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet: Single-sex Schools for Pregnant Girls,” 1203–1237. Nutt v. Goodland, 128 Kan. 507, 278 P. 1065 (1929). Perry v. Grenada Municipal School District as discussed in Grace Belsches-Simmons, “Teenage Pregnancy and Schooling,” 3. See e.g., FCAA, SWHA, Publications-Field Reporter, 1959, Box 48, Folder 13, p. 3. NFCM, SWHA, Publications-Annual Report, 1929, Box 2, Folder 9, p. 31. FCAA, SWHA, Publications-Conference Papers, Boyd Nelson “Elimination of Roadblocks in Educating School-Age Unmarried Mothers,” 1960, Box 50, Folder 1, pp. 2–3. FCAA, SWHA, Executive Committee Minutes, 1968, Box 36, Folder 6, p. 3. Changes in F.C. Home philosophy and service were also related to changing policies in many homes allowing for the unwed mother to give her child up for adoption. Such an option became increasingly common for the unwed young mother meaning that F.C. Homes, as one head teacher noted, “took on an aspect of a boarding school” with the girls staying at a hospital while pregnant, having their child, who was put up for adoption and then returning to their homes, “ready to return to her uninterrupted life.” FCAA, SWHA, Publications-June Peterson, “Public School Services in a Maternity Home,”1970, Box 49, Folder 10, p. 3.

Title IX and the Discursive Climate of Education for School-Age Mothers • 75 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Children’s Welfare League of America papers (hereafter cited as CWLA) SWHA, NCI Meeting Report, Box 48, Folder 5, pp. 3–6. CWLA, SWHA, NCI Policy Statement, Box 48, Folder 2. CWLA, SWHA, NCI Supplementary Statement to Project Application Training School Personnel to Accept Unmarried Mothers, Box 48, Folder 5, p. 2. FCAA, SWHA, Publications-June Peterson, “Public School Services in a Maternity Home,”1970, Box 49, Folder 10, p. 3. FCAA, SWHA, Publications-Conference Papers, Boyd Nelson “Elimination of Roadblocks in Educating School-Age Unmarried Mothers,” 1960, Box 50, Folder 1, pp. 1–2. CWLA, SWHA, Ovid Parody, “The Uninterrupted Education of Unwed Mothers,” Box 47, Folder 10, pp. 1–2. CWLA, SWHA, Ovid Parody, “The Uninterrupted Education of Unwed Mothers,” Box 47, Folder 10, p. 7. Educational Amendments of 1972, Section 901–902; 20 U.S.C. Section 1681 (1972); 34 C.F.R. Section 106.40 (b) (1) Id. Section 106.40(b)(3). Id. Section 106.40(b)(4–5). I recognize that these may sound like basic issues to the reader, however, my research and the research of others show that teen mothers do not have access even to these “basics.” Such issues often become mired in issues of power, control, and ideology about what the teen mother deserves. I explicate how this happens in the next chapter. When attempting to find the number of complaints about teen mothers’ access to schools that OCR had received nationwide, I was informed there was “no available code for ‘teen pregnancy.’”“Maternity discrimination” at elementary and secondary schools was suggested as the best search parameter, however, the number of reported cases under this search may also include adult women filing complaints (e.g., work-related complaints). OCR presently has no way of distinguishing teen mothers’ complaints under Title IX from adult women’s complaints. Complaints would have to be looked at individually to determine whether any were brought by a pregnant/mothering student, however, the complaints are not public documents unless they have been investigated or settled. The limits of using OCR data to determine whether pregnant/mothering students are receiving fair access to schools are apparent. Under the available search parameters, OCR reported that it found twenty-five complaints under “maternity discrimination” nationwide from 1993 to 2002. Personal Communication, September 18, 2002. Office of Civil Rights, Philadelphia, FOIA # 73. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” FN 182. Schools are not alone in setting policy that violates Title IX. Take for example, Indianapolis mayor Steve Goldsmith’s plan to turn to religious groups and organizations to reduce unwed pregnancy. He developed a “twenty-seven strategy” plan to “stigmatize out-of-wedlock births”—a “culture war” led by religious groups against illegitimacy. The plan placed pressure on schools “to ban pregnant teens and boys who had fathered children from extracurricular activities” and to send “pregnant girls to separate schools altogether.” Both of these strategies are blatantly illegal under Title IX. Loconte, “A City’s Assault on Teen Pregnancy,” 12. Two examples of this include a decision made in 1998 by the school district in Xenia, Ohio to review its National Honor Society membership policy after rescinding a student’s membership when they found she was a teen, unwed mother, and a change in policy by the school board in Texas in 1993 after three cheerleaders who were pregnant were kicked off the cheerleading squad, while a fourth who had an abortion was allowed to remain on the squad. I describe such a situation in Pillow “The Making of Mothers,” and Pillow, “Exposed Methodology.” See e.g., Fine, “Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females,” 29–53; Gordon, ed. Women, the State, and Welfare; Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Age Mothers,” 177–205; and, Rushing, “Sin, Sex, and Segregation.” See e.g., Fine, “Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females.” Kelly, “Warning Labels,” 165–186; Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; Lesko, “Implausible Endings”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Tolman, “Doing Desire,” 324–342. I have written about how teen mothers are often aware of the fear and discomfort their pregnant bodies engender in adult teachers and may even use this discomfort to their advantage


31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

to get what they want, exaggerating their pregnant bodies by standing with their full bodies thrust forward. Whether these young women were using the knowledge of the discomfort they caused adults to their educational advantage is debatable, but young pregnant women themselves are certainly aware of the discomfort their bodies cause for adults in school settings, see, e.g., Pillow “The Making of Mothers,” and Pillow, “Exposed Methodology.” See e.g., Lugg, For God and Country. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” 149. Houston v. Prosser, 1972; also see Warren, “Pregnant Students/Public Schools,” 112. Initially, the student was paying for the GED courses. The court decision did include the mandate that the school district pay for the student to complete the GED courses. Schools have also attempted to dismiss students for other behaviors seen as immoral. A 1981 seventh circuit court decision ruled that the Cobb County School District in Georgia had violated a student’s constitutional rights when it barred her from attending her regular school and required her to attend night school after she began living with her boyfriend (Street v. Cobb County School District, Georgia, 1981). Teachers also have been targets of contamination logic. As late as 1986 a teacher was dismissed for being an unwed mother. A district court affirmed the jury finding that the school board had violated the rights of the teachers’ constitution (Eckmann v. Board of Education of Hawthorn School District, Illinois, 1986). As reported in Grace Belsches-Simmons, “Teenage Pregnancy and Schooling, 4, FN 10. Warren, “Pregnant Students,” 111. Warren, “Pregnant Students,” 111. Warren, “Pregnant Students,” 112. Warren, “Pregnant Students,” 112. One comprehensive study detailing service provisions for teen mothers found that teen mothers predominantly served at separate school sites or off-campus programs, see Barrett, “An Assessment of Educational Services for Pregnant Students and Teenage Mothers”; see also Ling, “Lifting Voices,” 2387–2412. Barbara Whitehead, “The Failure of Sex Education,” 77. Note Whitehead’s focus upon “unwed” teen mothers—does this mean that teen mothers who are married would be treated differentially? Existing research does not support that married teen mothers fare better than unmarried teen mothers, an issue discussed in chapter 6. Whitehead, “The Failure of Sex Education.” Pillow, The Making of Mothers. See e.g., Pillow, The Making of Mothers; and Pillow, “Exposed Methodologies.” Wort v. Vierling, No. 82-3169 (C.D. Ill. Sept. 4, 1984). Pfeiffer v. Marion Ctr. Area School District, Civ. Act. 84–648 (W.D. Pa Jan. 10, 1990), aff ’d in part, vacated and remanded in part, 917 F.2d 779 (3d Cir. 1990), reh’g denied, 1990 U.S. app. LEXIS 23289 (3d Cir. Dec. 20, 1990), at 10–11. How do such decisions occur? How can courts separate premarital sexual activity from pregnancy? In a 1974 Supreme Court decision, Geduldig v. Aiello, that still stands, the court established a distinction between pregnant and nonpregnant persons that separates “pregnancy-related classifications from gender-based classifications” (Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” 1215). This decision thus allows for exclusionary policies based on pregnancy because such policies are not viewed as gender exclusions but the same as any other physical condition. Given public dissatisfaction with this decision, the legislature passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1975, specifically protecting pregnant women from discrimination in the workplace. However, for NHS cases, courts have relied upon the Geduldig decision to guide their decision making. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” 1228. Brake, “Legal Challenges.” www.aclu.org.news. Chipman v. Grant County School District, 1998. See e.g., Brake, “Legal Challenges”; and Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet.” See e.g., responses on ACLU website, www.aclu.org. It is obvious that the focus and attention and control in these cases are only on female students. While male students may engage in premarital sexual activity or may even be an unwed parent, such facts have not been deemed necessary or admissible to the court or even pertinent in the public mind. See Brake, “Legal Challenges.”

Title IX and the Discursive Climate of Education for School-Age Mothers • 77 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

On the other hand, the American public loves stories of people who overcome hardship. Thus the story of Nora Cadena made national news in June 1999, because although she was mother to a ten-month-old girl, having become a teen mother at age sixteen, she was heading to college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a scholarship based on her high grades and scholastic achievement. The story of this “southern California” teen mother was news because Ms. Cadena defies several stereotypes—she is attending a prestigious university based on her grades not on affirmative action, a feat in and of itself assumed to be notable for a Latina, and she is doing so as a young Latina unwed mother. In this story Ms. Cadena is treated sympathetically, because she is meeting a societal need to know that a Latina teen mother is going to be self-sufficient, hard-working, responsible, and not welfare dependent. This is the story the public wants to hear and wants reproduced—the teen mother who is taking responsibility and overcoming her hardships on her own, not asking for privileges. Ikemoto, “The In/Fertile, the Too Fertile, and the Dysfertile,” 1008. Ikemoto, “The In/Fertile, the Too Fertile, and the Dysfertile,” 1042. McClain, “‘Irresponsible’ Reproduction,” 342. Upchurch and McCarthy, “Adolescent Childbearing.” See e.g., Pillow, The Making of Mothers; and, Upchurch and McCarthy, “Adolescent Childbearing.” Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘Our Girls’ and ‘Welfare Mothers,’” 33. See e.g., Card, et. al. Family Planning Perspectives, 210–220; Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; Lesko, “The “Leaky Needs” of School-Age Mothers” and Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Long and Bos, Learnfare. See e.g., Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; Lesko, “Implausible Endings”; and, Pillow, The Making of Mothers.

CHAPTER

3

Schooling Responses to Teen Mothers Absences, Colds, and Disabilities This [teenage pregnancy] is a national emergency . . . I propose that teenage girls be encouraged to use long-term, maintenance-free contraceptives such as Norplant, IUDs, or Depo-Provera and they be paid regularly to continue doing so up to age 20 or so. —Quote from past AERA president, Educational Researcher, 1998 Schools are getting into being social workers rather than educators —School Board Member, Chicago Public Schools, 1998 We don’t want to make it too easy for teen mothers; otherwise we’ll reinforce the problems of teen pregnancy. —High School Principal, 2000

The National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy initiated by President Clinton in 1996 included representatives from the medical community, sports figures, a university president, and comedian Whoopi Goldberg.1 It did not include an educator or administrator from a grade school or a high school, or an educational researcher or policy analyst that studied teen pregnancy. The composition of this committee reflects the lack of involvement and visibility of educators and educational researchers in policy arenas at a national level. This absence is curious given that it is schools that have the most contact with adolescents and are the acknowledged frontline service providers for teen mothers. It seems obvious that educators and educational policy researchers have much to contribute to national 79


discussions and policy deliberations about teen pregnancy or should at least be involved in establishing policies that schools will be required to implement. So where have the educational policy researchers been? Why are education personnel noticeably missing from discussions, debates, and policy development? Why is their absence not questioned? Ellen Lagemann offers one explanation for educationists’ (her term for those who conduct education research) absence in social and educational policy development. Lagemann begins by asking why and how the educational “domain of scholarly work always has been regarded as something of a stepchild, reluctantly tolerated at the margins of academe and rarely trusted by policy makers, practitioners, or members of the public at large?”2 Lagemann suggests that while the arena of educational research attempts to be taken serious as a discipline, the field over-disciplined itself, mimicking other established disciplines in the social sciences and replicating existing research practices and methods. This process Lagemann argues has limited education’s usefulness to policy and has delegated the field of education to the realm of “poor cousin” of the social sciences. Lagemann’s history of educationists “low status and isolation” offers an understanding of the “current weak demand for education research” and the absence of educationists on a national policy level.3 However, an absence of attention to research on teen mothers is also present within educational policy and research. The arena of educational policy and research is also surprisingly devoid of discussion or analysis of teen pregnancy. While there are numerous articles in social science journals that focus upon the social-psychological attributes of teen mothers such articles remain focused upon identifying which girls are most “atrisk” and perpetuate cultural deficit theories to explain teen pregnancy. A review of the articles and books that do focus upon the education of pregnant/mothering students shows little to no mention of Title IX.4 This is a glaring absence given the direct impact court decisions and Title IX hold for the provision of education for school-age mothers. There are only a handful of education scholars in the United States who have researched and published on the educational experiences of teen mothers and most mention that their research is confounded by the lack of basic data on teen mothers at the school level, data such as school attendance and dropout rates.5 While teen pregnancy has remained at the forefront of policy debates over the past thirty years, information on how and where pregnant teens and teen mothers are being educated remains largely unavailable and schools have been primary participants in continuing this absence. For instance, over 90 percent of the schools and school districts I contacted could not respond to routine questions like, “How many pregnant teens or teen mothers are attending school?” “What schools are they attending?” “How

Schooling Responses to Teen Mothers • 81

many teen mothers leave school?” “How many teen mothers return to school?”“What kinds of support services or programs are pregnant/mothering teens getting?”“How many teen mothers complete school?”6 The education of teen mothers has not been a topic of consideration by larger research and policy groups either. While there is a wealth of research on prevention programs, there continues to be an absence of discussion and research on how to educate the teen girl when she is pregnant/mothering. Policy reports that discuss the problems of teen pregnancy often do not provide recommendations for how schools can respond to them or consider the role of Title IX in educating teen mothers. Many educational research groups do not include information on teen pregnancy or when information is provided it is focused upon prevention. A 1985 National Conference on State Legislatures report on initiatives that address teen pregnancy noted that: The major roadblock is denial. Even though we live in a highly sexually oriented culture, no one wants to admit that teenagers are sexually active. When you start introducing teenage pregnancy bills, the argument you’ll get from some of your constituents is ‘these kids should not be having sex,’ rather than ‘how can we prevent these 10,000 pregnancies a year?’ It’s like watching a house burn down . . .7

This denial and the fears of public policymakers and educationists to engage in a dialogue on such an emotionally charged topic have meant sparse attention has been given to the education of teen mothers. By comparison, great attention has been given to approaching teen pregnancy as a social welfare issue while there is no existing funding for longitudinal evaluation research to begin to determine what type of education is best for teen mothers.8 However, while there is an absence of knowledge and research about the educational needs and experiences of teen mothers, there is not a lack of opinion by educators about who the teen mother is, what she needs, and what she deserves. Regardless of the lack of basic information, data, and comprehensive research, school personnel have felt free to speak authoritatively about the problems of teen pregnancy in their school, district, or state and to offer prescriptive policy recommendations. It is difficult to identify the impact or influence of Title IX within statements by school personnel—often the fact of Title IX is not even mentioned, leaving the role schools should or could play in educating teen mothers seemingly open to local decision making. In this way the education of teen mothers can be recognized as both debated and ignored within the education arena. The debates that do occur reflect the sentiments of the quotes at the beginning of this chapter—that teen pregnancy is the fault of individual immorality, that schools getting involved with teen mothers overstep the


boundaries of education, and that providing programs for teen mothers to increase their access to schooling will give the perception that a school is “soft” on teen pregnancy. Notably absent in educational research and debate, is what schools can or should do under Title IX, to support the right of a teen mother’s access to an education equal to her peers. This absence is notable in education journals, where there are few articles focusing upon the education of the school-age teen mother. While articles on preventing teen pregnancy are relatively numerous, especially in social science journals, articles that focus on educating teen mothers are few. For example, between 1972 and 2002 Phi Delta Kappan published the most articles on education and the school-age mother, yet only one of these articles mentions Title IX.9 The remaining articles discuss the education of teen mothers without ever referring to the fact that it is illegal to dismiss teen mothers from school, that alternative placements must be voluntary, and that the teen mother has the right to an education comparable to her peers. Such absences within educational research support the discursive workings of crisis talk allowing it to dominate existing educational talk about teen pregnancy. The lack of data and information on educating teen mothers allows education personnel to replicate societal and social policy crisis and epidemic talk on unwed teen pregnancy. The quotes at the front of this chapter, which reflect the sense of crisis and epidemic surrounding teen pregnancy, are often difficult to argue against as they capture prevailing sentiment and there is not existing research to refute such statements as ideological. As noted previously, a climate of crisis engenders epidemic logic, which reinforces quick, poorly thought out, limited, and regulatory policy recommendations and decisions. For instance, Julian Stanley, the former president of the American Education Research Association (AERA), makes the extreme recommendation, cited at the beginning of this chapter, without any consideration of what effects it may have. Instead, he notes that “researchers could determine whether the strategy that I have proposed increases educational levels, reduces delinquency and crime, and promotes vocationally self-sufficiency.”10 Despite that some of the contraceptive methods he lists have not been studied or approved for use by women under the age of seventeen, he also fails to acknowledge that the long-term effects such contraceptives may have on teenagers are not known. Ethical considerations such as these are overridden by the sense of “emergency” surrounding teen pregnancy. Additionally, Stanley does not address how decisions about which teens to put on contraceptives will be made—presumably we will just know which girls are at risk. There are obvious problems with such policy recommendation, but before we dismiss Stanley’s views as far fetched, consider that several judges


in the early 1990s prescribed mandatory birth control, through the insertion of Norplant, as part of women’s sentences for child abuse, drug use, or welfare fraud. Additionally many states have linked incentives to use Norplant with the welfare system along with family caps.11 I explore the ramifications of such policy decisions further in chapter 6, but here note that Stanley’s recommendations are alarming exactly because such practices have already begun. This example is highlighted to point out that while I do present a picture of education personnel as absent from national and state-level debate and decision making regarding the education of teen mothers, schools are the frontline service providers for teen mothers and education personnel are making decisions daily that affect the lives of teen mothers. However, many frontline decisions are not based upon research or experience, but rather on epidemic logic, fear, and heightened morality discourses, all of which focus upon control, regulation, and surveillance of the pregnant/ mothering teen. Note the rendering of a pregnant girl from a 1987 Phi Delta Kappan article that called for “schools to tackle the problem” of teen pregnancy (see figure 5). Her eyes downcast redemptively, swollen belly prominent, she is dwarfed by the adults around her, clearly distinguishing her as a child versus the adults surrounding her. This white pregnant girl, though depicted as an object of attention by school personnel, is silent and silenced, without agency or voice, while the adults with large, claw-like hands hold her from the front and behind and control her future.12 Figure 5 illustrates the complexities of analyzing school responses, both absent and active, to the pregnant/mothering teen. Here I situate the complexities of reading school responses within practices and discourses of absence and ambivalence surrounding the provision of education to the pregnant/mothering student. Discourses and practices of absence and ambivalence are evident first in the lack of state and local policy for pregnant/mothering teens and within restricted interpretations of Title IX by school administrators. Correspondingly, a lack of research and data on the educational experiences and needs of pregnant/mothering students impacts and delimits how pregnant/mothering teens receive an education. Lastly, I consider in light of these absences how school personnel are making decisions about how to provide education to the pregnant/mothering student. By analyzing documents and conducting interviews with school personnel, including administrators and educators at regular public schools and administrators at the district and state level, I identify two metaphors that describe educational approaches to school-age mothers at local school levels: pregnancy as a cold and pregnancy as a disability/disease. These discursive models impact policy development and service provision and address the lack of data collection that allows binary understandings of teen


Fig. 5 Phi Delta Kappan, June 1987.


pregnancy to continue. Like the work of contamination discourse in chapter 2, either a cold or a disease/disability approach may contaminate the student body, however, the severity of the contamination determines how to treat and manage the pregnant female body. These discursive constructions of pregnancy structure schools’ responses to the teen mother—what and how much can schools be expected to deal with and handle. For instance, perhaps schools can handle a student’s cold, but not their disease. The cold or disability discursive model also guides how much empathy to feel for the pregnant student—having a cold is a pain and inconvenience, but you get over it, versus a disease or disability that is likely beyond your control and has long-term consequences. Obviously, the problem with these discursive models is that at times pregnancy is neither completely like a cold or a disability—it is sometimes neither, sometimes both. The limits of these models point to our continuing inability to deal with women’s fluctuating bodies, discursively and in practice.

Tracing Policy Absences at State and Local Levels: Evidence of Deliberate Ambivalence Certainly, Title IX has had a dramatic impact on teen mothers’ initial access to education, particularly white teen mothers.13 Prior to Title IX less than 10 percent of schools offered educational services to teen mothers.14 During the 1970s, schools routinely dismissed pregnant teens from attending school on the grounds of “gross personal misconduct.”15 In fact, in the 1970s married pregnant teachers were also asked to leave school and it was not until the early 1980s that all female teachers gained the right to remain at school throughout the term of their pregnancy.16 Similarly, prior to Title IX, the marital status of the pregnant teen did not protect her from school expulsion. However, while the most common practice prior to Title IX was outright dismissal of the pregnant teen, some communities and schools did have programs to accommodate the needs of the pregnant student. A 1972 Phi Delta Kappan article estimated that there were “nearly 200” programs in public schools for pregnant unwed mothers. These included providing home tutoring during the teen’s pregnancy, placing the teen in a separate setting, allowing the teen to remain in school until the fifth or sixth month of her pregnancy, offering the teen special classes at the regular school, or schools that continued to “dismiss pregnant students outright.”17 Donald Warren noted that in 1972 the type of service available to a teen mother was highly dependent upon where she lived, concluding: In short, there is little uniformity in the treatment of pregnant students by public schools, even within a given county or state; and, of course the quality of the programs where they exist varies from school district to school district and often from school to school.18


Although one might expect the passage of Title IX to have served as an impetus for schools to coordinate their policies and programs for teen mothers, this was not the case. Although by the mid-1970s schools were situated as the primary service providers for programs to deal with teen pregnancy, state and local school districts did not develop specific programs and policies to guide the education of teen mothers. A lack of federal funding initiatives to implement Title IX partially explains the lack of program development. Without authorization of funds to support the development of school-based teen pregnancy programs for pregnant/mothering students, school districts had little incentive to proactively develop programs for such students.19 After the passage of Title IX, states continued to leave the education of school-age mothers open to local definition and control. The effects of local interpretation and control are evidenced in a 1979 New Jersey plan that promoted a policy which allowed each school district to “voluntarily plan a program for its pregnant students.”20 Given the voluntary nature of this policy only a handful of school districts developed school plans for pregnant teens, meaning that the remaining school districts handled cases individually.21 With policies this unstructured, the schools’ responses to the teen mother have been sporadic, idiosyncratic, and limited. At issue is the evidence that even after Title IX schools have demonstrated ambivalence toward educating pregnant teens, unsure whether they are really the school’s responsibility or the responsibility of social welfare agencies and community organizations. Title IX made schools face the fact that they could no longer routinely dismiss pregnant/mothering students. Yet a RAND study indicated that by 1981 “most of the school districts studied had established separate facilities” for teen mothers and that these separate facilities had “low academic standards.”22 This use of alternative school placements for teen mothers should not be understood as a new age of school policy providing guidelines for the education of teen mothers. The same RAND study revealed that public schools were most likely to do no more than forbid expulsion of school-age pregnant teens.23 Schools typically developed programming for pregnant teens only under external pressure and in the Rand study, school administrators were never the first to initiate such programming, creating programs and policies only in response to external pressures.24 In this light, trends of placement of school-age mothers in existing alternative school settings are more accurately viewed as a response to schools no longer being able to dismiss pregnant teens outright, not a as response to the educational needs of teen mothers. Many such alternative schools were originally established for learning- and behavior-disordered youth, and teen mothers were often placed in such schools without any additional support.25 A 1981 “Information Update” on “The response of the schools to teenage pregnancy and parenting” put out by the Children’s Welfare


League of America noted several trends and problems in school response.26 Three types of programs for teen mothers were identified: “inclusive curriculum programs; supplementary curriculum programs . . . ; and noncurriculuar programs.” However, contrary to NCI’s expressed hope that schools become actively involved in the education of pregnant/mothering teens (see chapter 2), this study found that “schools neither seek nor want an active role in student pregnancy or parenthood” and further that the initiation of special programs for teen mothers “depends for the most part upon the dedication of a single individual.” Perhaps due to the lack of school personnel support, the update also noted that “pregnant students make most decisions concerning pregnancy and school continuation without school staff input.” Further, the quality of the three program models was found to be “uneven, both within and across programs” and while each program model was noted to offer something to the teen mother, none was able to meet all the needs of the pregnant/mothering student. A comprehensive 1985 study reported similar findings and no progress in coordination and development of school-based programs for teen mothers.27 The Children’s Defense Fund noting this trend saw fit to publish in 1986 a report titled “Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy: What Schools Can Do” linking the importance of educational opportunity for female students with the prevention of teen pregnancy as well as the vital role of public schools and educators in the life of pregnant/mothering teens. However, Larry Cuban argues that by 1986 school based programs and policies were more focused on preventing pregnancy than on educating pregnant teens, noting that “for prevention efforts, . . . schools have become the preferred provider,” however, “the prevention of teen pregnancy has been divorced from helping teenagers who are already pregnant.”28 Although a 1987 article reported that “65 percent of school administrators view teen pregnancy as one of the top ten problems facing their school systems,”29 another article in the same journal noted that there had been little progress in educating teen mothers, finding that a “vast majority” of school districts “have not begun to develop comprehensive plans to deal with the problems of teen pregnancy or teen parenting.”30 The author, James Buie, perhaps attempting to build from the mid-1980s attention to teen pregnancy as an epidemic of “children having children,” admonished educators, “The topic is hot. The time is ripe” further stating: school administrators need to act—carefully but courageously—to establish innovative programs to deal with [problems of teen pregnancy] in their own communities. 31

However the author of the article does not discuss the role of Title IX in establishing programs for teen mothers and emphasizes “employment skills” as the goal for teen mothers. Buie further cites the need for teen


pregnancy programs and programs for teen parents to take the “the romanticism out of having a baby” and further argues that although “mainstreaming is favored by 80% of school administrators . . . mainstreaming may be crueler than isolating teen parents in special programs,” due to the “toughness” it takes to survive in the “regular” school as a pregnant or parenting teen.32 Buie’s comments and recommendations remain focused upon changing the teen mother instead of considering how schools themselves could, and under Title IX should, change to accommodate the pregnant/parenting student. Although Buie suggests that the majority of school administrators favor “mainstreaming” of the pregnant student, a 1987 study found the more common practice was that of placing pregnant/mothering teens in alternative school settings, with 76 out of 90 cities providing services to teen mothers in “alternative schools.”33 This study further reported that the “education strands of the programs themselves most frequently provided counseling, special education, and nutrition, as well as family life and sex education.”34 Based upon articles and policy reports of the 1970s and 1980s, a disparate pattern of education provided to pregnant/mothering teens emerges, reflecting little program development that addresses their education, an emphasis upon vocational education as an appropriate goal for school-aged mothers and little to no attention to Title IX in educational policy research and development.

Ambivalent Uses of Title IX Wendy Wolf of the Center for Analysis and Policy Development argues that Title IX is still not being well utilized for pregnant teens and that the area of education to teen mothers is overlooked.35 At present most states continue to have no comprehensive policy for educating the pregnant or parenting teen. When state educational policies do exist “they can be divided into two general categories: rules excluding or segregating pregnant girls and mothers and rules restricting their participation in extracurricular activities.”36 Further, while school personnel often name teen pregnancy as one of the worst problems they face, at the same time, they have little knowledge about the legal rights of teen mothers or about effective educational models.37 This means that the education of school-age mothers remains open to local interpretation and implementation and thus programs for teen mothers vary widely in availability, size, services, admission policies, and goals. Certainly schools face many challenges in attempting to design policy to guide the education of pregnant/mothering teens. Basic questions such as, When is a teen mother a problem for the school—when she is pregnant, when she is a mother, or both? What kind of support and educational services are schools required to provide for the school-age girl who is pregnant


or parenting? How and what type of accommodations should schools make to ensure access for the teen mother? and, should our school have a teen pregnancy/parents program?, can quickly collapse into heated debates about the role of schools and charges of a declining morality in U.S. society. Discussions of what to do with teen mothers is compounded by the myriad of program options (despite little data about their effectiveness) and needs of the pregnant/mothering teen to consider. For example, do we need family life courses to prevent teen pregnancy, or family planning services, or prenatal health care programs, or alternative education programs, including vocational training and parent education, for the teen mother? Should the school play a role in coordinating social services for the teen mother? Who is a teen mother’s primary case manager—the teacher or the social worker? And should schools offer on-site childcare for teen mothers? None of these program options are easily discussed or easily placed within the regular school setting without intensive discussion and planning and many of them are “hot-topic” issues for local communities.38 Thus, it is often easier for school personnel to avoid making program decisions and focus instead upon the need for “character education” or programs like “dollars for deeds” which pay female students to stay in school, receive passing grades, and not get pregnant.39 As discussed, policy and research have been more focused on pregnancy prevention than on what to do with the teen girl once she is pregnant. I have observed that it is much easier to discuss pregnancy (and thus sexual relations) prevention and control, even if it is still difficult to agree upon how to prevent teen pregnancy. When discussing teen pregnancy however, adults are faced with the failure of “prevention” and their own fears and concerns about teen sexuality cannot be ignored. This means that policies affecting the education of teen mothers are left undeveloped or are established at a minimal level, such as a policy that states “teen mothers may not be routinely dismissed from school.” A 1991 publication by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights titled, “Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Issues under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,” was developed in response to the fact that fifteen years after the passage of Title IX many school administrators remained unclear about the legal obligations of public schools to provide an education to school-age mothers.40 Although legal cases of complaint had not officially occurred, anecdotal evidence pointed out that local school districts were widely varying in their treatment of the teen mother and that many were likely infringing upon the rights of teen mothers. This pamphlet was developed to counter such practices and prevent future litigation. The pamphlet reviews the language of Title IX noting, “schools may not bar pregnant students from any part of their education program, including


specific classes such as an honors class or program, or from any of the extracurricular programs, such as interscholastic sports or the debate team.” The pamphlet also emphasizes that alternative or “special” programs for teen mothers must be voluntary, “If special programs or special schools exist for students who are pregnant or who have children, schools may not require these students to enroll in or transfer to these programs. Such coercion is illegal.”41 (emphasis in original) However, the next section of the pamphlet seems to offer the school administrator a loophole in providing educational services to the teen mother, or at least confuse the school official about what a legally appropriate education for the school-age mother would be. For example, the section entitled, “Approaches for Addressing the Educational Problem of Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting,” states that “administrators, teachers, and school counselors are seeking ways of providing the best opportunity for these students to continue their education and maintain their academic progress” and lists “approaches used by some elementary and secondary schools to deal with the educational issues associated with teen pregnancy, marriage, and parenting while complying with Title IX.” However, prior to the listing the pamphlet states: “These approaches are not legally mandated by Title IX or the ED regulation” and further notes these approaches are ones performed by school districts who have “gone beyond preventing discrimination.”42 Thus, in this publication, Title IX is interpreted as simply preventing basic discrimination without specifying how to do this.43 The assumption continues that if a school simply does not expel the pregnant teen then it is meeting Title IX, regardless of the kind of educational programs and opportunities provided. School personnel are left to their own ideological and political determination and to that of their community, in deciding what education for school-age mothers will entail in their school system. Interviews with school personnel reveal this to be true; school administrators feel justified in making “decisions for their school” about how to handle teen mothers and in my research I found that knowledge about Title IX was sporadic. For instance, while most of the school administrators I spoke with knew they could not “kick” a pregnant teen out of school, many did not know that alternative school placements for the teens that is any placement outside of the regular school classroom, should be voluntary, and most typically had a diminished view of the kind of education the teen mother needed or deserved. As one school principal explained: What they (teen mothers) need now is not an education, but skills training. Training on how to be a mother. Training on how to learn a skill to get a job. And we (the mainstream school) are not equipped to provide these needs—they are better served in a vocational school setting or GED program.


Although Title IX requires that such placements be voluntary, this administrator does not acknowledge this nor did this school practice “voluntary” placements. Such practices and sentiments are echoed in a review of educational policy guiding placement of pregnant/mothering teens by states. As of 1999, only fifteen states have criteria for alternative education placements for pregnant/mothering teens.44 This lack of criteria allows school personnel to indiscriminately place pregnant/mothering teens within alternative placements instead of considering how the regular, mainstream, school could continue to meet the students’ educational needs. However, the presence of criteria does not seem to decrease placement of teen mothers in alternative education programs. States that do have placement criteria also report the most alternative placement options with “employment training” and “other” being the most cited type of alternative programs available.45 Even in a state with a statewide policy and program for teen mothers, I found wide variations in the interpretation and application of this policy between school districts and between schools in the same district. Consider the following statements from three regular high school administrators in the same school district: This school is not a place where pregnant girls should be—it takes away the focus on academics and is a bad role model for our younger students. They usually leave this school for good or come back after their baby is born. I send all pregnant teens to [the alternative school site]. We can’t accommodate their needs here. We just keep the girls going in their current schedule.

At present, the continuing lack of statewide policies or district policies providing guidelines on educating the school-age mother in the regular or alternative school setting means that although the passage of Title IX protects the right of the teen mother to an education, where she will receive it, how, and what it will entail are open to local interpretation and implementation. This means that there is a wide range of disparity in teen mothers’ educational experiences. There are several basic provision models schools use to provide education to school-age mothers. These include, 1. Attend home school with no special provisions 2. Attend home school with separate teen pregnancy classes during the school day or after the school day 3. Attend separate school for full day for duration of pregnancy or in some cases until graduation 4. Home schooling during pregnancy and for several months after the birth of the child, then mother returns to home school


5. Attend Night GED classes—no involvement with the home school. The range of services provided by schools such as, counseling, childcare, transportation, tutoring, and parenting classes, also widely vary increasing the amount of disparity between programs for teen mothers. This means that depending on where a pregnant or mothering student lives, educational opportunities for her may be severely limited. Currently, there are many services to pregnant teens that are often uncoordinated, sporadically offered, overlapping, unaware of each other, and at times working at cross purposes.46 At present there is no case law under Title IX determining which of the above types of provisions meets the “equal education,” “voluntary,” and “comparable” components of Title IX, or any determining where schoolage mothers would be best served (in terms of equal education opportunity). Certainly, however, Title IX clearly situates the responsibility of providing access to an equal, comparable education for the school-age mother with public schools. So how have schools responded to this mandate—which provision models are schools using and for which teen mothers? Before specifically turning to this question, I first address the role a lack of data has on the provision of education to pregnant/mothering students.

School Data Problems—Troubling Absences in Data Practices Overriding any discussion of teen pregnancy as an educational policy issue is the lack of data and information on the teen mother as a student. I cannot overemphasize the problem caused by the lack of basic data collected on the educational experiences of teen mothers. Questions of how, where, and what type of an education schools are providing to school-age mothers is confounded by a lack of informative data. Data on how many teen mothers graduate, from where, and with what type of an education, are often not available or embedded in data sets on other “at-risk” school factors. Programs for teen mothers are often provided under the guise of “atrisk” programs or within other programs such as vocational education and home economics and once the pregnant teen has given birth she is often no longer tracked as a teen mother.47 While there are annual counts of the rate of teen pregnancy and full scale reports on prevention policy and programs, there is no corresponding study and analysis on the education of teen mothers.48 States do not routinely gather data on or track teen mothers in school and many local school districts do not keep track of teen mothers in their schools. A 1986 Select Committee House of Representatives report, Teen Pregnancy: What Is Being Done? A State-by-state Look,” notes:

Schooling Responses to Teen Mothers • 93 [I]t is clear from this report that there is no focused approach to solving the complex problems of teen pregnancy at any level of government. The efforts that do exist are too few, uncoordinated, and lack significant support. In short, the system is broken.49

While the relationship between educational attainment and economic well-being is noted, the report found that “states lack the ability, using current data, to fully assess the problem and design appropriate services”50 For example, the report found that “no states were able to report the number of pregnant or parenting adolescents finishing high school with their class, or within one year of their intended graduation date.”51 Similarly, states could not provide the number of teen mothers who complete G.E.D. or vocational education programs. At the time of the study, “fifty percent of the States reported schoolbased educational programs which aim at preventing teen pregnancies.”52 These programs emphasized “family life, sex education, and/or health education,” but again the focus remains here on preventing teen pregnancy. Similarly, the National Research Council in a 1986 report, “Risking the Future: Adolescent Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Childbearing,” placed emphasis upon pregnancy prevention, making prevention the highest priority. This report did not address how schools could or should play a role in addressing the problems of teen pregnancy and childbearing, a glaring omission, given that the report was published twelve years after Title IX.53 In the 1986 report there is little information on what type of service pattern models schools use for pregnant/mothering teens, although twenty states described offering “parenting and other skills and child development to soon-to-be, and new adolescent parents” and twelve states specifically noted the use of “alternative schools which only enroll pregnant or parenting teens” and a “few states mentioned homebound programs,” while “eleven states reported providing school-based child care services at regular and/or alternative school sites.”54 Further, the report states that: [N]one of the states provided information for the following questions on the survey: the number and percent of pregnant and parenting adolescents completing the General Equivalency Degree (G.E.D.) within two years of their intended graduation date; the number and percent of pregnant and parenting adolescents completing vocational education programs within two years of their intended graduation date; the number and percent of pregnant and parenting adolescents obtaining employment; the unemployment rate among adolescent mothers and fathers; and the percent of adolescent fathers providing child support to their infants.55

While there was no discussion of Title IX and its role in regulating the education of pregnant/mothering teens in the questionnaire, the report supported the development of vocational education programs for school-age mothers.


Research on teen pregnancy is made further problematic because the National Center for Health Statistics, the Bureau of Census, and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which provide the majority of data on teen pregnancy, use different systems of age and racial classification and have differing definitions of what constitutes a teen pregnancy.56 While the Department of Public Health in each state tracks the number of teen births, these statistics do not tell us how many of these girls continue in, return to, and/or complete high school. Wendy Wolf suggests a formula for determining the number of girls a state or district could expect to be serving in schools based upon aggregated birthrates to teen mothers over several years. Wolf explains that “a typical mid-size city with about 500 births to girls 18 and under on an annual basis will have about 800 to 900 adolescent parents who are eligible for services.”57 A city and school district then can estimate how many teen mothers are being or not being served by subtracting the number of pregnant/mothering teens receiving services from the estimated birth rate. However, the use of such a formula quickly becomes complicated in practice. In each of the states I studied, data on the number of teen mothers in school was not available or varied by availability at the state or district school level, replicating the “broken system” findings of the 1986 House report. In my research, State Departments of Education did not have or could not provide data on the number of pregnant/mothering students in school. At the district level, only 25 percent could provide me with up-to-date information (within the past three years) on the number of pregnant/mothering teens in school. Districts with some type of teen pregnancy program in place did have data, but again this data was confounded by unclear definitions and grouping of data on teen mothers with other categorical areas. Compounding the problem of tracking the educational experiences of pregnant/mothering students is that when schools do attempt to track the teen mother many problems of definition arise. For example, when is the pregnant/mothering student considered a teen mother? When she is age seventeen or under, or also when she is eighteen and older? If the student is married is she still considered a teen mother? If the pregnant teen leaves school or does home tutoring while she is pregnant and returns to school without support after birth, should she be counted as a teen mother? When a female student drops out of school how does the school know whether she left school due to a pregnancy or not? If the pregnant/mothering teen is receiving support services is she tracked as a teen mother or as a special education student? Given that the majority of schools have not developed policies to deal with the pregnant/mothering student, many questions also arise about how to count the teen mother as a student and how to treat her


absences due to illness during pregnancy or absences immediately after childbirth. When should the pregnant/mothering teen’s absences be excused and when should they not? Certainly much of the confusion around defining who the teen mother is and the resulting confusing data practices is related to funding for services for the teen mother. Programs that allow (or in some cases require) schools to facilitate services for pregnant/mothering teens decide how teen mothers are defined and tracked. For instance, I found practices that included, girls leaving their regular school, enrolling in an alternative school, but still appearing on the attendance roles in their regular school; girls who attended after-school mothering classes labeled as “behavioral disorder”; and girls who had left school due to pregnancy and were prevented from returning to school because they could drop back into school only at certain times during the school year due to strict attendance regulations. I also found differing data practices in schools within the same school district. As one school administrator stated, showing me the triplicates of forms she had to file on the teen mothers we were discussing, “It could not be more confusing.” While it may be surprising to those outside of education that schools have not achieved better data management and collection on the problem of teen pregnancy, for the school personnel attempting to keep track of the experiences of teen mothers the paperwork is already “burdensome” and as another district administrator explained to me: “teachers [the teen pregnancy teachers] are all coding differently no matter how we try to systemize the forms. The state requires data from us that we sometimes cannot answer, but we have to fill in the blanks for funding.” Further, when directly and persistently questioned, school personnel I interviewed in school districts or states that do offer school-based programs for teen mothers acknowledge that they likely serve a small percentage of the teen mothers in the community. Similarly, a review of the 1994 Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) publication on Teenage Pregnancy in Ohio, reveals that the gap between eligible and enrolled teen parents in a teen parent program, “Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills” (GRADS), offered throughout the state varied dramatically from county to county, ranging from approximately 10 percent to 65 percent.58 Thus, at best GRADS reached approximately 65 percent of eligible students, while some counties served only 10 percent of eligible students. GRADS summary and evaluation reports do not make such facts known. So, for example, while a GRADS 1992 annual report asserted that it graduated 85 percent of its students, this is 85 percent of the teen parents the program reaches, which in some districts may be a small number of eligible students.59 A more representative figure of the number of teen mothers graduating was reported by the CDF noting that “less than 56 percent of 18- and 19-year-old teen mothers are high school graduates.”60


Combining data absences at state and local levels with conflicting practices of reporting at local school levels yields a portrait of data confusion and misinformation. The data we do have on pregnant/mothering students is, even within the same school district, often based upon conflicting interpretations of how to track and code the teen mother and is likely inaccurate. The result is that at present we simply do not know how many teen mothers receive an education, how and where, they receive it, and what percentage of pregnant/mothering teens are in and not in school. Yet, it would seem obvious that knowing how many school-age mothers are in which schools and which programs, and how they do in the school or program is basic to evaluating services to teen mothers. The author of a 1972 article in Phi Delta Kappan recognized this need and despairing of the lack of data on teen mothers called for schools and educational researchers to begin to address the following questions: • “What effect does the presence of unwed pregnant students have on the values and life-styles of their peers?”. . . “is the student’s sexual activity any of the school’s business?” • “What is the effect of pregnant students on the school climate and the pace of student life?” “Do students relate to each other differently when pregnant students are among them?” “Are studentteacher relationships altered?” • “Does pregnancy affect positively a student’s cognitive development and motivation for learning? And, if it does, what learning environments would most effectively make use of this deepening interest in education?” • “What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various programs for pregnant students found among the nation’s public schools? For example, is a program offering home tutors a meaningful alternative to outright dismissal? What is the effect of isolating pregnant students from regular programs, both on the student involved and her peers?” • “What is the range of community attitudes toward a school’s exclusion or inclusion of pregnant students?”61 Thirty years later these questions remain pertinent and could still be pointed to as primary research questions. Yet we still lack informative research that begins to address such questions and begins to understand school-age mothers’ educational experiences and needs. This lack of data is not only due to educational researchers positions as the “poor cousin” of social science research as Lagemann argues, but also due to the lack of internal discussion, debate, and research within education. In summary, educational policy, local decision making, and discourses are impacted by the many problems encountered when attempting to re-


search and develop policy and programs for the school-age mother. These problems include, • Lack of research and discussion in education journals on teen mother’s educational experiences and specific lack of discussion of Title IX • Lack of state educational policy to coordinate schools’ responses to and treatment of teen mothers • Lack of data on teen mothers at the state and district level, and when data is collected, a lack of coordination of what data is to be collected and how • Lack of coordination between schools and many community programs for teen mothers • Fear of discussion of teen pregnancy The lack of research—evaluative, descriptive, interpretive—contributes to the sense of confusion and debate over what role schools should or could play in the lives of pregnant/mothering teens. Despite the passage of Title IX, community and education personnel remain ambivalent to providing services and programs for the pregnant/mothering teen within public schools. Local solutions often involve moving services for the pregnant/mothering teen to a community center, away from the visible site of public schools. When faced with community and public disputes about teen pregnancy, educationists are continually faced with the limitations of a lack of data addressing education issues of pregnant/mothering teens.

Education Provision Models: Is Pregnancy Like Having a Cold or Is Pregnancy a Disability? Given the lack of case law, state policy, school policy, and educational research to guide direction for educating school-age mothers, school personnel are faced with making their own decisions on what kinds of services to provide to the teen mother and how to provide services to her. How do school personnel make such decisions? What guides their thinking? Through interviews and observations I found an integral connection between how school personnel defined the problem of teen pregnancy and the types of local policies and practices in place to handle the school-age mother. Given that the local school administrator at the regular public school is often the one who determines what will be done with the pregnant teen, this person’s perspective directly impacts policy and services for the school-age mother. This connection is most obvious in school districts that do not have special alternative schools for pregnant teens. When alternative school settings are available, school personnel do not have to face decisions about what to do with the teen mother. She will typically be


placed in the alternative setting, often without the regular school personnel even having to intervene, as the pregnant girls or their families will often seek out placement in such settings. However, when separate school placements are not available and when special school-based programs for teen mothers are not available, local school personnel are faced with how to handle the teen mother. In such instances, I found that many school administrators turn the case of the pregnant student over to the school counselor or social worker leaving them to “work out the details.” While this move acknowledges that as a student the teen mother will likely need additional support to remain in school and have unique needs other students will not have, it also situates the issue of pregnancy as outside of the realm of education. In this way, school administrators reinforce an ideology that pregnancy is not something the school or educators should deal with—it is a medical and behavioral issue. Keeping in mind that how teen mothers are treated as students continues to vary dramatically from school to school, district to district, and state to state, with the potential for conflict arising more in districts that do not have established special programs for teen mothers, there are two common ideological themes that impact the provision of and reinforcement of existing policies, practices, and programs for school-age mothers. These themes were variously spoken of by school personnel within districts and states with specified services for teen mothers and those without such services (although the pregnancy as a cold model was not spoken of by school personnel working at alternative school settings or in special programs for teen mothers). The discursive structures of these themes do not work to challenge local ideological constructions about the teen mother but rather work to constitute and justify existing local policy and practice. These discourses then create and reinforce barriers for teen mothers’ access to education. The two discursive themes are models of “teen pregnancy as a cold” and “teen pregnancy as a disability/disease.” These discursive models, spoken by both male and female school personnel, are each variously presented by school personnel as the most equitable and progressive stance for schoolage mothers. My investigation of what is constituted in each of these discursive models is not to prove one model better or worse than the other but to make visible what each has to say about the teen mother and what her educational needs are and make visible how each model justifies the existing treatment of the teen mother.

Pregnancy as a Cold In a discussion with a State Board of Education official responsible for tracking teen mothers in school on the lack of data available in the state on teen mothers, the official responded that there is no need or requirement to specifically track teen mothers as, “We treat them like any other student


who has a cold.” Although such a statement could be seen as meeting the equal treatment component of Title IX, are pregnant/parenting teens really like a student with a cold or do they have additional needs, needs that affect whether they have access to equal schooling? It is obvious that teen mothers have additional needs, but the issue of how schools should respond to these needs, or if they need to respond, is open to local debate. As noted previously, most states and school districts do not have school policies detailing how to handle the pregnant/parenting teen as a student. This absence of policy was often explained to me not as an absence, but as “there is no need to have a policy for pregnant students”—the pregnancy as a cold model. If pregnancy is like a cold, then it is temporary, not serious, does not inhibit learning, and while the pregnancy may impact school attendance, it will only briefly impact the teen’s normal life as a student. Like a cold there is no additional treatment needed for pregnancy—the student will recover on her own. Also like a cold, the teen mother will not require any special treatment after her “recovery,” the birth. However, at the height of “contagion,” when the effects of the cold reach their height, the pregnant teen may be advised not to attend school to avoid spreading her germs to other students. While the pregnancy as a cold model seems to support the work of feminists to see pregnancy as “natural” and support policies that do not delimit the life chances and career opportunities of women, the possibility exists for this model to limit the access of teen mothers to an education. For example, although pregnancy as a cold seems to achieve a desire for pregnancy to be treated as normal and situates pregnant women as fully capable of functioning physically and intellectually, the work of the pregnancy as cold model means the teen mother not only does not require any additional support services or special modifications, but does not have a right to such services or modifications. If pregnancy is no more debilitating than a cold, then pregnant/mothering teens need no more intervention or support than any other student in school. For instance, consider the following statement by a school administrator: “We do not treat the pregnant teen different from any other student—her pregnancy should not be an excuse for her.” Embedded in the above statement is not simply an egalitarian ideal of treating the pregnant/mothering teen like any other student, but also a “tough love” approach to teen mothers—they got themselves in this position and need to be responsible for it. “No excuses” equates making any accommodations for the pregnant/mothering teen as extras, as special treatment. In schools where the attitude is “teen pregnancy is like a cold,” I found few support services for teen mothers. Modifications, for example, excusing absences or allowing for make-up work, when made were argued for and made on a case-by-case basis—typically by a school counselor or


school social worker. However, by not excusing absences, allowing for make-up work, or allowing for additional bathroom breaks during the school day, the pregnant teen may find it very difficult to remain in the regular school environment. Yet because her “pregnancy should not be an excuse,” she will be treated like any other student. Accommodations thus are situated as not only unnecessary for the pregnant/mothering teen but also beyond the scope of what schools should do for the pregnant/mothering student. Pregnancy as a cold discourse works against Title IX directives which state that the appropriate accommodations should be made so a teen can remain in her school and receive an equal education. This discourse situates schools as only needing not to discriminate against pregnant/mothering teens by not actively restricting their attendance at their regular school. Under pregnancy as a cold sentiment, schools are responsible only for not forbidding pregnant/mothering girls from attending school. This discourse places responsibility for continuing in school solely upon the pregnant/mothering teen. Repeatedly within such schools I heard statements similar to this succinct one by a high school principal: “If the girl can’t make it here, she needs more than we can give her and she needs to find another placement.”

Note the emphasis here upon the student to find a new placement, a school, that will work for her—the pregnant/mothering teen’s educational needs are not the school’s concern. I found the results of such sentiments in the girls I met at alternative school sites, with close to 80 percent reporting they had found and negotiated placement into alternative school placements on their own initiative. Further, many teen mothers at alternative schools note the amount of work it takes to remain in the regular school setting. Recall the story related in the introduction of the pregnant girl who literally could not fit into the school’s desks. I related this story because it was not an isolated observation, but one I saw repeatedly across regular school settings. The systemic practices that make it difficult or impossible for pregnant/mothering students to remain in regular school settings are explored in depth in the following chapter, but here it is important to note that pregnancy as a cold discourses reinforce such status quo practices in schools. Further, some pregnant/mothering teens cite harassment by students and teachers at their regular schools as problematic and unless schools have policies to explicitly define such harassment as unacceptable, as a form of sexual harassment, the teen mother will not find support for attempting to handle such instances.62 When asked about treatment of teen mothers by other students in the school, school personnel either denied that it was a problem or noted that the potential of such harassment was a compelling rea-


son for the pregnant teen to “receive home schooling during the second and third trimester of her pregnancy and then return to school after giving birth.”

Pregnancy as a Disability/Disease Pregnancy as a unique experience for women is well-founded in feminist literature, but in social policy how to handle the “uniqueness” of pregnancy and mothering in terms of maintaining equality for women has been confounding. What does equality look like for pregnant women—the right to access certain jobs while pregnant or the right to be protected from certain jobs while pregnant; the right to time off or to opportunities for advancement and promotion while pregnant? The linguistic limitations of social policy with its emphasis upon rights, protection, and measure of “specialness,” become apparent when discussing pregnancy. Educational and social policy discourse on teen pregnancy faces the same problems. For instance, schools and school policies most often link the provision of “special” services or accommodations with some definition and understanding of disability. Often the only way to get “special” accommodations in schools is if you are understood to be in need of “special” accommodations, if you are “special” or “disabled” in some way. Teen pregnancy as a disability/disease discourse fits within existing educational discourses and practices surrounding the provision of special services to students, thus making a case for multiple support services for pregnant/mothering teens, but also as this section delineates, this very discourse limits educational opportunities for pregnant/mothering students. The discourse pregnancy as a disability/disease marks teen pregnancy and the girls who are pregnant/mothering as having special needs. However, the pregnant/mothering student is only afforded the right to any special needs by first being identified as somehow disabled, untouchable, and deficient by virtue of being a teen mother. In addition to reinforcing understandings of the teen mother as deficient, inadequate—socially, morally, emotionally, intellectually—pregnancy as a disability/disease feeds into contamination discourses, furthering ideological practices of separation and exclusion. When pregnancy is viewed as a disability/disease, the teen mother is treated as someone in need of special services and likely in need of separation from the regular school environment. Similar to school practices of separation and at times exclusion of students identified as having “special needs,” the pregnant/mothering teen identified as having “special needs” is most often removed from the regular school environment. The reasons given for separation and removal vary from “separation is necessary for the good of the pregnant/mothering student” to “separation is necessary for


the good of the regular student body,” but neither reason negates, separation is as much for the comfort of the regular school personnel and students as it is for what is “best” for the pregnant/mothering teen. This separation is for the good of the student but also for the student body and school community. Consider the following statement made during an interview with the principal of an alternative separate school serving pregnant/mothering teens: These girls have needs that the regular school cannot address, but here we can. We make it possible for them to come to school, by providing transportation and coordinating social service programs for them. Here they can see the social worker, a nurse, a job coordinator all in one place.

Repeatedly I heard similar statements from school personnel linking the provision of special services to the pregnant/parenting teen to their being placed in a separate school setting. Consider the following commentary by a principal at a regular public school, which did not offer any special provisions for pregnant/parenting teens: We can’t handle teen mothers at this school. We have enough going on at our school—you have been here in the hallways—it is not safe for a teen mother to be here when she is pregnant.

When asked to clarify how the school would not be safe for the teen mother, the principal continued: Well she could be bumped more and physically hurt and I don’t know what its like to be pregnant, but I’ve heard other adult women say how uncomfortable they are during pregnancy and the pregnant teen will not be comfortable in this school. . . . Also she will likely be teased about her condition and this may lead to fights or other problems.

It is important to note that for this school administrator the teen mother is a pregnant student and it is her pregnancy he is most concerned about. In my discussions with administrators who held similar views there was never any question about the school changing—changing policy, changing climate, changing practices, changing treatment—toward the school-age mother, rather it was simply understood and assumed that the pregnant/mothering teen does not fit into the regular school. However, this discourse, though it supports providing services to teen mothers, is as much about separating her from the student body as about aiding the teen mother. The teen mother, similar to early legal decisions, is removed for her own “safety” and for the safety of the school. The reasons for separating teen mothers are circulated within schools and in media,


perpetuating the idea that teen mothers should be removed from the regular school setting. For instance, newspaper articles supporting separate or special programs for teen mothers note the problems pregnant/parenting students face in their regular schools, such as teasing, can not fit in desks, lack of night school for high school students, repeated stories of girls who drop out during pregnancy and don’t return because it is too hard to remain in regular school. However, I have yet to see a newspaper article that mentions that teen mothers have a right to an equal education under Title IX. This absence keeps our focus upon the teen mother and not the structures of schooling. Pregnancy as a disability discourse does not offer a policy panacea for schools as this discourse also includes many problematics. For instance, when does the disability end—with birth or does a teen pregnancy mean you are disabled for the length of your schooling? Thus, is being a teen mother also a disabling condition? Currently most separate school programs for pregnant girls continue to keep girls enrolled until graduation or G.E.D. completion. Many schools operating under this model do treat pregnancy and “early parenting” as disabling. What this means is that the teen mother can continue to receive special support services in order to remain in school. However, as argued in later chapters, the kind of education such teen mothers receive in segregated, alternative school settings is questionable, with many programs placing more emphasis on moral and vocational training than on education. While disabling discourses of pregnancy seem to create more support services for teen mothers, this discourse also comes at price for teen mothers. A further problem of disability discourse is, whose pregnancies are marked as disabling? Is teen pregnancy a disability if the teen girl is married? Does being a “good student” mean pregnancy is not a disability? For instance, I found a close correlation between districts that operate under such a disability model and the number of African American and Latina teen mothers served in separate schools, although I also found that low-income white girls’ pregnancies were regarded as disabling.63 In such districts, a disabling discourse of pregnancy matched and reinforced the interventions provided to pregnant/mothering teens—that is removal of such girls to a separate special school facility. Processes and practices of labeling and separation occur in highly racialized discourses, resulting in for example, an overrepresentation of African-American students in special education and separate classrooms environments. A similar pattern for teen pregnancy emerges—discourses of disability are most often applied to low-income, African-American girls and my research experiences and those of others point out that AfricanAmerican, and Latina pregnant/mothering teens are more often placed in separate school settings.64


However, I found that disabling discourses are utilized differently at different settings, even within the same regional area. Such differences in how disabling discourses were used bring out another nuanced definition of disabling pregnancies. For some adults, the teen girl who becomes pregnant and keeps her child is responsible for her disabling condition—she brought it upon herself. Thus while she is “disabled” by her pregnancy, her condition was “invented” as one school administrator explained to me by herself.65 As another alternative school administrator explained: Well they [teen mothers] all got themselves here [to the alternative school] by their own actions. They haven’t made many good choices and maybe they can start to change that here.

Under such discourses, programs that hold the teen mother accountable and incorporate tough love approaches make sense; sympathy is not what is needed, structure and responsibility are key. These variations in disability discourse impact how much and what type of services are provided to teen mothers. For instance, one of the most debated issues is whether schools should provide on-site childcare for teen mothers. It would seem that under a disability discourse childcare for mothering teens would be an important support service. However, while recent studies support and some practitioners state that providing childcare is key, communities and some school personnel have become verbal opponents of site-based childcare, particularly at regular school sites. I observed this during my research where none of the schools I visited had on-site childcare for teen mothers. Thus while discourses of disability are used to provide pregnant/parenting teens with services, such discourses are also used to limit services. School personnel operate within the political climate and pressures of their communities. This does not leave schools off the hook; they have a responsibility to provide teen mothers with an equal education regardless of the political climate. I agree with Michael Males who argues that schools need to “provide supportive services that will give pregnant and mothering students the best chance to remain in school.”66 Although pregnancy as disability/disease discourses may initially yield services and programs for pregnant/mothering teens, this same discourse often limits educational provisions to pregnant/mothering teens. The policies that impact teen mothers face the same problems as policies that affect all pregnant women—how to pay attention to their unique needs without characterizing them as deficient. As Mary Gales argues we have to “explain why pregnancy is different from other temporary disabilities and why that difference explains and justifies describing laws that single out pregnancy-related disabilities for protection not as preferential but as equal treatment.”67


Education as a Social Welfare Issue—The Impact of PRWORA & TANF on the Implementation of Title IX Regardless of whether local school personnel are operating under the discursive model of pregnancy as a cold or of pregnancy as a disability, overall educational talk about teen mothers reflects a linkage of the problems of teen pregnancy with social welfare and thus emphasizes education’s role in preparing the teen mother to be an economically responsible citizen. As detailed in chapters 1 and 2, education for teen mothers, particularly for low-income African-American and Latina women has been defined as a social welfare policy issue. Passed in 1996, PRWORA directly affects the teen mother by linking her monthly assistance, provided under TANF, to her enrollment and attendance in a state-approved school. Although TANF requires school enrollment and attendance, the act does not specify what kind of education school-age mothers should receive or where they should receive it, nor does TANF require that states provide services, such as transportation or childcare, to aid in helping school-age mothers attend school. How has the passage of PRWORA affected the provision of education to teen mothers? What has PRWORA meant for teen mothers’ access to equal education opportunity guaranteed under Title IX? Such questions have not even been addressed in policy debates or in evaluating the success of the teen mother programs developed under PRWORA. What is successful varies widely across programs, but regardless, evaluations of such programs point to their often limited impact.68 However, none of the existing evaluations questions whether the programs developed or administered under the impetus of PRWORA are providing teen mothers with equal educational opportunity under Title IX. This question is not even considered vital to evaluate. States have done little to specify guidelines for implementation under TANF. Although states may set up sanctions for school-age mothers who do not meet the TANF requirements, thirty-five states have no state policy detailing the criteria to determine if a teen mother is meeting the school requirement under TANF.69 Thus the teen mother in most states does not have access to knowledge about what it is she is expected to do to meet TANF requirements. She is required to enroll in a school or training program but there are no guidelines about what is required of her or of the school system. This leaves the teen mother’s case absolutely up to individual discretion. The teen mother does not have the protection of policy guidelines, leaving herself open to changing interpretations and requirements of her case. The teen mothers receiving assistance that I interviewed after 1996, spoke to the frustration in their lives created by individual discrepancy, noting that the rules governing their benefits often change and


when they begin to accomplish what is required, different requirements are placed upon them. For instance, what counts as an educational placement for the teen mother? Who determines what educational placement is best for the teen mother? TANF does not require that teen mothers attend regular school— only that they are involved in some form of continuing education. Given the history of alternative and separate school placement for teen mothers, TANF opens the door for schools to shift teen mothers into separate or vocational placements unless there are explicit criteria for their placement in line with Title IX. However, only fifteen states have specified criteria under TANF for alternative education placement for school-age mothers.70 Typical alternative education options include mentoring programs, youth employment training programs, G.E.D. preparation programs or other vocational education placements. According to TANF guidelines, states “have broad discretion deciding what alternatives are appropriate for minor parents.”71 This makes it easier for school-age mothers to be placed into alternative job training programs that qualify as education because most states have no specific education requirements for teen mothers. States that do have a specific policy range from local discretion (Georgia), individual family assessment (Illinois), individual educational assessment (Minnesota), to enrollment in a job program whose goal is occupational training irregardless of high school or G.E.D. completion (Louisiana, Oregon, North Dakota), combination of G.E.D. completion and job training (Massachusetts), job training for students who do not meet attendance requirements (Texas), job training for students who are over eighteen (Ohio), emphasis on life skills training (North Carolina), or the requirement that a teen mother attend school that will lead to a diploma or G.E.D. unless she is deemed incapable of completing standard high school education (Arkansas, Iowa, New Jersey, New Mexico, Virginia).72 The range of these policies leads to vast differences in teen mothers’ access to regular school education and points to the variety of interpretations affecting the implementation of the school attendance requirement under TANF. For example, Texas’ policy is based upon a school attendance requirement and excludes pregnant teens that have already left school from being eligible to return to their regular school, automatically referring them to a job training or G.E.D. program. The pregnant teen that has missed school during pregnancy or childbirth may also be ineligible to return to her home school under this policy. States without specific policies under TANF leave school placement for school-age mothers up to individual discretion, a practice that repeatedly leads to exclusion and separation of pregnant teens from access to equal educational opportunity. Many questions and challenges are raised for schools when education of teen mothers is linked directly with social welfare reform policy that is in-


vested in training teen mothers to be economically self-sufficient. If the purpose of educating teen mothers is for economic self-sufficiency, are schools meeting this need? Can a young mother with a high school degree obtain a job or engage in a career that will allow her to earn a wage supporting herself and her child above the poverty level? If a teen mother is on welfare, should she be discouraged from pursuing college in favor of vocational training? Does schooling for the teen mother, particularly the teen mother identified in welfare reform, need to be career oriented and not academically oriented? These questions are explored in chapter 5. The following chapter considers what we know about who the pregnant/mothering teen in school is.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

Clinton, “Remarks Announcing the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy.” Lagemann, An Elusive Science, x. Lagemann, An Elusive Science, 241, 245. Note, for example, the absence in the following works, an absence I reproduced in my own earlier writings, Burdell, “Teen Mothers in High School”; Lawson and Rhode, eds. The Politics of Pregnancy; Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; and Nathanson, Dangerous Passage. My notice of this absence is not an indictment of these authors’ works, which are important, but to point out how Title IX is left out of research and talk about teen pregnancy even when the focus is upon education. See e.g., Burdell, “Teen Mothers in High School”; Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Age Mothers”; and Pillow, “Decentering Silences/Troubling Irony,” and “Exposed Methodology.” Based upon phone or interview contact with school personnel in 52 districts across two midwestern states conducted in 1994, 1999, and 2000. My first inquiry was typically made to the instructional programming director of each school district who would refer me to another person if s/he could not respond to questions concerning teen mothers. State Legislative Initiatives that Address the Issue of Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting, x. For commentary upon the lack of effective evaluation research on teen pregnancy interventions, see Roosa and Vaughn, “Teen Mothers Enrolled in an Alternative Parenting Program,” 348–360; and Stahler and DuCette, “Evaluating Adolescent Pregnancy Programs,” 129–133. Phi Delta Kappan published a total of ten articles on teen pregnancy and schooling between 1972 and 2002. The quote at the start of this chapter from a past AERA president, published in Educational Researcher in 1998, is particularly disturbing given that from 1972 to 2002 Educational Researcher published no articles on education and teen mothers. Correspondingly, to date, the American Education Research Journal has not published any articles on teen pregnancy and the journal of Review of Research in Education published only one article from 1972 to 2002. Such absences allow the perception that schooling for teen mothers is not an educational issue to prevail and support the thinking that the education of the teen mother should be left to local decision and control. An argument can be made that the consistent, though not prolific, presence of articles on teen pregnancy in Urban Education and Black Studies in Education perpetuates the stereotype of teen pregnancy being an urban/black problem. While teen mothers and programs for teen mothers may be more concentrated in urban areas, pregnant teens and school-age mothers are present in all types of school districts, and rural counties have seen some of the highest increases in birth rates to teens. Stanley, “‘The Vision Thing,” 34. Burrell, “The Norplant Solution,” 401–444. The race of the pregnant teen in this figure is important to note, as all of the illustrations accompanying articles on teen pregnancy in Phi Delta Kappan depict the pregnant student as “white.” As the articles in Phi Delta Kappan on the whole attempt to call attention to the


13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

necessary role of schools and school personnel in the educational lives of pregnant/mothering teens, such depictions reassert understandings of the white pregnant teen as an entitled subject, as “our girl,” worthy of attention by school personnel while the pregnant “nonwhite” student is invisible in such constructions. In this way, the white pregnant teen continues to be the model for calling attention to and gaining support for the needs of pregnant students, while perpetuating an understanding of the African-American and Latina pregnant student as problematic and beyond what schools can be expected to respond to. In this way, Latina and African American school-age mothers remain unsympathetic subjects. Upchurch and McCarthy, “Adolescent Childbearing and High School Completion in the 1980s.” Berwick and Oppenheimer, “Marriage, Pregnancy, and the Right to Go to School,” 1196; Weatherly, et.al., Patchwork Programs. Luker, Dubious Conceptions. Luker, Dubious Conceptions. Warren, “Pregnant Students/Public Schools,” 113. Warren, “Pregnant Students/Public Schools,” 113. Further recall that in the past three presidential administrations the Office of Adolescent and Family Life has been reconfigured to focus funding and initiatives upon teen pregnancy prevention, most recently in the form of abstinence-only educational programs. See chapter 6 for discussion of the growth of abstinence-only programs in public schools. Hendrixson, “Pregnant Children,” 665. Hendrixson, “Pregnant Children,” 665. Gail L. Zellman, The Response of the Schools to Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood, 735. Zellman, The Response of the Schools to Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood. Zellman, “Public School Programs for Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenthood,” 15–21. Zellman, “Public School Programs for Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenthood,” 17. See also Ling, “Lifting Voices,” for a history of pregnancy schools in New York City. Florence Crittenton Division of the Child Welfare League of America Papers, SWHA, “CWLA Research Department Information Update,” 1981, Box. 68. Weatherly, et.al., Patchwork Programs. Cuban, “Sex and School Reform,” 321. Cuban, “Sex and School Reform,” 321. Buie, “Teen Pregnancy,” 738. Buie, “Teen Pregnancy,” 737. Buie, Teen Pregnancy,” 738, 739. Kenney, “Teen Pregnancy,” 735. Kenney, “Teen Pregnancy,” 735; see also Roosa and Vaughn, “Teen Mothers Enrolled in an Alternative Parenting Program,” 348–360. Wolf, Using Title IX to Protect the Rights of Pregnant and Parenting Teens. Belsches-Simmons, “Teenage Pregnancy and Schooling,” 1. See e.g., Pillow, The Making of Mothers; and Weatherly, et.al., Patchwork Programs. At present approximately 600 schools in the U.S. offer on-site childcare for at least part of the school day. For debates on childcare in school settings, see, for example, Luschen, “Contested Scripts,” 392–410; Evans, “Teen Mother Can’t Get to Class,” A1, 9; Sanchez, “Nursery at Junior High Holds Teen Mothers’ Hope for Future,” A1, 19; Howard, “Baby-Toting Teenagers Learn Lessons in Life,” A1, 7, 13. See, for instance, McQueen, “Md. Panel Urges Family Responsibility for Teenage Parents,” C5; Melton, “Va. Panel Sidesteps Pregnancy Issues,” D3; Gorman, “Dollars for Deeds,” 51. Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Issues under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Issues under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 6–7. Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Issues under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 8. Title IX and consequent interpretations of Title IX for the education of school-age mothers is characteristic of much social policy in the 1980s and 1990s—creation of nondiscrimination policies but allowing states and local agencies to comply with such policies as each sees fit. See Parsons, Power and Politics for an overview of such occurrences in higher education policy.

Schooling Responses to Teen Mothers • 109 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

State Policy Documentation Project. Summary of Policy Issues, 1–14. State Policy Documentation Project. Summary of Policy Issues. See, e.g., American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. How Schools Shortchange Girls, and Weatherly, et.al., Patchwork Programs. See Pillow, The Making of Mothers. See e.g. Kirby, Emerging Answers, for a comprehensive overview of teen pregnancy prevention programs. U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. Teen Pregnancy: What is Being Done? ix. Select Committee. Teen Pregnancy: What is Being Done?, 47. Select Committee. Teen Pregnancy: What is Being Done?, 121. Select Committee. Teen Pregnancy: What is Being Done?, 113. In Kenney, “Teen Pregnancy,” 731. Select Committee. Teen Pregnancy: What is Being Done?, 114, 115, 119. Select Committee. Teen Pregnancy: What is Being Done?, 321. Luker, Dubious Conceptions. As cited in, “School-Based and School-Linked Programs for Pregnant and Parenting Teens and Their Children,” 11. See also Wolf, Using Title IX to Protect the Rights of Pregnant and Parenting Teens. “A Higher Price to Pay/Teenage Pregnancy in Ohio, 1994,” GRADS serves both female and male students, thus my use of “parents” and not “mothers” when referring to this program. This is not to refute that GRADS has a higher graduation rate with pregnant/parenting teens than many other school-based programs and is a nationally recognized program, but to point out the conflicting messages portrayed in teen pregnancy evaluations. See: GRADS/Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills, Annual Report, 1991–92. Ohio Department of Education, Vocational and Career Education, Columbus, Ohio, 1992. “A Higher Price to Pay,” 1. Warren, “Pregnant Students/Public Schools,” 113. Shavers, “Shattering the Silences—When Will Our Voices Be Heard?” Pillow, The Making of Mothers. See Pillow, The Making of Mothers and Shavers, “Shattering the Silences.” Policy and debates surrounding issues, such as contraception, abortion, the morning-after pill often make this distinction—between the woman who brings the pregnancy upon herself, through her own moral irresponsibility, versus the woman who is a victim of rape. There are teen mothers who are mothers due to rape, some times through incest, however, these cases are not the norm. I found in my research that school-based programs were the least able to reach and work with such girls, see Pillow, The Making of Mothers, and Pillow, Troubling the Irony. Males, “Poverty, Rape, Adult/Teen Sex,” 410. Gale, Unfinished Women, 484. See, e.g., Kirby, Emerging Answers; and Stahler and DuCette, “Evaluating Adolescent Pregnancy Programs,” 129–133. State Policy Documentation Project. Summary of Policy Issues. State Policy Documentation Project. Summary of Policy Issues. State Policy Documentation Project. Summary of Policy Issues, 11. State Policy Documentation Project. Summary of Policy Issues, 11.

CHAPTER

4

The Teen Mother as a Student Who Is She and What Do Schools Do with Her? She is not your typical teen who gets pregnant. She is quiet, very studious, and very sensitive to the needs of her baby. For this mother though it is a struggle for her, trying to make it through high school —Ebony, 1986.

Who we think the teen mother is—what her problems and characteristics are—impacts decisions about the kind of education we think she needs or deserves. Although it is beyond the breadth of this chapter to completely trace the representations of teen mothers in educational literature and discourse, it can be understood that depictions of teen mothers in the education arena mirror the social constructions of unwed and teen mothers identified in chapter one. Furthermore, our assumptions about who the teen mother is mimic the racialized constructions of unwed mothers that continue to yield differential treatment of the teen mother. Continuing the discursive tracings of the previous chapters, this chapter explores how who we think the pregnant/mothering teen is as a student, constructs the type of education she will receive. For example, teen mothers are often described as and assumed to be “poor students” or “incapable students.” Such discursive structures influence a trend toward providing teen mothers with a basic, minimal education or with a vocational education. I work to investigate the limits of these discursive structures that provide fixed understandings of the teen mother and will demonstrate how these discursive structures institute and reinforce barriers to their accessing an education. 111


Drawing on the findings of recent studies that have attempted to identify who the pregnant/mothering student is and on findings from my own research, I provide a portrait of the pregnant/mothering teen that differs from popular representations. In this way, I am offering counter narratives to predominant thinking about teen mothers. Although counter narratives have often been used to offer victory narratives, here they are used to demonstrate how the constructions of pregnant/mothering teens limit their access to education. Consider for instance the above quote from Ebony.1 We are led to understand that the teen mother discussed in Ebony is not typical because she is “quiet,”“studious,” and attentive to her baby thus also understanding that the typical teen mother, in this case the African-American teen mother is a loud person, a poor student, and likely a poor, inattentive mother. The teen mother depicted in Ebony is a seventeen-year-old teen mother who continued to stay in school, remained at the top of her class with a 3.8 grade point average, and worked part-time. She is able to attend school due to support—there is daycare close to her home for use by teen mothers and she has a job through a community program, which provides job training, counseling, and social services to teen mothers. Yet if education for this “good,” atypical teen mother is difficult, what must it be like for the typical “bad” teen mother? If Ebony’s attempt was to show the teen mother that did not conform to the stereotype of the “welfare queen,” the characterization in this “counter story” portrays the teen mother as an exception and thus reifies our understanding of teen mothers, particularly black teen mothers, as loud, irresponsible, and problematic. I want to work against the telling of counter stories, such as the one presented in Ebony, because such binary tellings continue to overgeneralize and subjectify the “good” and “bad” teen mother. Do we need counter stories of teen mothers who are responsible, focused, and caring mothers? Yes, but not because these stories are atypical, but precisely because they are not atypical. Counter stories in this way are stories that resist and delegitimize popularized and politicized discourses about teen mothers.2 In this way, counter stories complicate who we think pregnant/mothering teens are and acknowledge the diversity and complexity in any attempt to determine just who the pregnant/mothering teen is. For example, are teen mothers irresponsible, selfish, abusive—in some cases yes, but in other cases teen mothers are responsible, focused, and caring. Here I want to encourage the reader to consider, to read, the teen mother like all mothers—there are “good” mothers and “bad” mothers of all ages, ethnicities, races, and classes. We should avoid overgeneralizing the teen mother and situate her experiences within the context and experiences of all mothers. What is different is the unique relationship between teen mothers and the state because of their age and the increased scrutiny placed upon preg-

The Teen Mother as a Student • 113

nant/mothering teens due to their presumed incapacity as individuals, students, wage earners, and mothers. This assumed incapacity of the teen mother works to continually shift the focus from the incapacity of educational institutions to handle the teen mother equitably and from the incapacity of society to respond to the status and roles of mothering equitably. In an attempt to shift this focus, I examine the educational and institutional barriers that pregnant/mothering teens face in attempting to access an education. Although this chapter is on pregnant/mothering teens in school-based teen pregnancy programs, who, as this chapter will detail, are not typically college preparatory students, it must be understood that all pregnant/ mothering teens face barriers in accessing an education. As the Title IX cases in chapter 2 make evident even high-achieving white students confront barriers to equal education opportunities. Both “good” and “bad” girls who get pregnant and keep their babies are problematic. Further, one commonality I found in my research across income, race, and status of the pregnant/mothering teen as a student is the desire and expectation that the teen mother be “quiet.” The girls I interviewed understood this as “Do not ask for, and certainly do not demand, your rights.” And “Do not be too “loud” about your pregnancy—do not make an issue of it for the school.” I consistently found that the pregnant/mothering teens who were the most vociferous and confident about their right to an education, attributes that many of us would consider positive and indicative of responsibility and independence, were repeatedly described to me as one administrator put it, “the most unrealistic and unreasonable girls.” Although I have noted that all teen mothers face barriers to access to equal education opportunities, in this chapter I give particular attention to the girls who are most subjected to regulation of their education—“the most unrealistic and unreasonable girls”—who I argue do not receive access to equal education opportunities in terms of access to curriculum that is comparable to their peers but instead are tracked into basic education curricula or vocational education. These girls I came to view as the “expected girls” by school personnel—the girls who the adults I interviewed said they were “not surprised when she showed up pregnant.” What then do schools do with these girls—the girls we already assume and presume will not be good students? How do we treat these girls as students when it is they, as this chapter indicates, who overwhelmingly stay or return to school when pregnant. Specifically focusing on the teen mother who attends school—either staying in school when she is pregnant or returning to school after she becomes pregnant—provides further context to these questions. This emphasis will help to investigate what we know about the girls who utilize teen pregnancy programs, to identify trends in how schools handle these


teen mothers, and to examine how schools differentiate the purpose of education for the teen mother based upon her race. The previous chapters identified the broad discourses that impact how the problem of teen pregnancy is defined and examined the implications these discourses have on the provision of education to teen mothers. Here analysis is extended to consider present day differential treatment patterns for teen mothers and how such differential treatment/education patterns have been established under Title IX. This chapter concludes by specifically looking at the obstacles to receiving an education for the school-age mother. What these stories demonstrate is the amount of diligence, dedication, and effort many teen mothers must put forth in order to access an education. As a teacher in a separate school-based program for teen mothers said, “By the time they get to me they have had to fight for a lot.”

“Pregnancy Scares” and the White Girl on Family TV Before considering what research is telling us about who the pregnant/ mothering teen is as a student, I want to offer a brief commentary on how several television shows, aimed at a teenage audience, have presented and handled the issue of teen pregnancy. I do this here because I found that many people, adults and teens, repeatedly talked to me about these episodes. The girls portrayed in these episodes, however, did not resemble the girls I interviewed during my research. Recall principal Stevens admonishment to the pregnant student in Boston Public, “you show, you go.” The girl in this episode was a white, honor student, applying to elite colleges who had an abortion to terminate her pregnancy after being told by principal Stevens that she could not remain in school while pregnant. This episode mirrors how the teen girl who is pregnant, or in some cases fears she is pregnant, has recently been portrayed on television. For instance, along with Boston Public, Dawson’s Creek and Popular have all dealt with the issue of teen pregnancy. In each case, it is a middle- to upper-income white girl, who is a good student, and mostly a “good girl,” who finds herself pregnant or at risk of pregnancy.3 In each case the girl either finds herself pregnant and has an abortion (Boston Public) or has a “pregnancy scare” (Dawson’s Creek and Popular). The girls at risk in these episodes, the “our girls” of the 1970s, are not the girls I observed utilizing school-based teen pregnancy programs, nor are they the girls for whom such programs were developed. This is likely because, as depicted in Boston Public, many white, particularly middle-income girls who become pregnant will have an abortion.4 Shows like Boston Public, Dawson’s Creek, and Popular serve as a gentle reminder to white middle-income, good girl students that they may still get


in trouble engaging in “risky” behavior. The message is not to get caught, to use birth control, or to take care of their pregnancies outside of school. In the case of the Boston Public episode the white girl shows responsibility and maturity in her decision to have an abortion—she realizes she made a mistake, often a “one-time” mistake, and that this mistake need not delimit her future. She will “take care” of her pregnancy, often without involving school personnel, continue her future, and we can assume, later reproduce in a more responsible way. While overall white girls have higher rates of teen pregnancy, they also have higher abortion and adoption rates, which lowers the number of them who return or remain in school while pregnant or mothering, thus lowering the perception that “our girls” are at risk. Although across state averages Caucasian teen mothers represent the highest number of teen mothers enrolled in school, as detailed below, where and how these girls utilize and do not utilize school-based teen pregnancy programs is different from how African-American and Latina teens utilize or are provided with educational programs during and after pregnancy. It is important to note again, the girls of Boston Public, Popular, and Dawson’s creek were not the girls I interviewed. Because my focus is upon pregnant/mothering teens in school-based programs and/or alternative school settings for teen mothers, I did not meet the girls who took care of their pregnancies quietly, either through abortion or by homeschooling until birth. I heard about these girls from the pregnant/mothering teens I interviewed—stories about such girls were part of the pregnancy folklore at regular schools—however these girls were also understood as being “different” from the girls in the teen pregnancy classrooms or programs. As one pregnant girl said to me, “they just handle it better . . . its like they were never pregnant and teachers and other kids just forget they ever were pregnant or had a baby.” Handling “it better” in this case refers to keeping pregnancy invisible— keeping your pregnant self and/or mothering self separate from school. The remainder of this chapter is about the girls who were not quiet, who for a variety of reasons could not or chose not to keep their pregnancies invisible.

The Teen Mother as Student: Who Is She? I begin with a basic yet difficult question: Who is the teen mother as a student? The teen mother as a student has been presented in popular media as the National Honor Society student—the “good” girl who finds herself pregnant, responsibly decides to keep her baby, and overcomes the hardships of teenage motherhood while maintaining her grade point average or conversely the “good” girl who finds herself pregnant and responsibly “takes care” of her pregnancy. Popular media have also presented the teen


mother as a failure—the “bad” girl, who behaved uncontrollably, irresponsibly, and immorally. This girl drops out of school, potentially has drug use and sexual abuse issues, goes on welfare only to have additional children, and enters into a cycle of dependency upon the rest of society for the remainder of her own and her child(ren)’s lives. As with any tellings, these representations do capture partial truths about the teen mother, but these two tales do not represent the “average” school-age mother.5 While I can base my idea of the average school-age mother on my longterm qualitative research, it is surprisingly difficult to access public school data to determine just who this “average” school-age mother is and who she is as a student. As discussed in chapter 3, unless the school-age mother is enrolled in a special school-based program for teen mothers her educational history will not be tracked and even then her educational history is scanty. Data on teen mothers is often embedded within other data sets on school truancy, school dropouts, or at-risk students, making it difficult to track the educational path of the school-age mother, before, during, and after her pregnancy. An additional difficulty in collecting or analyzing data on the education of school-age mothers is that although teen pregnancy has remained at the forefront of public consciousness and schools have been under pressure to provide both preventive and support programs, “educators have not been at the center of research and policy construction regarding the school-aged parent” and further the design of policies, intervention programs, and curricula “have been largely borrowed from specialists in the social welfare, psychological, and medical traditions.”6 In this way, educators have been responding to governmental social, welfare, and health policy and relying upon other agencies to gather comprehensive data on the teen mother. Thus, some of the most in-depth research on the educational experiences of teen mothers has been conducted by researchers outside the arena of education. Given the above constraints, what do we currently know about who the school-age mother is as a student? Compared to their peers, school-age mothers graduate from high school at a lower rate. How this occurs, why, and the long-term consequences of a teen pregnancy have recently been open to debate. For example, several researchers question the assumed link between teen pregnancy and long-term social, educational, and economic failure of the unwed mother, arguing that the long-term effects of teen pregnancy are not as dire as previously assumed and longitudinal studies indicate that a majority of teen mothers catch up to their peers in educational and economic attainment by age twenty-five.7 Such findings have helped to reconceptualize what are routinely thought of as consequences of teen pregnancy—school failure, poverty, limited educational and economic opportunities—as antecedents, or partial causes,


of teen pregnancy. Teens most impacted by teen pregnancy are young women who are already living in impoverished conditions prior to becoming pregnant. For such teens, a teen pregnancy does not limit opportunities in their life, their opportunities are already severely limited and because of this “early childbearing is not necessarily regarded by pregnant teens as a major obstacle to achievement.”8 For example, Rebecca Maynard reports several “contradictory” results when evaluating the opportunities of low-income teens that had viable pregnancies and healthy births versus those of low-income teens that miscarried and thereafter delayed childbearing. The contradictory results include: • Teen mothers were more likely to complete high school or obtain a G.E.D. • Teen mothers welfare dependency was the same as teens who delay child childbearing • Teen mothers worked more hours and earned more money than nonparenting teens9 Such results provide further evidence that it is not solely teen pregnancy that delimits a young woman’s life chances, as much as the socioeconomic circumstances she is in prior to becoming pregnant. In a similar way, recent research calls into question a causal linkage between teen pregnancy and incidence of school dropout rates for female students.

Rethinking the Teen Mother as School Dropout: “Returning and Staying in School Due to My Baby” “I returned to school because of my baby.” “My pregnancy saved me—it got me back in school.” “I’m more focused now and I have goals now for my future.” Pregnant/mothering teens, particularly African-American and Latina teens, are typically presented as school dropouts. In the minds of social science researchers and school personnel teen pregnancy is linked with school delinquency and dropouts. Recent studies investigating female dropouts reveal startling findings. While it has been assumed by educators, policy makers, and the public at large that girls drop out of school because they are pregnant, studies show that up to 60 percent of girls who become teen mothers drop out before pregnancy.10 Thus contrary to popular belief, a large percentage of teen pregnancies occur when the teen girl is already disenfranchised from schooling. These girls would seem the hardest to target for education, so perhaps even more startling is evidence that up to 25 percent of female dropouts return to school when they are pregnant.11 Repeatedly during my research girls told me, “I returned to school because of my baby.” This stance is embedded in other qualitative research


studies and newspaper articles and in newspaper accounts, with researchers noting some version of “having a baby made her more mature” to a 1999 issue of People magazine in which one teen mother reflects, “If I hadn’t had Alexis, I might not have graduated from high school and might have ended up a bum.”12 Yet, I was not prepared for the phenomena of girls reporting that pregnancy and parenting helped them to be better students—no literature I had read talked about the teen mother as a returning student. Indeed, quite to the contrary we equate the teen mother with dropping out and teen pregnancy remains one of the primary reasons given for female students dropping out of school. When the return rate of pregnant students is combined with research indicating that schools typically serve about half of the teen mothers in their district (largely due to the fact that up to half of the girls who become pregnant while they are enrolled in school, drop out and do not return to their home school), we get a very different picture of the teen mother who is utilizing school-based teen pregnancy programs or who is seeking an education at her home school.13 This means that a potentially sizable percentage of the pregnant teens in school are students who are school returnees, girls who had previously dropped out, had already experienced school failure, and are returning to school pregnant. Closer examination of this trend reveals significant differences depending on the race of the pregnant teen. For example, a 1998 large-scale study reveals several important findings and trends, including that while the overall dropout rate due to pregnancy was 30.3 percent, more than one-quarter (28.2 percent) of the girls had dropped out prior to pregnancy.14 These rates vary widely by race with “Hispanic” girls most at risk for pregnancy both prior to and after dropping out of school. “Hispanic” teens have the overall highest dropout rate occurring at any time before or after pregnancy, (68.7 percent), followed by “white” teens (59.6 percent) and “black” teens (50.3 percent). “Hispanic” girls also have the highest rate of pregnancy after dropping out (40.9 percent), followed by white girls (31.3 percent), while the rates for black girls was much lower (10.8 percent). Comparably, dropout rates after pregnancy were 27.8 percent Hispanic, 28.3 percent white, and 39.5 percent black respectively and the rates of girls who did not drop out when pregnant were 49.7 percent for black girls, 40.4 percent for white girls, and 31.3 percent for Hispanic girls.15 What this means for schools is that overall one-quarter of the girls who need education while pregnant are already disenfranchised from school and that for Latinas this rate may be as high as 40 percent. Furthermore, on average close to one-third of the girls who do get pregnant while in school will drop out. Recent research suggests that such girls, the girls who


drop out due to pregnancy, return to school at a lower rate than girls who had previously dropped out from school.16 This suggests that girls who are utilizing school-based programs are mainly the girls in school who did not drop out when pregnant and girls who are returning to school when pregnant. Also significantly, for African-American girls staying in school does not decrease their rate of pregnancy, while when pregnant they stay in school at the highest rate. Visits to classrooms and interviews with girls in my research sites confirmed such trends, reinforcing that, contrary to popular opinion, the teen mother is as likely to return to school as she is to drop out of school when pregnant. In other words, many school-age pregnant teens become pregnant after they have already left school, and return to school when they are pregnant. Having dropped out from school once, and disenfranchised from school already, they are now returning to school precisely because they are pregnant. The girls returning to school when pregnant are not the Faye Ordway’s found in existing case law, they are likely not National Honor Society students,17 but students who were disenfranchised from school before becoming pregnant. Case law and educational policy have not even begun to consider what equal educational access and opportunity means for such girls. As noted in chapter 2, white teen mothers’ graduation rates rose dramatically between 1975 and 1986, while black teen mothers’ rates stabilized.18 Yet today black teen mothers’ graduate at a higher rate than white teen mothers.19 Additionally, current data provides evidence that girls use teen pregnancy programs differentially, with African-American and Latina teens returning to school pregnant at the highest rate.20 These trends, I argue, have affected how schools define education for teen mothers and how school-based teen pregnancy programs have been initiated and implemented and to what purpose. Understanding that many pregnant/mothering students return to school precisely due to their pregnancy has many implications for educational policy and practice. Pregnancy may indicate a time when some students who were previously disengaged from school feel a new sense of interest and commitment to education; there may be a unique window of opportunity for schools to do more than provide pregnant/mothering students with a minimal education. What would it mean to recharacterize pregnant teens who pursue an education from irresponsible girls to a “selfselected and motivated group,” as girls, who against many odds, are making responsible choices for themselves and their child(ren)?21 Keeping the challenge of this question in mind, the remainder of this chapter looks closely at how teen mothers are provided with an education and identifies the major obstacles and barriers they face in seeking or continuing their education.


Staying in School: School Engagement, Pregnancy, and Acculturation Who is staying in and returning to school when pregnant? Recent research indicates that responses to this question vary by race of the teen girl. For instance, black teens who are in school have the highest rate of staying in school while pregnant (close to 50 percent), while Latinas have the highest rate of dropping out when pregnant.22 Other researchers have suggested that the comparably high rate of black teens that remain in school while pregnant combined with the rate of those that return to school, demonstrates the “high resiliency” of the black teen mother.23 In fact, a 1998 report indicates that black teen mothers reach educational levels as high as or higher than national averages for all black teens.24 A further notable finding in the this report is that the rates of teen pregnancy for black girls who dropped out and for those who stayed in school were not significantly different (10.8 percent and 7.4 percent respectively). Yet, the rates for white and “Hispanic” teens who dropped out and for those who stayed in school were highly significant. Thus in this study, staying in school lowered the risk for pregnancy only for Caucasian and Latina teens.25 Upchurch and McCarthy’s research demonstrates a similar pattern. Black mothers who first give birth at age seventeen or younger, graduate at a rate higher or comparable to black female teens overall.26 I found similar trends in my research. For instance, in 1998 in the alternative school settings I studied, settings that primarily served African-American teen mothers (70 to 85 percent), the graduation rate for these girls was 78 to 84 percent, higher than the district average for African-American females at that time (approximately 68 percent). One study also points out that black pregnant teens who are in school are more likely to say that school is important, are less likely to drop out, and receive higher grades than white pregnant teens in school-based programs.27 So while a teen pregnancy may not delimit the chances of high school completion for many African-American girls, a lack of educational engagement is also likely contributing to the high rates of pregnancy for such girls. Consider the following fifteen- and sixteen-year-old AfricanAmerican girls’ comments about their schooling experiences prior to becoming pregnant: “I don’t know, maybe if I would’ve been more into school stuff I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.” “I already felt like school weren’t teaching me so I felt like why wait.”

These girls’ statements echo statements made by many of the other AfricanAmerican pregnant/mothering students to whom I spoke. For them school engagement was key to how they thought about their pregnancies.


There is not enough recent research on Latina teen pregnancy to consider the role of kin networks and effects of school engagement for the Latina pregnant teen. The few recent studies that do exist indicate that the findings of previous research on the attributes of teen mothers and the characteristics of girls who become pregnant do not hold for Latinas. For example, a recent study reported that girls who stated they wanted to have or planned to have a child were most likely to be married Latinas, who left school before becoming pregnant, and were less likely to receive welfare.28 One common finding that teen pregnancy causes a problematic motherdaughter relationship has not been shown to hold for Latinas. Recent studies show that Latinas with a positive view of “early” pregnancy “had good communication with parents.”29 Overall compared to other teens, Latinas had less negative views toward teen pregnancy and also “were non-U.S. natives, had low levels of educational attainment, had low parental monitoring, . . . and wished to have many children.”30 However, another study suggests that family influence on Latinas’ views toward teen pregnancy may be overestimated as most recent research shows that teen’s attitudes toward sex, their sexual activity, and views of teen pregnancy are primarily influenced by their peers, not their families or family situation.31 Additionally, research indicates that Latinas have the highest rate of teen pregnancy, the highest birth rates, and that they have the lowest rate of utilization and access to health care, due to many political, social, and economic barriers and that Latina students also experience the stress of acculturation and racism in public schools.32 Recent research also indicates that Latina teen pregnancy rates rise the more acculturated the Latina teen is. Other studies support Jennifer Manlove’s findings that indicate Latinas are most at risk for dropping out of school due to a pregnancy and most at risk for becoming pregnant if they leave school. Yet, research also suggests that the longer the Latina/o student has been in the United States, the greater their risk of dropping out of school.33 While counterintuitive to what many believe, recent research demonstrates that acculturation is also a factor in Latina teen pregnancy with acculturated English-speaking teens more likely to become pregnant than Spanish-speaking teens.34 At a school I visited for Latino/Latina students that has run a program for pregnant teens and teen mothers since 1974, all the teen mothers are second or third generation Latina’s and all are fluent in English. Counter to images of “Hispanic” culture being innately overreproductive, the above research indicates that processes of acculturation and racial stratification are key to explore Latina students’ educational experiences and teen pregnancy. What does seem common to white, black, and Latina teens who become pregnant is a set of educational experiences that may contribute to a lack of


access to educational opportunities, yielding feelings of separation and disenfranchisement from education.35 We do know for example, that teens who return or remain in school during pregnancy are in significantly different schools and classes than girls who do not have a school-age pregnancy. Teen girls, across race and ethnicity, who are pregnant/mothering, are more likely to be previously tracked into low-ability courses, were less likely to be in high-ability math at eighth grade, and were more likely to be served in schools that lack access to a range of educational experiences and opportunities.36 Overall, girls who are less engaged in school are more likely to drop out, often putting them at risk of becoming pregnant and there is also evidence that teacher attitude toward the girl as a student impacts how teen girls who become pregnant describe their schooling experiences.37 One study noted a striking finding, for black teen girls, “low teacher ratings were associated with an increased risk of school-age pregnancy, even after controlling for test scores, grades, and aspirations.”38 This finding points dramatically to the power, role, and influence of teacher attitude toward students and how particularly for African-American female students, supportive, engaged, and positive interactions with adult teachers have the potential to affect personal and educational outcomes for the student.39 Data available on who the pregnant teen is as a student confirms that the problem of teen pregnancy cannot be separated from the education of all young women and situates the problem of how to educate teen mothers within the larger issue of how to successfully educate all female students. In particular, the high rate of pregnant/parenting black teens who stay in school and the overall rate of teens that return to school when pregnant raises many implications for development and implementation of equal education opportunity and educational programs for pregnant/parenting teens. This data also provides the opportunity to rethink how the pregnant teen is represented as a student.

Where Are Teen Mothers Served? Exposing Differential Service Patterns In both of the states I studied, I was unable to find and access explicit state or district data on where school-age mothers were receiving their education. Also, as noted above, we have to question the accuracy of the reported numbers by school-based programs and separate schools. Similar to the question of “who is the school-age mother as a student,” the question of how, where, and what type of education schools are providing to schoolage mothers is confounded by both a lack of data and a lack of informative data. Data on how many teen mothers graduate, from where, and with


what type of an education are often not available or embedded in data sets on other “at risk” school factors. Programs for teen mothers are often provided under the guise of “at-risk” programs or within other programs such as vocational education and home economics and once the pregnant teen has given birth she is often no longer tracked as a teen mother. While there are annual counts of the rate of teen pregnancy and full-scale reports on prevention policies and programs, there is no corresponding study and analysis on the education of teen mothers. What are available are legal analyses, a few large-scale analyses, a handful of small-scale analyses, and a growing body of qualitative studies detailing the experiences of teen mothers (while some of the qualitative studies are not specifically focused upon the education of school-age mothers they do provide some idea of how and where teen mothers are receiving an education).40 I use this body of research, combined with my own qualitative research, to provide an overview of what we presently know about how schools are meeting the mandate to provide education to school-age mothers. I organize this analysis through three key mandates of Title IX identifying the common barriers teen mothers face in their attempts to access education opportunity. The three key mandates are: 1. Teen mothers may not be expelled from school. 2. Attendance at separate schooling sites must be voluntary. 3. Policies affecting teen mothers’ access to school must be nondiscriminatory and teen mothers’ education should be comparable to that of their peers.

Practices of Exclusion or Expulsion Taking a cursory look at the issue of exclusion or expulsion, it would seem that schools are upholding Title IX. Pamphlets on Title IX distributed to school districts in the 1980s clearly state that schools may no longer routinely expel pregnant/mothering teens. When state and local districts do have a written policy regarding the teen mother, it will most likely declare expulsion illegal. However, data presented in the previous section reveal that up to 50 percent of the girls who become pregnant while in school, leave school and do not return, while girls who become pregnant after leaving school return at a higher rate. This raises the question: Why do so many girls attending school, leave when they become pregnant? Available research point outs out that while school-age mothers are no longer officially expelled, many barriers exist that hinder teen mothers from pursuing education.41 Some researchers argue further that “pushout” strategies, common before Title IX, still continue and there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence that schools participate in practices of


discrimination that limit the educational options for pregnant teens. As Monica Stamm asserts there is evidence that “subtle forms of discrimination and certain policies discourage teen mothers from staying in school, particularly mainstream schools.”42 Such practices occur at administrative and classroom levels and may include: failing to provide teen mothers with information; discouraging teen mothers from attending or continuing in school; requiring teens to complete a complicated enrollment process to stay in school; berating the pregnant/parenting teen in front of her peers; enforcing stringent attendance requirements that do not accommodate for pregnancy and childbirth; failing to provide various accommodations for the pregnant/parenting student, including bathroom passes, make-up work for absences, extended time to get to class, or provision of a classroom seat that can accommodate a changing and growing body; failing to provide transportation or childcare; and other less tangible issues such as the attitude of adults and the welcoming or unwelcoming climate of the school or the teen pregnancy program. These subtle and not-so-subtle practices create a climate of stress, regulation, and surveillance for the pregnant teen, and many pregnant teens, already experiencing the stress of an unplanned pregnancy, will choose to leave school. Pregnant/mothering teens who do remain in or return to school, emphasize the amount of work and effort it takes to simply access and/or continue their education.43 For instance, girls as well as teachers noted that decisions concerning when to excuse the absences of a pregnant/mothering teen is an issue that rises repeatedly. All schools have strict school policies regarding school absences, excused and unexcused, that affect whether students can, for example, makeup missed work, quizzes, or tests; that affect whether the student passes or fails a class, and may also lead to in-school suspensions. Such policies, which do not fit pregnant/ mothering students’ situations, are often the first site of trouble for these teens. As schools typically have no written policies explicitly addressing how to make decisions about absences for pregnant/mothering students, such decisions are left up to individual teachers and often to individual teacher’s discretion. Leaving such decisions up to individual discretion has not worked to provide pregnant/mothering students with equitable access. Here one ninth grade pregnant student explains: So when I was seven months pregnant I was having some bleeding and cramping and on those days I was supposed to stay in bed—do bed rest—one time I had to do this for seven days straight. But some of my teachers wouldn’t excuse my absences . . . even though I had an excused absence form from the attendance office I had to go to each teacher separately to figure out what they would do and each teacher was different. One let me makeup work, one said

The Teen Mother as a Student • 125 just don’t worry about it, one said I had to have a note from my doctor and two said I had to have a note from the doctor that I had been seen by a doctor, like that I had an appointment each day. I tried to explain that I didn’t see a doctor each day I was on bed rest, I just called in [to the nurse] and stayed in bed! But it was like they didn’t get it or didn’t want to and said the only way they would excuse my absences and let me makeup work and tests is if I showed I saw a doctor each day . . . So then I’ve gotta go and try to get something from my doctor to say I really needed to be on bed rest and they’re busy and don’t get why I need such a note and say they can’t say I saw a doctor each day, and . . . it’s just a mess and so at some point you just give up because you’re running in circles and getting nowhere, y’know what I mean?

Another school social worker detailed what she had to go through in order to get a chair for a pregnant student in one of her classes: I had a teacher who didn’t even want her student to sit in a chair. She wanted her student to sit at a desk like other kids. This girl is almost nine months pregnant. She can’t fit in a desk. And, she wouldn’t accommodate her until her counselor wrote a letter and the principal had to sign it. And all she wanted was a chair and her teacher wouldn’t let her have a chair! So, it’s just prejudices like that that some girls have to battle with and have to deal with . . .

One school social worker describes why she intervenes in such cases: Because, I look at them as parents as I would look at myself or any other faculty member in this building as a parent . . . when anybody’s babies or children are sick, if you don’t have husbands that can be home to take care of these children, you have to do what you have to do. So, I’m a strong advocate there, and will come to their defense if they have be out for a week because “Joey has an ear infection.” You know that needs to be excused. I think you need to allow them that time to be home with the sick child. . . . So I work real hard with making sure that they just don’t get messed on. You know, especially if they’re trying to make it and for the most part the girls are struggling, trying to make it. You know, so I would hate to see things like “where were you yesterday?”. . . interfere to the point that it makes them say, “Well, I don’t want to be here. I might as well not come to school.”

My interviews with teen mothers confirm the above social worker’s fears that such barriers may be enough to have them give up on school. I heard over and over again from the girls how hard it is to get access to an education and several spoke of the friends they knew who left school or did not return to school while pregnant because of the many barriers. These barriers may be physical (as in the case of pregnant students literally unable to fit into their school), structural (as in the case of policies governing absences that do not fit with pregnant/mothering students’ situations), and also attitudinal. One girl, a school returnee, said when describing a meeting with her previous school principal, “you should have seen the way he looked at me,


with disgust, like I was nothing.” Pregnant/mothering students take notice of adult interactions with them and these interactions matter. At a time when these young women are already handling multiple changes at one time, the attitude of school personnel seems to dramatically impact their decision making. As a fifteen-year-old pregnant teen explained to me why she left her regular school, Well they just didn’t seem to care and some of the teachers treated me like she’s just gonna drop out now so don’t spend time on her. So I left.

At other times practices of explusion/exclusion were more overt. For instance, one teen mother recalled how the principal in her regular school pulled her out of her classes one day to confront her about her pregnancy: He called me into his office and he said I hear you are pregnant. And I say, ‘yeah, so what?’ He says we don’t have pregnant girls in this school—how it was bad for the school’s reputation and would give other girls ideas.

However, while in school the barriers do not end. All of the girls I talked with spoke about “being watched.” Practices of surveillance increased stress and resistance for the teen mothers. You’re just not supposed to complain in this school or act like you should be treated different because you are pregnant. They want to treat you just the same but I’m not the same anymore.

At the same time they are being told they will be treated just the same, teen mothers also note they are indeed being treated differently. They report being “watched a lot,” “glared at,” and “always having to act like I’m not pregnant.” Some students note that their teachers or school counselors/social workers tell them they “can’t make any mistakes” but have to be on their “best behavior” and “set good examples” because “some people think we should not even be in school.” One girl further noted: It’s like when you’re pregnant and in school you have to be quiet or people think you’re bad. They act like something is wrong with you anyway and you can forget about being in clubs or anything—they won’t let you.

The above comment about exclusion from clubs, only recently came to national attention over the National Honor Society cases. When I asked the above young woman and others if they felt they had a right to be in schoolsponsored clubs and activities, some said they “weren’t sure,” but all the young women said they were “too busy,”“too stressed just trying to make it now,” “tired of fighting with adults” and “don’t have the time” to pursue those rights even if they had them. For these girls, the temporary nature of pregnancy, the invisibility of their parenting, the high demands of their multiple lives as student, mother, wage earner, daughter, lover, and so on,


reduce the likelihood that they have the time and energy to pursue one more thing. I began to see that only with extraordinary adult advocacy would a pregnant/mothering student pursue access to educational opportunity. This may help us understand why so few cases are brought to OCR attention or make it to the courts; not because pregnant/mothering teens encounter no barriers in accessing schooling but because proving the existence of such barriers is a burden the pregnant/mothering student must face herself. Some teen mothers, as I have previously reported, resist and speak back to the negative attitudes they encounter. After getting to know these girls, I came to feel that it was likely these same traits, which provide them with “resiliency” while they are pregnant and mothering, that made them problem students before they were pregnant. Listen: They just treated you like you were dumb. Like if you asked questions you were stupid. Y’know I figure they are getting paid to teach me and if they aren’t doing that they aren’t doing their job. They should have helped me understand the stuff when I asked questions. . . . I told them it was their job to teach me.

This student who returned to school when she was pregnant decided to attend night school in addition to attending classes during the day while she was pregnant to “catch up and be able to finish.” While seemingly a very focused and responsible decision, the student was told by the principal and school social worker that she could not do this. He told me I was too dumb and how was I gonna handle it. They pulled out shit on everything I had been in trouble for before I was pregnant. I told them it was none of their business—what concern of it was theirs, they weren’t doing anything to help me anyway . . . I said they couldn’t stop me and he [the principal] said they could, they could kick me out of school. I said, “are you kicking me out?” and he said, “yes” and pulled out the paper for me to sign. I said “no way, this is not fair and you can’t talk to me like this without my guardian here” and I left.

The above principal did acknowledge a “heated” exchange with the student but felt that her plan for herself was “unreasonable.” However, in further discussion, the principal did reveal that the primary reason for not approving the student’s request is that she was not yet eighteen years old and according to state policy she could not attend night school unless she had withdrawn from school. He did not share this information with the student because he “did not see how it would matter.” Within two weeks this same student had found out about a local separate school program for teen mothers that she could transfer to and attend classes at night, but she needed her current principal’s signature. Their next meeting was just as confrontational:

128 • Unfit Subjects I went in and put the paper on his desk and said this is where I need to go, sign here. He said no, I could not go to this school because I was not bad enough. I could not believe it—what did he mean I wasn’t bad enough? Just two weeks earlier they had been telling me how dumb and bad I was and now I wasn’t bad enough! “How bad do I have to be?” I said. “Look at my grades, I’m not learning here, I’m making D’s, no one is helping me—how bad do I have to be?” “You’re not failing every subject,” he said. I was so angry—I told him his school hadn’t done nothing for me and that when I wanted to learn they kept stopping me and that I was going to this (other) school and he couldn’t stop me.

She returned with her grandmother, who is her guardian, and got the necessary papers signed. After her baby’s birth she attended the alternative school, took parenting classes, and attended night school for one year. She had a second child with her boyfriend the following year (they were now living together) and graduated with a 2.95 grade point average when she was still seventeen. Soon afterwards she enrolled at a local community college where she was “really enjoying classes.” This pregnant/mothering teen who in many was ways highly motivated and responsible for herself and her children, did not “fit” within her regular school given her previous school record and the assumptions school personnel held about who she was and what she was capable of. Her “outspokenness” in response to the educational barriers she faced further situated her as unreasonable and unfit for education in the regular school setting. While practices of outright expulsion from school settings may seem unlikely to occur, the above narratives make obvious that multiple barriers exist which exclude pregnant/mothering students from receiving an equal education. Such barriers include policies and practices that are inflexible and that create an unwelcoming or hostile school environment for the pregnant/mothering teen. Further, negative attitudes toward the pregnant/mothering teen dramatically impact students’ attempts to remain in or return to school. Identifying the barriers teen mothers experience is key to pursuing access to equal education opportunity for pregnant/mothering students under Title IX.44 Further, regardless of the lack of OCR complaints, we cannot assume that all pregnant/mothering teens are receiving initial access to schools. For instance the Women’s Equity Resource Center notes the continued presence of “blatant discrimination” by school districts, citing that until 1993, and then only changed by threat of complaint, the St. Louis public school system had a “written policy requiring all pregnant elementary and secondary students to attend a separate school for pregnant students in the district, a practice blatantly in noncompliance with Title IX.”45 Further an independent study by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) found significant evidence of “rank discrimination” against pregnant/mothering teens who want to attend school. NYCLU interns


posing as pregnant students called up city high schools for enrollment information. Although the interns, who all said they were six months pregnant, told admission officers they were in good academic standing and lived within the school attendance zone “eight out of twenty-eight schools actively tried to discourage them from enrolling . . . and another three schools refused to sign the girls up.” Out the remaining seventeen schools, over half encouraged the “teen mother” to seek services from one of the few “special schools” for teen mothers instead of at their school.46 Evidence such as the above indicates that we cannot assume school districts are holding to even the initial intent of Title IX and highlights the need for research that explicitly addresses the barriers pregnant/mothering teens face when they attempt to access schooling, either in regular or separate school settings.

Voluntary Practices? If a pregnant teen remains in or returns to school, what are her educational options? How voluntary is her placement into separate programs? Title IX does not require or specify one type of educational provision over another for school-age mothers and there is evidence that schools interpret Title IX narrowly and take a passive stance toward provision of special services.47 Thus, schools can successfully argue for providing no special programs for school-age mothers (pregnancy as a cold model) and just as successfully present a case for school-age mothers to be served in a separate educational program in a separate facility (pregnancy as a disability model), or provide a range of services in between these two options. While the kinds of programs provided for school-age mothers varies widely among states and even within states utilizing the same teen pregnancy program, what does seem common is that teen mothers do not have a say or choice in what type of educational programming would best suit their needs, nor is placement in separate programs clearly voluntary.48 The lack of choice by pregnant/mothering students is so prevalent that this lack is not questioned as evidenced in the following field note I wrote during my first year researching pregnant/mothering teens in public schools. “I signed the paper . . . ” After several months of listening to teen mothers tell their educational stories, including their narratives of returning to school or seeking help after finding they were pregnant, I picked up a phrase I heard repeated regardless of whether the girl was from an urban, suburban, or small school—“well, I signed the paper.” This statement usually was made as part of a tale of conflict with the school principal or vice principal/attendance officer. What was this paper the girls were referring to? I had to go back and ask and then found for myself that this piece of “paper” became slippery to find.

130 • Unfit Subjects I was told by school personnel: “There are various forms we have to fill out for each of our students.” I was not given access to these forms. The paper seemed variously to be a dropout form, or perhaps an agreement to attend an alternative school, or a form that the principal had students sign authorizing them to leave school. I was not allowed to see the actual forms for the girls I interviewed, however, one of the teen pregnancy teachers once explained to me that “the paper. . . . allowed the school to not count the girl as a dropout if she did not return to school.” What she may have been referring to is a provision in Title IX about attendance. Yet there is another interpretation and use of the form. The young women who signed the paper understood it as a form that had to be signed before they could receive services. I cannot help but wonder if this form is also utilized by the districts who provided alternative school programs to have evidence that girls voluntarily agreed to be placed in the alternative separate placements and thus provide protection from Title IX’s mandate that such placements be “voluntary.” What is obvious is that the girls were not sure what they were signing but thought they had to sign the form in order to receive access to an education. Two of my subjects refused to sign “the papers.” Both cases involved the girls wanting to get an education at their home school and coming to realize that if they signed the papers they could not.

Pregnant students often have limited or no options in how they will receive their education, and contrary to the language of Title IX, when alternative school programs are available they are presented as the only option, not as a choice for the student.49 If a school district has a teen pregnancy/ teen moms program, teen girls are routinely required to attend it. If a school district offers no special programs for teen mothers, it is assumed they will stay in their regular classes and seek services she may need outside of the school day.50 In fact, the only choice teen mothers consistently told me they had was whether they would remain at school during their pregnancy or receive home tutoring and this “choice” was made most available to middle-income Caucasian students. In a discussion with a principal at a regular high school on how placement decisions are made for pregnant/ mothering students in his school, he responded, Well it is really about student need and there are some girls who can get tutoring and come back to their classes and some who cannot. . . . Or some for whom an academic education just isn’t going to be appropriate.

In listening to the educational histories of pregnant/mothering girls in separate school facilities I came to see these girls as the girls “for whom an academic education just isn’t going to be appropriate.” For such girls, alternative separate school placements were presented as the only option and if such separate spaces did not exist, these girls often dropped out of regular day school sometimes to later attend GED programs.


What also became apparent in my research visits to separate school facilities were visible racial differences between girls in separate school settings and girls in regular school settings. Seven out of ten separate school settings were majority African-American (and in one case Latina) girls— with an overall student body comprised of over 80 percent black students. These schools were identified as “black schools” by the students who attended them and by school personnel. As one student attending such a school stated: Well this is a black school and we all know what that means. So when a white girl [a white teen mother] comes here we all wonder what she done to end up here.

Identification of such schools or school programs as “black” works discursively to mark these settings as problematic, special, and deficit while also reinforcing placement decisions that perpetuate segregated school settings. In contrast, during my research I observed or heard stories about the pregnant/mothering teen who stayed in school until her last trimester at which point she stayed at home and received home tutoring. After the birth of her child she returned to school, stepping back into her original classes—she remained invisible to her school during the height of her pregnancy and returned to school without any need of special support, thus minimizing her new role as mother. Most girls who I met who followed this pattern and every story I heard about such girls were collegetrack Caucasian students—some who decided to give their child up for adoption or had a mother at home to take on primary caretaking of the child. By not becoming involved in any of the special teen pregnancy or teen parenting classes offered in their school district, these girls reinforce the perception that “good students” and “good girls” and in this case “white girls” are not getting pregnant. These girls’ pregnancies remained for the most part invisible to the school—she received no special treatment beyond home tutoring and was not in school during the last trimester of her pregnancy when her pregnant body is the most exposed and obtrusive. She is removed from school when she does not fit, and then returned when she does. While such teen mothers are also seen as contaminated, these teen girls are absent from school buildings during the height of her contamination, thus making her “condition” controllable, containable. Counseling the white teen mother to utilize home schooling/home tutoring during her pregnancy and then return to her normal school routine upon the birth of her child perpetuates the idea that a pregnancy for the white, middle-class student need not disrupt her educational track and career goals and that she is entitled to continue to work toward her goals with


little disruption.51 Such girls continue to be seen as deserving of an education and requiring little from the school, outside of access to curriculum (except for when such girls exceed the boundaries of this script by requesting continued participation in “x-tras” like National Honor Society membership). This pattern fits a discursive “pregnancy as a cold” model and requires schools to only practice minimal nondiscrimination by maintaining minimal access to the student’s educational track. If white female students who are pregnant/mothering are not participating in school-based teen pregnancy programs, this also leads to an overrepresentation of black and Latina students in these programs, perpetuating the perception that teen pregnancy is a “minority” problem. This trend is supported by additional research indicating that schools treat teen mothers differentially by race, placing “minority” teen mothers in special, separate teen pregnancy programs, while encouraging Caucasian pregnant teens to receive home tutoring during the duration of their pregnancy and then return to school after the birth of their child.52 Such practices create a two-tiered system of programming for school-age mothers and allow for the perception that teen pregnancy is a “minority” problem because of the higher number of minority girls in these programs. In many cases, the special, alternative teen pregnancy program site had become known as a “minority” school resulting in few referrals of white teen mothers to these settings and an increasing number of minority girls being referred to these settings.53 Availability of programming for school-age mothers seems not only arbitrarily developed, but also dependent upon the race of the teen mother. Furthermore, it is evident that when school-age mothers are presented with only one option for their education they are not making a voluntary choice.

What Does Comparable Look Like? When school-age mothers do receive an education is it one comparable to her peers? Available research yields insight to this question only on teen mothers who are served in separate school programs for part of or all of the school day and often at a separate facility. We know little to nothing about how and whether teen mothers who do not attend a special program experience their education, thus this analysis is limited to school-age mothers in special programs. Remember, however, that given what we know about how teen mothers are counseled, “minority” teen mothers are most often encouraged or required to attend special teen pregnancy programs in order to remain in school. Based upon what we know about school-age mothers who return to or remain in school while pregnant, it is likely that special programs for teen mothers serve a majority of teens who are African-American, Latina, or low-income Caucasian.


Available studies indicate that teen mothers receive less than an equal education in separate school settings and that separate schools for pregnant girls do not provide a comparable level of academic excellence.54 For example, separate programs and schools often lack the course offerings of the comparable peer school and do not provide a college preparatory curriculum.55 Additionally, there are often dramatic differences in provision of services, pedagogy, curricula, and goals for students within the same statewide program, depending upon the location, administrative support, and ideology of the teacher implementing the program for teen mothers.56 Instead of being developed with questions of how best to provide the pregnant/mothering students with an equal education, school-based teen pregnancy programs are driven by public policy and governmental interest in the teen mother (as evidenced by the PRWORA act, 1996) and are intent upon preventing a second pregnancy, meeting minimal graduation requirements, preparing the young mother for the work force, and engaging in activities and counseling that will help the teen mother see the error of her ways and understand that she must not be dependent upon social welfare.57 Although the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has not yet cited any discrepancies in compliance under the issue of comparability under Title IX, Deborah Brake states this fact itself should be suspect. Brake argues that OCR is not clear on what criteria it uses to judge the comparability of education for teen mothers and that “OCR’s record in this area is cause for concern.”58 Measures of comparability are caught up in what we think teen mothers need and deserve in an education. And comparable to what, to who? What is a comparable education for the teen mother who is returning to school when pregnant? Additionally, knowing that teen girls who become mothers are most likely to have been placed in lower educational tracks prior to becoming pregnant, what is an appropriate or comparable education for them when they are pregnant/mothering? At this point, public and policy sentiment have defined education for this teen mother as a responsibility—she must gain basic skills in order to obtain a job that will keep her off social welfare assistance. Does this mean that the teen mother who was tracked in low-ability classes before becoming pregnant is receiving an equal education if she has access to this same level of schooling when pregnant? Does this mean that the teen mother who states she wants to attend a two-year college after graduation can be discouraged from doing so because she was not on such a track before becoming pregnant? The above questions have received little debate or attention beyond a linking education for some unwed teen mothers with social welfare reforms. Recall the political climate and impetus surrounding the teen mother and her inclusion into a protected category under Title IX. The teen mothers featured in debates were “our girls”—girls who were entitled


to continue to receive access to their education despite their mistake of early pregnancy, and as noted previously, these girls did gain an increase in access to education as evidenced in an increase in Caucasian teen mothers’ graduation rates after Title IX. For these girls, schools seem to have at least responded by ending outright expulsions and allowing the teen mother to continue in her regular curriculum after giving birth. However, as indicated, such girls also support school practices of “pregnancy as a cold” by keeping their pregnancies invisible or contained, by not requiring any “special” accommodations, by homeschooling until birth when the pregnant body stops fitting into the school, and returning to school after birth with no additional support programs. As some of the girls I interviewed noted, “it is like she never had a baby.” Such practices require little from the school; all the school must do in this case is not expel the student. It is up to the student to accommodate herself and her changing self, to fit the existing structures of schooling. Here then it is easy to see how the pregnant/mothering student who cannot “fit” into school invisibly, who receives no support because of her “special needs,” who raises questions, becomes hypervisible and is situated as problematic. From teen mothers who challenge their denied admissions to National Honor Society organizations, to the teen mother who challenges why she must fit into a desk that does not accommodate her pregnant body, to the teen girl who returns to school because she is pregnant— all become hypervisible subjects, situated as problem girls, problem cases. As detailed above, the solution for some of these problem girls is removal into separate programs or separate school settings for pregnant/mothering students. However, the question of whether such placements better meet the educational needs of such students or are simply placements that better meet the needs of schools to separate and contain such girls remains unaddressed. Questions of whether such separate placements are comparable have not begun to be addressed in existing educational research. I suggest, like Brake, that how we think about comparability of education for the school-age mother must be expanded beyond a cursory look at minimal access to curricula. If education for pregnant/mothering students is situated as a school equality and equity issue, given that across race, but particularly for African-American students, most teen mothers do not have access to equitable schooling prior to their pregnancies, we can expand how we think about issues of comparability. Situating the education of pregnant/mothering students within the context of debates on gender and race and the effect they have on school equity moves discussions and


analysis of comparability beyond discussions of what the teen mother deserves to what she is entitled to in an education.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

“Not Your Typical Teen Mother,” 67–68, 70, 74. My use of counter stories is similar to usages in critical race theory. See e.g., Parker and Lynn, “What’s Race Got to Do With It?” 7–22. As this manuscript was nearing completion, Boston Public aired another episode dealing with teen pregnancy (October 10, 2002), this time however the young girl was Caucasian, from a lower social economic status, and had some learning problems. She did not confirm her pregnancy until she was over seven months, then did not tell her parents and hid her pregnancy. She gave birth during the school day in the girls’ bathroom left the infant in a toilet. After the infant was discovered and she confessed and voiced her desire to keep and raise her child. Although a school counselor attempted to cover the circumstances of the birth and intervene on this student’s behalf so she could keep her child, when the facts of the birth came out, police and social services intervened. The viewer was left to believe that the young mother would be charged and the infant placed into foster care. This episode obviously plays off of the reports of “prom moms” (girls who gave birth in the school bathroom during the school day or the prom and returned to their classes or the dance) in the media during the late 1990s. These mothers, all Caucasian, are like the girl in Boston Public, situated as troubled girls whose problems are too many for the public school to handle. These Caucasian girls break the rules by over-performing the invisibility of their pregnancies and births and thus when they attempt to return to school as “normal” students are not accepted. See e.g., Brindis, “Antecedents and Conferences,” 257–283; and Natural Center for Health Statistics, 1992. By “average” I do mean the typical teen mother as student—this student is lost in constructions of the teen mother as epidemic and as the victim of abuse, crime, drugs, and older men. As argued in chapters 1 and 2, these constructions are necessary in order to draw attention to the problem of teen pregnancy, however, such constructions of the teen mother permeate public perception and policy options to the exclusion of the average teen mother. I was not prepared to find this “average” teen mother in my research—I expected to find the problem teen mothers presented to me in social science research and the media, yet the average teen mother is who I found (and indeed the “problem” teen mother seemed ill-served by the programs developed for her in mind, see Pillow, “Deconstructing Silences, Troubling Irony.”). I have long been interested in the disjuncture and contradiction between educational policy and practice developed and implemented based on representations of the school-age mother that circulate and are reproduced independent of who the teen mother may actually be. I have explored the implications of such representations in other work, see Pillow, The Making of Mothers, and “Exposed Methodology.” Burdell, “Teen Mothers in High School,” 164. See also Pilat, Adolescent Parenthood and Education. See e.g., Luker, Dubious Conceptions; Pearce, “ ‘Children Having Children,” 46–58; Phoenix, “The Social Construction of Teenage Motherhood,” 74–100; Rhode, “Adolescent Pregnancy and Public Policy,” 301–335. Ladner, “Black Teenage Pregnancy,” 53–63. See also Brindis, “Antecedents and Consequences,” 257–283; Luker, Dubious Conceptions. In reviewing this research I am not implying, nor do the researchers I cite imply, that a teen pregnancy does not have ramifications for the teen mother, her family, and society. What the researchers are questioning is the presumed link between teen pregnancy and school failure and the long-term economic impact of early pregnancy. Rather, these researchers argue that the teen mother’s circumstances will be varied and that the teen mother’s future is more dependent upon the opportunities she had and the social and economic circumstances she was in before becoming pregnant. Maynard, Kids Having Kids.

136 • Unfit Subjects 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

See Brindis, “Antecedents and Consequences”; Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 187–220; Polit and Kahn, “Teen Pregnancy and the Role of the School,” 134; Upchurch and McCarthy, “The Timing of a First Birth and High School Completion,” 224–234; Weis, et. al., eds. Dropouts from School. Brindis, “Antecedents and Consequences”; Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy”; Polit and Kahn, “Teen Pregnancy and the Role of the School.” See e.g., Lesko, “Implausible Endings”; “Revisiting ‘the Baby Trap,’” 55. See also; Schultz, “Constructing Failure, Narrating Success,” 582–607; and Lloyd and O’Regan, “ ‘You Have to Learn to Love Yourself ‘Cos No One Else Will,’ “ 39–52. Some research also indicates that teen mothers have higher self-esteem, use recreational and illegal drugs to a lesser extent, and are more focused and committed to their goals than other sexually active girls. See Males, “Poverty, Rape, Adult/Teen Sex,” 409, fn. 19. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 200. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 200. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 200. I write about an exception to this, Shelley, and her experiences attempting to continue in a college preparatory curricula during and after her pregnancy in Pillow, “Exposed Methodology.” Upchurch and McCarthy, “The Timing of a First Birth and High School Completion.” Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy”; Upchurch and McCarthy, “The Timing of a First Birth and High School Completion.” Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” Journal of Research on Adolescence. Brindis, “Antecedents and Consequences,” 259. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy.” Scott-Jones, “Adolescent Childbearing,” 53–64. Ladner, “Black Teenage Pregnancy”; Scott-Jones, “Adolescent Childbearing”; Stevenson, Maton, and Teti, “School Importance and Dropout Among Pregnant Adolescents,” 376–382; Upchurch and McCarthy, “The Timing of a First Birth and High School Completion.” Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” reports that white pregnant teens have a drop out rate (31.3 percent) far greater than nonpregnant white teens (6.8%). Similarly, the nonpregnant Hispanic drop out rate is 11.3 percent, while the drop out rate for pregnant Hispanic teens is 40.9 percent. Upchurch and McCarthy, “The Timing of a First Birth and High School Completion,” 201. Stevenson, et. al., “School Importance and Dropout among Pregnant Adolescents.” It has been hypothesized that the comparably high rate of school attendance and completion for black pregnant/mothering teens is due to family, community supports, and kin networks, which are often not available for many low-income white pregnant/parenting students. See e.g., Pillow, The Making of Mothers and “Decentering Silences/Troubling Irony”; Stack, All Our Kin. Rubin and East, “Adolescents Pregnancy Intentions,” 313–320. Unger, Molina, and Teran, “Perceived Consequences of Teenage Childbearing among Adolescent Girls in an Urban Sample,” 205–212. Unger, et. al., “Perceived Consequences of Teenage Childbearing.” Beal, “Social Influences on Health-Risk Behaviors among Minority Middle School Students,” 474–480. Rew, “Access to Health Care for Latina Adolescents,” 194–204; Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling.

The Teen Mother as a Student • 137 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

See Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling. See Becerra and de Anda, “Pregnancy and Motherhood among Mexican-American Adolescents,” 106–123; Corcoran, “Ecological Factors Associated with Adolescent Pregnancy,” 603–619. Latinas teens have among the lowest birth weight of their babies but again contrary to popular belief, acculturation may play a role in the pregnant teen not eating properly and gaining necessary weight during pregnancy. See Gutierrez, “Cultural Factors Affecting Diet and Pregnancy Outcome of Mexican-American Adolescents,” 227–237; Rew, “Access to Health Care for Latina Adolescents.” Yolanda Gutierrez found that with acculturation, Latinas who are pregnant, “lost most of the traditional Mexican cultural beliefs related to pregnancy, and their attitudes about weight gain were more negative.” Yolanda Gutierrez, “Cultural Factors Affecting Diet and Pregnancy Outcome of Mexican-American Adolescents,” 227. See Brindis, “Antecedents and Consequences.” Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 204; Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 204; Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy,” 211. Such findings replicate previous studies that note the importance of African-American students’ school engagement, attainment, and achievement with the presence of supportive, caring teachers. See e.g., Delpit, Other People’s Children; and Foster, Black Teachers on Teaching. Brake, “Legal Challenges”; Ling, “Lifting Voices”; Manlove, “The Influence of High School Dropout and School Disengagement on the Risk of School-Age Pregnancy”; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet.” Brake, “Legal Challenges”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet.” Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” FN 164. See e.g., Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Detailed, well-documented evidence of barriers pregnant/mothering students face will be necessary in order to challenge existing policies and practices that create barriers to their accessing or continuing their education. Outside of outright flagrant expulsion, the burden is upon the pregnant/mothering student to offer proof of discriminatory practices. However, proof of a hostile school environment may not be enough to challenge existing practices as shown in recent Federal Court of Appeals cases upholding that “the vulgar atmosphere” in this case in a workplace had nothing to do with the plaintiffs “presence or the fact that she was a woman.” The behavior in question, although notably vulgar, was determined to be “isolated” and male “banter”—that is boys will be boys—while the female plaintiff was also described as not upholding to a “model of femininity” herself. See Sontag, “The Power of the Fourth,” 44. Such decisions although discouraging should not deter educational researchers from documenting the range of present-day barriers pregnant/mothering students face in pursuing equal education opportunity. See “Report Card—Treatment of Pregnant and Parenting Students.” Morrison, “‘Rank Discrimination,’ “ A07. Brake, “Legal Challenges”; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet.” See Brake, “Legal Challenges”; Nash and Dunkle, The Need for a Warming Trend; Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet.” Brake, “Legal Challenges”; Ling, “Lifting Voices”; Nash and Dunkle, The Need for a Warming Trend; Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet”; Zellman, The Response of the Schools to Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood. See also Brake, “Legal Challenges”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Pillow, The Making of Mothers and “Deconstructing Silences/Troubling Irony.” See Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet”; Zellman, The Response of the Schools to Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood. Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Zellman, The Response of the Schools to Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood.

138 • Unfit Subjects 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Ling, “Lifting Voices”; Pilat, Adolescent Parenthood and Education; Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” Columbia Law Review. Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Pilat, Adolescent Parenthood and Education. Pillow, The Making of Mothers and “Exposed Methodology.” See chapter 5 and also Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Pilat, Adolescent Parenthood and Education. Brake, “Legal Challenges,” 149.

CHAPTER

5

The “Dual-Role” Model of Schooling the Teen Mother Like I know I’m supposed to work and support myself and be a mother, and y’know I want to, but the thing is I don’t see it happening. Who’s gonna hire me and pay me enough to support me and my baby? —Teen Mother, age sixteen

This Is a Test. A Real Test. Rank the following types of childcare for your infant/preschooler from poorest to best: relative, close friend in your home babysitter in your home day care center in neighborhood relative, close friend in their home babysitter in their home Did you take the test? If not, don’t cheat by reading ahead until you think about the question above which was a part of 1980s curriculum for pregnant/mothering teens. Although no longer utilized as part of the official curriculum, this test question encapsulates the mission, goals, and reformation emphasis of many school-based programs for pregnant/mothering students. The correct answer to the test question, revealed later in this

139


chapter, may surprise you. By asking what this question purports to test provides insight into what we think teen mothers need, what needs to be changed about teen mothers, and the inventive, although regulatory, ways some programs have come up with in attempts to alter teen girls’ attitudes and behavior. While debates on educating teen mothers continue and related policies lag, there are several nationally disseminated school-based programs recommended as exemplary programs for schools to use if they are developing programs for school-age mothers. School-based programs are specialized programs and curricula that are in place for pregnant/mothering teens either as a part of their school day in the regular school setting, in a before or after school program, or in a separate alternative school setting. An analysis of these programs provides a lens through which to view how education of the pregnant/mothering teen is being defined and what type of education we think pregnant/mothering teens need and deserve. This emphasis acknowledges the role discursive structures play in impacting educational policy and practice—in this case how the teen mother is represented and how her needs are defined through policy and curriculum discourse. I have addressed in previous publications how such discourse impacts and delimits pedagogy and practices in teen pregnancy classrooms.1 Here I am focusing upon how the needs of teen mothers are politicized in policy and program texts. This focus analyzes how schools operationalize the problems of teen pregnancy into curricula, pedagogy, and practice. Although I do not focus upon it, I do not wish to deny teacher and student autonomy, creativity, and subjectivity. In addition to finding that the teen parent program is shaped by its participants, I also observed that the ideological approach of the teacher—her views on teen pregnancy, on the girls she worked with, on the status of women—could dramatically impact the pedagogy and feel of the classroom.2 However, even within the classrooms that felt the most open, or with teachers who practiced a feminist pedagogy, the teachers and the pregnant/mothering teens were always operating under, within, and against predominant discourses about teen mothers in their schools, their community, to local and national media, as well as the local and national political discussions, including legislative initiatives and policy decisions. Thus this review of school-based programs points out and confirms that the education of teen mothers is closely linked to the societal needs of the teen mother. In this way, school-based programs for pregnant/mothering teens are developed not only with the teen mother in mind, but the taxpayer as well, with many programs emphasizing not education for preg-

The “Dual-Role” Model of Schooling the Teen Mother • 141

nant/mothering teens, but (re)training in moral education and vocational education.

School-Based Programs and “Dual-Role” Training As discussed in a previous chapter, separate programs for pregnant/mothering students are often instituted and justified under a discourse of pregnancy as a disability/disease. This discourse confirms the special needs of the teen mother and justifies separate placement to meet the needs of the pregnant/parenting teen. There are commonalities among the schoolbased programs reviewed here and many other programs for teen mothers. These include: • • • • •

An emphasis on school completion An emphasis on prevention of second pregnancy An emphasis on vocational education An emphasis on moral development School-based programs often coordinated through home economics programs and classrooms and supervised by home economics teachers • The use of evaluation instruments, like pre- post- testing, to judge effectiveness of the program across indicators, such as school completion or decrease in rates of second pregnancies and other indicators that included changes in teen mothers’ attitudes and beliefs concerning her role as mother and economic provider. What becomes apparent in even a cursory look at existing school-based programs for pregnant/mothering teens is the often conflicting goals of school-based programs for pregnant/mothering students. For example, some programs are focused solely upon providing support for the teen mother to complete high school, while other programs focus upon vocational training, and other programs are geared toward aiding the pregnant/mothering teen in her new role as mother. Most programs have a stated goal to prevent a second pregnancy. I am particularly interested in how the above goals are enacted through a “dual-role” discourse with the dual role being the roles of mother and worker. “Dual-role” discourse rises out of increased attention to the teen mother as an economic drain and situates the school’s role not simply access to an education but vocational or skill training for the teen mother. This training is not limited to skill acquisition but strongly focused upon retraining and reforming the teen mother’s attitudes and behaviors.


It should be noted that dual-role ideology for women, while often presented as a new concept arising out of feminist movement in the United States, has long been present and a requirement of low-income and working-class women. Some women have never had the “choice” of whether to work or to be a mother—they have had to combine these “dual-roles.” Similarly, “dual-role” training for the teen mother is not geared toward all teen mothers, but to those who are seen as most at risk of being welfare dependent and correspondingly to those young women who it is assumed do not possess the skills to be “good” mothers.3 As previous chapters pointed out, shifting definitions of the problems of the teen mother linked with the race of the teen mother impact who is using school-based programs and how. Many school-based programs, including the one analyzed in this chapter, place emphasis upon the unwed teen mother’s moral development and her responsibilities as a wage earner. In this way, such programs link a shift in the teen mother’s character with her potential to be a responsible wage earner. Moral and vocational training become linked in such curriculum because a moral change in the teen mother is seen as necessary in order for her to be fiscally responsible. This curricular emphasis clearly presumes a teen mother will be irresponsible, have no work ethic, and have a low income. Such programs are specifically targeted toward teen mothers who are assumed to already have experience with welfare and thus be most “at risk” of welfare dependency. Noting the above, the reader should be aware that these programs by their own evaluations serve only a portion of pregnant/mothering teens. Additionally, within my research and as indicated by other researchers, the implementation of these programs varies greatly depending upon the location of the school and the race and socioeconomic status of the teen mothers utilizing the program.4 Schools primarily serving white teen mothers in suburban schools deemphasized the welfare and work components of their curricula, while schools primarily serving black teen mothers in urban schools focused upon linking with community organizations and emphasized moral and vocational training.5 A review of school-based programs for teen mothers exposes the tensions between whether schools should be providing basic education, college preparatory education, or vocational training for the pregnant/ mothering student and raises questions about the purpose of education for the teen mother. Consider for example the names of the following school-based parenting programs: Learnfare, Learning, Earning, and Parenting (LEAP), Parents Too Soon. The names of the programs indicate the emphasis within each upon the pregnant/mothering teen as a student and mother, but primarily as a mother and wage earner. Learnfare, like work-


fare, emphasizes a work ethic in this case the teen mother’s responsibility to do the work of “learning” in order to earn a “fare,” LEAP, obviously emphasizes the teen mother’s role as one of learner, mother, and wage earner, while Parents Too Soon emphasizes the lack of economic opportunities available to those who “parent too soon.” “Dual-role” discourse had an early impetus and emphasis in F.C. philosophy and practice. Recall that F.C. Homes were the largest national provider of services to unwed mothers until the mid-1970s. Many homes had linkages with local schools and participated in transition of responsibility for teen mothers from community programs to school settings and provided a model of intervention for school-based programs. Tracing the development of dual-role emphasis in F.C. practice reveals the influences of F.C. ideology on the development of education for teen mothers in public school settings. To this end, I look closely at a nationally recognized and disseminated school-based program for teen mothers, Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Roles Skills (GRADS), tracing how “dual-roles” (re)training is implemented discursively through its curricula. GRADS, developed in 1978, one of the earliest school-based programs for teen mothers, is a comprehensive school-based program managed through home economics programs and funded with state educational funding in thirteen states. I became aware of GRADS during my research as it was implemented in Ohio, one of the states I studied, and operating in many of the schools I visited. Thus, I was able to observe this program in practice. GRADS has been highlighted as a nationally recognized and successful program for teen mothers—increasing school attendance and graduation rates while decreasing the rate of second births. However, here I am not interested in proving or disproving measures of GRADS success. Rather I am interested in what GRADS says about whom the pregnant and/or parenting teen is and how GRADS defines what her needs are.

The Florence Crittenton Homes Dual-Role Model As noted in an earlier chapter, F.C. Homes not only provided a model of service provision to unwed mothers but also influenced societal and professional perceptions of the problems and prognosis of the unwed mother. By the mid-1960s, most F.C. Homes had developed some kind of formal educational training for unwed mothers and were the largest provider of services to unwed mothers. Thus it is worth looking at how F.C. philosophy of the unwed mother’s needs impacted the early development of school programs after Title IX. Although few states or individual schools developed school-based programs, many schools did link with a local F.C. home to provide educational programs to the teen mother.


From its inception, F.C. Homes focused upon providing skills or vocational training to ensure that the young, unwed mother, particularly the lower-class unwed mother, could support herself once she left the home. Although it was debated over the life of F.C. Homes, most homes had policies explicitly requiring the unwed mother to keep her child. It was assumed that some women, particularly those from the lower-classes, would not find responsible marriage-minded men, and thus it was necessary for such women to be skilled in a trade with which they could support themselves and their child. This training was limited to several humble, but honest trades fitting the unwed mother’s status and position, trades such as seamstress, cook, or housekeeper. Such trades were sought for “white” and “colored” girls, albeit in segregated settings. A 1925 F.C. document noted that “Mrs. Sarah H. Malone, President of the F.C. Home for Colored Girls” of Topeka Kansas, reported as following: Our plans are to train our girls. We do not let them leave the Home until they know how to make their living. We feel that it is not enough to have our girls come into the Home and deliver their babies and go out. We train them to cook, decorate, cater, etc.6

However F.C. Homes’ focus was not only upon learning a trade but upon changing the unwed mother—changing her practices, as well as her attitudes and psychological attributes. One of the goals was to “introduce a proper social life among the girls.”7 Thus key to the vocational emphasis was side-by-side training on how to be a good, honest, moral woman. One way to accomplish this was by keeping strict, structured schedules in the home, linking cleanliness with decency, and structure with purity, and cultivating appropriate cultural interests and activities. As Kate W. Barrett, one of the founders of F.C. Homes, noted in 1903: [M]ost of the girls who come to us need to be taught to love books, as very few of them have natural fondness for reading, and in order that they may be supplied with wholesome subjects of conversation, this habit of reading should be cultivated, if possible.8

F.C. Homes by their design separated the pregnant and mothering unwed female from society, her community, and/or her school. Typically the mother would have a stay of seven months, but the unwed mother could remain longer until she found suitable employment. During this time, the unwed mother would have little to no contact with outside visitors and only have limited access to the community after she had proven herself trustworthy. This separation and removal from her old environment was considered key to the reformation of the unwed mother, and as Regina Kunzel argues, reinforced the rise of a professionalization of social


work and of specialists to work with and meet the needs of unwed mothers.9 When the unwed mother was deemed ready, the home would reintroduce society and culture, controlling what and who she was exposed to. Remember that F.C. philosophy was based upon the idea(l) of the fallen (white) woman, who was in need of “rescue,” support, structure, and role models.10 Although little mention is made of the young, school-age unwed mother in F.C. papers, there are a few entries that shed light on what the homes may have done with such girls. Specific reference to teen mothers does not occur in F.C. literature until 1959, although what to do with the “younger unwed mother” had gained earlier attention.11 When the homes found themselves dealing with the younger, unwed mother they had to address the educational needs of such women. The school-age mother would be removed from her school and often from her community, remain at the F.C. home until giving birth, and then perhaps in some circumstances return to school to complete her education or move straight into her wageearning profession. Debates about what to do with the younger unwed mother worked its way into a F.C. annual report as early as 1941: Some social workers feel that a girl, if she is of school age, must be in school–many superintendents of school and teachers do realize that the school cannot cope with delinquents and problem children. Many feel that academic training is over-stressed with this type of girls. I feel, personally, that time spent in getting straightened out is time well spent even tho it means a whole year out of school.12

This quote provides an early example of associating teen pregnancy with delinquency, the idea that schools cannot handle the needs of such girls, and that an academic education may not be appropriate for such girls or should at least be delayed. In addition to questioning the role of academic training for the teen mother this statement supports the idea that reforming teen mothers cannot occur in a school setting with educators who are not trained to deal with such girls. Early mention of education provision to unwed mothers in F.C. homes notes the educational programs took place in the homes, typically through coordination with special education departments, even if what was being offered were regular classes.13 When F.C. Homes provided educational instruction it was initially the basics of writing, reading, and figuring. The goal at the homes was to ensure the unwed mother could read the Bible and do the basic computations suitable for work as a cook or housekeeper. There was no question of educating them beyond basic reading and writing, as the women would all be entering service positions. F.C. Home records focus upon “retraining” and “reformation” as primary goals and such retraining occurred across all areas—from moral retraining, to social retraining in the form of “learning


acceptable ways of having fun,” to vocational training in “homemaking, sewing, crafts, etc.” and included teaching the young women how to “dress for work, behaviors on the job, etc.”14 As discussed in chapter 2, F.C. Homes laid the foundation arguing for the necessity of continuing education for the young unwed teen mother. The educational goals for the unwed teen mother included access to schooling and F.C. Homes focused upon providing a comprehensive education for the young unwed mother; an education that served the “whole girl.” For instance, a 1969 publication on “Thoughts on Planning for Education of Pregnant Teen-Agers,” argues that: your program concentrate on three R’s . . . Not Reading, Riteing, and Rithmetic . . . The three R’s mean Relevance—to today’s world and to the girl involved; Realism—that there is the potential both in the girl and in the program; and Rewarding—not only in the economic sense but also in stimulating additional growth and self-realization in the girl.15

A 1971 F.C. policy statement on “Continued Schooling for Youth Regardless of Marital Status or Condition of Pregnancy,” affirms that “education is essential to the development of youth” and the necessity of the “provision of a continuous program of instruction in public day school for pregnant students, regardless of marital status.” If attending the public day school is not “inadvisable or hazardous” the statement notes that an “individualized educational program” should be provided within the F.C. home in cooperation with the local school. Further, the statement advocates an education that accounts for the young unwed teen mother’s dual-roles including: (a) Practical courses in budgeting and household management, nutrition, child development, and training, (b) Vocational courses designed for actual available jobs leading to economic independence, (c) Group discussion classes designed to help develop attitudes that will lead to responsible adulthood.16 The emphasis placed on providing education to teen mothers in F.C. literature was one of necessity. By the 1970s, F.C. Homes found themselves working primarily with young, teenage unwed mothers. With contraception and abortion accessible and societal attitudes toward unwed mothers and “illegitimacy” changing, adult unwed mothers were not seeking aid from F.C. Homes. Additionally, by the mid-1970s all F.C. Homes had to provide services to girls they previously had not served, namely AfricanAmerican girls. Integration became a necessity, not only due to civil rights policies, but for the viability of the F.C. Homes themselves. Without serving the African-American unwed mother, the homes would be in jeopardy of closing.17


By the 1970s, this change in the population F.C. homes was serving also resulted in a shifting discourse about and changing attitude toward the young unwed mother. Although statements by an F.C. Home director in the 1960s described the teen mother in language similar to F.C.’s longstanding philosophy toward the unwed mother—that is she is worthy of time, support and redemption—a shift in tone is evident in the literature in just ten years. The only change in the home was the race of the girls being served—from predominantly Caucasian to predominantly African American. Consider the following statements made in 1963 by the director of this home to a local newspaper: Even though there are many teen parents who become warm, nurturing, and caring toward their children, few achieve this status without overcoming serious problems. If the girl is given enough help—through parental understanding and case work, it can be a maturing experience. We want it to be a growing experience. If the girl must go through it, it should be positive, not a negative time. . . . pregnancy under any conditions is one of the most significant and wonderful experiences a woman can have. You must not let your experience be marred by the problems that surround it.18

Such comments support early F.C. ideology of the unwed mother as a fallen but reformable woman. However, compare the above to the tone of the following comments made in 1972 in an annual report from the same F.C. program: The most noticeable change this year . . . was the type of student. The typical student in the past was, in general, highly motivated and realistic in the need for an education. The student that was enrolled this year is not as motivated, is generally questioning of the value or need for an education, is questioning of authority, is well-versed in her rights, is not well aware of her responsibilities and is generally weighted down with an abundance of personal and emotional problems.19

What is unsaid in this report is that “the most noticeable change” in the population served by the home that year, was the race of the student, from Caucasian to African American. Attributes such as independent thinking that may be seen as evidence of an intelligent creative mind are not valued in the racialized teen mother. Here teen mothers who are noted to be critical or questioning or knowledgeable of their rights are marked as uncooperative, unreformable, and unstable. Although African-American unwed mothers had typically been discussed differentially in F.C. records, for instance described as “delinquent” at a higher rate than Caucasian unwed mothers, F.C. had at least in its policies remained committed to services for all unwed mothers.20 However, when F.C. Homes began to serve more African-American unwed mothers, program language changed from treatment to characterization of teens as


irrational actors, as immoral. African-American teen mothers, for instance, were noted to reveal similar “personality traits, including less acceptance of social norms, an inability to use information, an inability to project events into the future, and low self-esteem.”21 F.C. case notes began to describe the unwed mother as more troubled than in previous decades, they began to place and locate blame on the individual girl and if the girl resisted or refuted this blame she was seen as incorrigible. This shift occurred along highly racialized discourses, which were at times explicit, as indicated in a 1961 F.C. Field Reporter referring to the “problems of the lower statra Negroes.”22 By the early 1970s this decade was already repeatedly referred to as “an era of change” in F.C. literature.23 This change was primarily reflected in the population F.C. Homes was serving. This change is evident in national annual reports tracing the shift in racial classification in unwed mothers served in F.C. homes: Services to and Characteristics of Teen Mothers 1965 89 percent white 1967 91 percent white in “unwed mothers” 1968 90 percent white in “unwed mothers” 1969 82 percent white; 18 percent nonwhite “unwed mothers” 1970 “unwed mothers” 75.3 percent white; 24.7 percent nonwhite 1970 several homes noted increase in interracial births (in “white” homes) and requests for placement of biracial babies 1971 “single and pregnant” 76.8 percent white; 18.9 percent black, 4.2 percent other, .1 unknown 1972 72.3 percent white; 27.7 percent nonwhite24 Again, by the mid-1970s F.C. Homes were already serving and meeting the changing needs of teen mothers. What most impacted the homes during their “era of change” was the race of the young women served by the homes. While statistically the racial shifts in who F.C. Homes were serving may appear to be negligible an increase across all F.C. Homes to serve 25 percent “non-white” unwed mothers was a dramatic institutional change for the F.C. association. This change in clientele, as I argue, impacted, at times dramatically, institutional level discourse and ideology about who the teen mother is and what her problems. The pattern I trace here holds with other research noting that even small changes in who institutions serve by race yields institutional shifts in ideology and practice. For example, the same pattern of discursive and institutional shifts in ideology and practice. For example, the same pattern of discursive and institutional change has been found to exist around instances of school desegregation and neighborhood integration when even seemingly small shifts in racial


demographic patterns in schools and neighborhoods result in dramatic shifts in institutional policies and discourse based upon racial fears and stereotypes.25 Thus, this change in the population at F.C. Homes and the corresponding discursive shift in attitude toward the teen mother are not only important for the ideological, programmatic, and pedagogical implications for F.C. Homes but also important because these changes and shifts indicate that just when schools under Title IX would begin addressing how to serve teen mothers, a prevailing attitude of the teen mother as problematic was surfacing. She was no longer potentially the teen mother worthy of help and capable of reformation, but a strong-willed, vocal, irresponsible, psychologically impaired, young women who is “well-versed in her rights.” Thus, school-based programs for school-age mothers were developed during a time of crisis talk and an increasing focus upon the costs to society of unwed teen pregnancy. As specified in earlier chapters, an emphasis in the shift from “our girls” to “other girls” correspondingly led to social and political discourses that focused upon the irresponsibility of the unwed teen mother. By the late 1970s, when initial programs for teen mothers were being developed, the necessity for teen mothers to be economically responsible and the idea of the teen mother as inherently irresponsible overwhelmed policy discourse. Contrary to the ideology which drove the start of F.C. Homes, the rhetoric during the mid-1970s, the period that saw the development and transition of services for school-age unwed mothers to the schools, was one of “immorality, unaccountability, and incapacity,” in particular the immorality, unaccountability, and incapacity of certain teen girls and certain unwed mothers, namely AfricanAmerican unwed teen mothers.

GRADS Dual-Roles Training Many school-based programs emphasize the dual roles of the teen mother as a mother and economic provider. These are the dual roles allowed; not multiple roles or other dual roles. Not mother and student, or mother and lover, or mother and wife, but mother and provider. Education, under dual-role discourses, is not the primary goal, but necessary only to the extent that it prepares the teen mother for the work force. This training shapes the teen mother to ensure she will be a (more) responsible woman, mother, and citizen. GRADS emphasis upon dual-role training is obvious in the program title and is evident in the programs philosophy statement: [Y]oung pregnant girls and school-age mothers constitute a target group with critical needs. These young women must shoulder adult responsibility when

150 • Unfit Subjects they themselves are still at pre-adult stages. They must take on the added responsibilities when their personal resources, life experiences, and skills are functioning at a minimum. Even more than the typical adolescent, these young mothers need to complete their education, acquire an employable skill, and develop a positive attitude related to the combination of an employment role and a family/mother role.26

Implicit in GRADS philosophy and curricula is preparation of the teen mother for graduation, the dual roles of mother and wage earner, and to be able to make mature, responsible decisions for herself and her child. GRADS in it earliest conceptions was based upon the confusion felt by educator’s about what to do with teen mothers. As the 1980 GRADS curriculum states, “unclear ideas related to the need of education and vague goals with respect to the combined roles of employee and mother lead to a high drop out rate among teen mothers and a beginning of a life of dependency upon welfare assistance.”27 GRADS strove to clarify this confusion by laying out clear goals for the education and training of the teen mother. GRADS stated mission is to promote the personal growth, educational competence, and economic self-sufficiency as socially responsible members of society of pregnant and parenting28 teens. GRADS stated objectives include: 1. To increase the likelihood that participants will remain in school during pregnancy and after childbirth, and stay to the point of graduation. 2. To help participants carry out positive health care practices for themselves and their children in both prenatal and postnatal stages. 3. To provide participants with knowledge and skills related to child development and positive parenting practices. 4. To prepare participants for the world of work. 5. To encourage participants to set goals toward balancing work and family.29 When GRADS was first initiated these goals and the climate of providing services to pregnant/mothering teens led organizers to determine that the regular public school is not where the pregnant/mothering teen should be.30 The dual role of wage earner and mother necessitated that the teens be placed in vocational schools that can meet these needs. The vocational school would provide the structure for the majority of a teen mother’s schedule with the GRADS program offering supplemental instruction four hours a week. These four hours were to be broken down into: two hours of GRADS classroom instruction, one hour of role-model interaction, and


one hour of individual or small group time with the GRADS coordinator. In addition, one hour per month was to be spent in some form of structured, family-oriented social interaction. In its early conception then, GRADS can be seen as a support program for the teen mother. GRADS did not provide, for example, courses needed for graduation, or train teen mothers in a vocation, but operated within the vocational school as an additional support to specifically address the needs of the teen mother. The teen mother would receive basic classroom instruction as well as learn a vocation from instructors within the school. GRADS still operates as a support program within schools, although contact hours are now one hour a day instead of two hours a week. Even with state support and approval GRADS had a difficult time getting established in school settings. Although developed in 1978, by 1980, GRADS served only sixty teen mothers in three vocational schools. Prior to GRADS, the most common program for teen mothers in Ohio was the Teenage Pregnancy Program (TAP), an after-school program for pregnant teens which provided two hours of instruction, twice a week, one hour of academics and one hour of prenatal classes. The TAP program allowed schools to keep pregnant and parenting teens “on the books” although they did not attend school during the day, a common practice during the 1970s and 1980s, and it is likely such practices continue today.31 Such teen mothers were, as one school teacher told me, known to be “unofficial dropouts” with some girls returning to school after the birth of their child, while other teen mothers remained in TAP until they were old enough to attend night school to receive a GED. Given the climate of schooling for teen mothers in the early 1980s, a 1981 report indicates that GRADS was not warmly received by school administrators and coordinators had to actively look for pilot sites. Some sites did not want to alter existing teen pregnancy programs, some did not feel the program “would be appropriate,” one administrator did not want to “get involved in pilot studies,” while another rejected his school as a pilot site because he wanted pregnant teens in TAP, and teen parents in GRADS, a practice that would continue to remove the pregnant teen body from the regular school. Such sentiments provide a picture of how, in the early 1980s, discriminatory practices toward pregnant/mothering teens continued and allows us to view how the conception of GRADS was progressive and radical in its time period. GRADS by requiring the pregnant teen to remain in school, albeit vocational school, required schools to change practices that removed the pregnant teen body from school. GRADS linkage with vocational schools did not ease the discomfort voiced by principals of these schools at having pregnant girls in their schools.


GRADS initially was developed to be implemented through vocational home economics courses taught by certified home economics teachers and was initially strongly linked with vocational schools. The placement of the first GRADS classrooms in vocational schools underlines the program’s emphasis upon skill training and preparation for employment. The choice to place GRADS only within schools that offered vocational home economics was based upon the acknowledgment that the “dual role emphasis of homemaker and wage earner has historically been a major emphasis in vocational home economics.” However, the initial placement of GRADS in junior or high school vocational schools provided the opportunity for pregnant/mothering teens to receive vocational training in nontraditional fields that paid more money than women’s careers. The GRADS logo, with it’s depiction of the roles of the teen mother with baby, diploma, and hard hat complete with dollar sign, reflects this early emphasis and points to the uniqueness of this program’s inception. The idea that teen mothers needed a livable wage in order to be fiscally responsible is a notion that seems obvious but one that remains missing from present-day comprehensive school programs for teen mothers.32 This progressive feminist emphasis, if one can call it that, soon was lost as GRADS became firmly linked with consumer homemaking and GRADS eventually moved out of vocational schools. While GRADS has retained its emphasis upon “dual-role” training, most GRADS classrooms now operate out of regular or alternative separate school settings. A move was made in 1980 to have certified vocational home economics teachers coordinate and teach GRADS. Then, as now, teachers of GRADS should be vocationally certified consumer homemaker teachers and attend a two-day training program in how to use the GRADS Adolescent Parent Resource Guide (APRG). Teachers of GRADS may work out of one school or among three or four. By February 1982, in a memo to local supervisors of vocational home economics teachers, a problem with housing GRADS at junior vocational schools was noted due to the lack of consumer homemaking programs at such schools. A policy change then required that GRADS only be offered in high school settings, with no GRADS services offered below the ninth grade. By February 1982, GRADS was serving 140 girls in three counties and plans were made to continue an expansion of it into individual schools including nonvocational school settings. GRADS classroom instruction and other activities remained focused upon educating and retraining the teen in her dual roles as mother and provider. Lessons included instruction on this dual-role concept, changing attitudes toward work, and providing information on child development and par-


enting. The dual-role emphasis and these lessons continue in GRADS today through a model of “practical reasoning skills.”

Defining Teen Mothers as in Need of Training in “Practical Reasoning Skills” School-based programs replicate a professional psychological and social work approach to both defining and treating the young unwed mother.33 For example, the GRADS program is reliant upon psychological studies that attempt to identify “at-risk” factors to determine who might be most at risk for a teen pregnancy or repeat/second pregnancy.34 This research has had a two-fold impact on educational policy: one, a focus on preventing teen pregnancy; and two, linking teen pregnancy with a host of other maladaptive behaviors. For example, such research supports links between teen pregnancy and alcohol and drug use and attempts to identify personality characteristics of teens who engage in such activities. Although psychological studies and indices may be useful to trace the links between adolescent behaviors that may impact rates of teen pregnancy, they have also produced a body of work that prescriptively describes and locates the pregnant teen mother as incapable and maladaptive. Discourses defining teen pregnancy that accept and confirm that the teen mother is deficit produce policy, and in this case, programmatic responses seeking to change and contain the deficits of the teen mother. For instance, many programs for teen mothers have been developed that adopt a “tough love” attitude toward the teen mother. That is, the pregnant teen is a girl who has engaged in irresponsible behaviors and thus needs to be disciplined to control, contain, and change these behaviors.35 This ideology results in school-based programs that, for example, develop very strict attendance guidelines, institute behavior-monitoring programs, and teach a curriculum that seeks to help the girls see their errors and reform their ways.36 Discourses of the teen mother as not only “atrisk” but “risky” and in need of “tough love” contribute to what we believe the teen mother deserves or needs while she is in school. For instance, is childcare for the teen mother a necessity or is providing school-based childcare making it “too easy” for the pregnant teen. Such beliefs and discursive fears that the presence of teens’ children in public schools will increase the rate of teen pregnancy impact the provision of school-based childcare. Indeed, less than 5 percent of schools nationwide provide childcare services to teen mothers.37 Additionally, discourses of “at risk” have been critiqued for reproducing racial and gender biases in ways that come to seem natural by assigning some


traits to Caucasian girls (e.g., that she is a good girl who did one bad thing and can be reformed) and other traits to African-American girls (e.g., that it’s in her “nature” to be sexual and irresponsible and thus she cannot be reformed).38 For example, in my research, I noted similarities between a program’s focus and the discourses that shaped opportunities within it based upon the race of the girls in the program. The similarities between a program’s focus and race of girls served yielded a discrepancy between what type of education pregnant/mothering teens received and how it was delivered. Schools that served a majority of African American girls most often focused upon a deficit model of treatment, while schools that served mainly Caucasian girls, implemented education programs based upon reform models.39 How have discourses of “at-risk” and “risky” impacted GRADS? While GRADS focus has changed from its inception, the program remains centered upon reforming and preparing teen mothers for their dual roles. While some teen mothers informed me they entered GRADS for the space and support the teacher and other girls provide—“it’s a time out from your day”—many reported not liking the reformatory emphasis of GRADS and felt this emphasis kept some teen mothers away. Further, as a reminder, note that GRADS operates as a supplementary comprehensive support program, meeting once a day, and does not replace nor replicate the teen mother’s academic courses. GRADS operates through an assumption of pregnant/mothering teens as “at risk” and “risky” and actively seeks to contain risks for the teen mother, her child, and society. For instance, GRADS’ emphasis upon reforming the teen mother resulted in the current thirteen-hundred-page Adolescent Parent Resource Guide (APRG). The APRG, developed in 1989, emphasizes practical reasoning through process skill development across four topic areas—positive self, pregnancy, parenting, and economic independence. Each area is further divided into three or four topics, which are then further broken down into specific issues. For example, the topic area of “positive self ” is divided into three subareas “concerns regarding self-formation,” “concerns regarding communication skills,” and “concerns regarding relationships,” each with specific lessons and topics under them. “Self formation” has ten lessons; communication, four; and relationships, six. The practical reasoning model lays out teacher pedagogy and includes teaching modules with each lesson coded by a number corresponding to a lesson planning sheet(s) and materials. The APRG and record keeping for the program fills three full file cabinets. The primary stated goal of the APRG: is to develop proactive teens who control their own lives by successfully solving their perennial practical problems. The students will solve problems related to

The “Dual-Role” Model of Schooling the Teen Mother • 155 self-esteem, pregnancy, parenting, and economic independence by identifying problems, evaluating information, considering alternatives, judging consequences, scrutinizing decisions, and taking morally defensible actions.40

The goal of the program is to facilitate development of “fully functioning individuals.”41 The APRG helps pregnant/mothering teens learn to take “three types of reasoned action: technical, communicative, and emancipative” with emancipative being “practical” reasoning.42 The APRG is clearly developed out of an ideology of the teen mother as incapable and at risk, situating the necessity of training in “practical reasoning skills.” There are several assumptions embedded within this model. One, that with the clarity of a very didactic curriculum, practical reasoning skills can be taught; two, that we can see and judge practical reasoning skills; and three, that practical reasoning skills can “fix” the teen mother. For instance, an important component to practical reasoning is for the pregnant/mothering teen to be able to see how her previous behaviors, which led to her pregnancy, were not “practical.” This can be accomplished by having the pregnant/mothering teen tell confessional stories of her life, noting how she was irresponsible in her life choices, now realizes better, and how she is currently being accountable to the situation she put herself, her child, family, and society in. These stories, which Nancy Lesko terms “rites of redemption,” work to confirm that the pregnant/mothering teen has learned her lesson, they are also cautionary tales to other teen girls. Lesko however raises questions, about which stories are heard, what stories are allowable within “rites of redemption.” For example, Lesko found, and my research duplicated, that the stories teen mothers are prompted to tell include a theme of previous irrational and irresponsible behavior resulting in their pregnancy and too-soon mothering and then include a climatic shift of the girl is now demonstrating mature, responsible decision making and her focus on being economically self-sufficient. As Lesko notes, however, these story lines counter what we know about the challenges of single parenting in the United States; single mothers face many difficulties including housing, health care, employment, and childcare. The official school-based curricula remains blind to the difficulties the young mother will face, neglectful of the kind of supports they will need, and reinforces an “individualistic ethos in placing all the responsibility for success or failure on individuals.”43 While teen mothers’ stories provided testimonials that they have become “rational and orderly,” their lives as women, mothers, students, and wage earners are often not rational and orderly.44 Stories that dealt with the messy realities of unwed mothers’ lives were not a part of the official curriculum or discourse of GRADS. Although in


some classrooms I observed, girls were allowed space to talk about the messiness of their lives, such talk never made its way into the official discourse of the program. Listening to teen girls’ discussions of childcare, birth control, and health care—discussions of diapers, gels, and fever remedies—I could often forget I was sitting with girls half my age; their stories and experiences were the stories of women and mothers. However, such voices and needs were not spoken at school board meetings, community nights, or included in curricula literature. For instance, talking about the lack of childcare at the schools, which greatly impacted and raised complexity of girls’ daily lives as students was not “officially” allowed. Girls were told to concentrate upon how to rationally solve their childcare problems and focus on what they need to do to get to school. While this approach may be helpful to focus the teen mother on what she needs to do, this also means that any critique of the structure of GRADS and the structure of schools as inhospitable places for pregnant/mothering teens is effectively silenced.

Schooling for Work Once a teen mother has practical reasoning skills what is she supposed to do? She is supposed to perform one of her primary dual roles—be prepared to get a job and be fiscally independent. The linkage of teen pregnancy with social welfare reform, as evidenced by PRWORA and TANF, has made preparation for the world of work one of the primary emphases of comprehensive programs for teen mothers. However, programs for teen mothers not only address skill training but assume that the teen mother is psychologically and in many cases culturally unprepared for the world of work. The need for school-based programs to orient the teen mother to the arena of work is repeatedly made by referring to her lack of experience with and lack of knowledge about work. This is indicated in the following statement of a research group evaluating welfare to work programs for teen mothers: [P]rograms to prepare young people for employment need to act as “cultural interpreters”. . . they must convey the norms, values, and customs of the workplace to those young women who have limited exposure to the world of work.45

So how does a program become the “cultural interpreter” and change a teen mother’s attitude toward the world of work? Some research links the problems of the teen mother to her lack of role models who responsibly manage work and parenting. GRADS sought to change the pregnant/mother teens’ attitudes and value systems through the use of role models. During the early 1980s, GRADS incorporated into its curriculum the use of role models, specifically women who were posi-


tive role models as wage earner and mothers. This role model was to be a “young employed mother selected because of her dual role of employee and mother and because of her ability to communicate with young people.”46 The role model was to interact one hour each week with an assigned teen mother through school, work, and home visits as well as participation in social events. The use of the role model was to “relay to participants in a first-hand fashion that parenthood does not preclude employment and that public assistance is not the only route for young people faced with the responsibility of a child.”47 However, in a 1982 evaluation of the program, program directors noted the difficulty of finding role models, particularly role models in similar socioeconomic levels as the teen mothers. “We had not forecast the difficulty in finding role models who were in similar socioeconomic levels, an aspect we felt necessary for positive interrelationships.”48 This difficulty and the changing structure of GRADS led to dropping the role model component as an official part of the GRADS program. The difficulties GRADS personnel faced in finding role models did not deter the program from staying strongly focused upon preparing teen mothers for their own “dual role.” That GRADS could not find low-income women who were mothering in a “responsible” manner, who had a job, were not on public assistance, had effective communication skills, and had the time to volunteer as a role model could have been a signal to personnel that dual-roles for low-income mothers is not only challenging but may at times be structurally impossible. Yet there is no indication of this in correspondence or in curriculum. Instead, the curriculum and instruction stayed focused upon changing the attitudes of the teen mother toward work. So while the role model component of the curriculum was dropped, GRADS instruction continued to focus on “reality of the work world,” the skills for positive parenting, the practice of healthcare for self and child, and the “goal-setting skills to assist in avoidance of long-term dependency on public assistance.” GRADS program units include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Why work? The need for a diploma Employment yesterday and today Women at work/nontraditional jobs for women Reality of the work world Assessing skills, abilities, and experience How marriage affects the dual role of wife, mother

GRADS used pre- and post- tests across each area to determine the effectiveness of instruction. For example, tests measured changes not only in


student knowledge but also student attitude toward work and mothering. The 1978 pre- and post-tests have questions about toilet training, doing it all alone, and anger management. Questions range from multiple choice, to true or false, to written response. Many of the questions are subjective and it is difficult to determine what the best answer is. Consider how you would reply to the following true or false questions? The reason most women are employed is that they need money. The reason most women are employed is that they want a fulfilling, rewarding life Being a good mother does not depend upon your work status. Before a mother takes a job she should first be able to handle all household chores, care of her child(ren), and care of herself. Women’s earnings are equal to men’s. It is just as good to go on welfare as it is to work. It is too easy to go on welfare. It is too difficult to go on welfare. Such quizzes obviously focused upon changing individual girls’ attitudes toward work and towards teen mothers holding mainstream views and opinions about work and welfare that are in the best interests of society. Another quiz covered girl’s attitudes toward welfare as a way of life, asking similar questions, such as “do you feel that it’s just as good to go on welfare as it is to work?” and “which would you choose to work for $80 a week or receive welfare check for $60 a week?” and “do you think it is too easy or too difficult to go on welfare?” These components of GRADS indicates the program is not targeted to college-bound teen mothers—the curricula is geared toward training the lower income and presumed lower-achieving student. In this way, GRADS is also directly aimed at the teen who is already receiving social welfare or seen most at risk for going on welfare and thus continuing in or beginning a cycle of poverty. One of the major goals of GRADS is to reduce “welfare dependency,” reorienting the teen mother to the fact that, as the GRADS program statement argues, “Public assistance is not the only route for young people faced with the responsibility of a child.”49 The goal of training programs for the teen mother to be self-sufficient has in some cases brought about interesting questions about women and


the workplace and a lack of equal pay for “women’s work.” These questions lead to linkages with feminist interests in gender and women’s equity in the workplace. For instance, as noted GRADS in its initial inception sought to counsel teen mothers into nontraditional, potentially higher paying vocations, including welding, automotive repair, industry, and technology. Such occupations would potentially provide the teen mother with a skill that she could actually make above minimum wage and thus provide for herself and her child without welfare assistance. While GRADS moved away from only placing teen mothers in vocational schools, it has not lost its emphasis upon their being workers, but does not address how teen mothers are supposed to be able to access positions that pay a living wage. Corresponding with welfare reform debates, the late 1980s saw a wealth of development of employment training programs for teen mothers. Some of these programs recognized that the low pay of many traditional, lowskilled occupations for women (housecleaning, secretarial) would not pay enough to enable the teen mother to support herself and her child without welfare support. These programs turned to nontraditional occupations for the teen mother.50 “Nontraditional” occupations include, police officer, fire fighter, bookkeeper, computer data processer, computer sales woman, preschool teacher or aide, automotive technology and repair woman, agricultural worker, florist, landscaper, travel agent, nurse, electronic technician, draftswoman. Notably, some of these occupations are traditionally female roles and low paying (such as teachers or nurses’ aid). Further, while such programs expose teen mother’s to the idea of such careers, the programs do not acknowledge how teen mothers with a basic diploma or GED can enter such positions. Most of these careers require some sort of additional schooling or training. A review of work training programs for teen mothers yields similar findings—that while programs may expose teen mothers to a variety of career options, the programs do not address the structural barriers teen mothers face in pursuit of a career. In light of such barriers, many programs, like GRADS, keep their emphasis upon changing the teen mother rather than addressing societal barriers to employment. TANF seems only to have increased attention to the prescribed and assumed necessity of altering the teen mother’s attitudes and behaviors toward work, as job training programs must coordinate with schools to ensure that the teen mother is attending school and learning a vocation in order to receive welfare funding. Such programs use “incentives” to change teen mothers attitudes and behaviors—the old carrot-and-stick approach to policy implementation—provide the carrot, the reinforcement for the behavior you want, and use the stick, the negative consequence, when the teen mother does not meet policy guidelines.


For instance, Ohio’s LEAP (Learning, Earning and Parenting) program, initiated in 1989, is a mandatory statewide program for teen mothers on welfare, offering financial incentives to enroll in school and attend regularly. Pregnant/mothering students could be enrolled in GRADS and LEAP at the same time. School-age mothers who enrolled in LEAP and meet the program requirements received a $62 “bonus” in their monthly welfare grant (under the 1994 allowance); those who did not enroll or failed to meet attendance requirements (no more than two unexcused school absences per month) had their monthly welfare checks reduced by $62. The underlying assumptions driving LEAP, include that teen mothers on welfare are both lazy and irresponsible and thus the need for incentives, positive and negative, to acclimate them to the realities of school attendance and future work skills. However, many problems have arisen in implementing such carrotand-stick approaches that link social welfare with school attendance. The main dilemma being the lack of school-based programs to accommodate pregnant/mothering students in school and a lack of school policies that allow, much less, encourage the teen mother to attend, remain, or return to school. A 1991 evaluation of LEAP noted that limited education options and support programs available for school-age mothers, even in a state where GRADS was initiated statewide, negatively impacted the ability of LEAP to be implemented. As the report indicates, “the quality, diversity, extent, and flexibility of education services all vary by school district.”51 There were three basic models of education available to teen mothers in Ohio at that time in conjunction with GRADS: return to their regular high school, attend an alternative school, or enroll in an ABE/GED program. However, compulsory education laws in Ohio do not permit students eighteen years of age and younger to attend ABE/GED programs, ruling out this option for many school-age students. Thus, when a school-age mother lives in a district that has limited options, she is less likely to participate in LEAP, “despite the financial penalties.”52 Further problems that arose implementing LEAP involved issues of communication and control between two large systems, education and human services. LEAP case managers often found themselves serving as education counselors, particularly for the teen mother attempting to return to school, and complained about the lack of assessment of the teen mothers’ educational needs.53 The review also identified the numerous barriers school-age mothers face when “attempting to comply with the LEAP mandate.” For example, the review found that attendance, grading, and drop out policies can result in an “unfortunate convergence . . . in which both the education and welfare systems require her [the teen mother] to attend school but she does not have access to an education option through which she can make progress toward a diploma or GED.”54


Programs like LEAP, which attempt to make connections between social welfare and school systems, run into a myriad of differing practices and competing ideologies that impact the provision of education to teen mothers. Schools have not been proactive or involved in developing policy and school-based programs for teen mothers and thus are ill-prepared to support social welfare programs. The goals of the social welfare program, in this case school attendance, may conflict with or even challenge local school practice. This situation is further compounded by where to place the school-age mother, particularly if she is an older returning student, yet she is not old enough to attend GED courses. This means the teen mother will have to wait until the following school year to officially return to school and start earning credit, however in the case of LEAP, the program requires her to return immediately to school or be sanctioned. On the other hand, school staff voiced concern over students receiving bonuses independent of student progress in school whereas LEAP personnel felt student progress was the educators’ concern. LEAP also puts additional requirements of tracking and monitoring of attendance data of the school-age mother on the school, a task that some school officials felt should be handled or funded by human services.55 Additionally, obtaining attendance information was much more difficult than assumed by LEAP developers who found that “definitions of key terms such as ‘absence’ or ‘excused absence’ may differ widely from district to district, or even school to school.”56 These issues, concerning definitions and divisions of labor may seem small in scope and thus easily resolved, can lead to larger rifts. Anyone who has worked in a school setting recognizes the communication and power struggle battles evident in the above cases. A 1994 assessment of LEAP and another program, New Chance, also demonstrated mixed results. While LEAP showed positive effects on the graduation rate or GED attainment of school-age mothers already enrolled in school (an 8.8 percent increase), it yielded insignificant results in enrolling teen mothers not in school and “only 43 percent of LEAP teens attended school even 20 days during any given school year” and “22 percent of dropouts enrolled in LEAP were sanctioned nine or more times for noncompliance and received zero bonuses for active school participation.”57 Further the evaluation noted that “the program had high rates of absenteeism and a large number of early dropouts, high rates of repeat pregnancy, and rapid turnover among those who did find jobs.”58 Additionally for New Chance participating students who did obtain a GED, this did not relate to success in the job market or getting off welfare. The report also found that GED attainment did not mean these students had achieved basic skills as New Chance “participants and controls scored at the 7.8 grade level of the Test of Adult Basic Education.”59


A 1997 evaluation of the same programs, New Chance and LEAP, found that while such programs may be effective at increasing graduation rates among teen mothers (specifically through provision of a high school equivalency degree), they do not decrease the number of young mothers on welfare or increase their chance of finding a job upon graduation.60 A program director in San Jose noted that although teen mothers “learn new behaviors, they sing the songs of building dreams,” these new behaviors do not translate or fit back into their communities and families and may even cause them to be ostracized. The 1997 study also indicates that teen mothers who are retrained to “build dreams” and to get a job and get off welfare, face the stress that any low-income parent faces in looking for a position with a livable wage. The young mothers who did find work were earning an average of $5.66 an hour.61 The young mothers participating in the New Chance program reported that the difficulty they had finding an adequate-paying job, one that could accommodate an employee with a young child (under age five), increased the stress they felt over their children. These mothers reported more behavior problems with their children and had higher rates of depression compared with a group of teen mothers that did not participate in such a program.62 A teen mother I talked with who had completed her GED echoed these findings: I wanted to do what they asked—get a job and be this working mom—I wanted my own place and money to buy stuff, but the jobs I found were either long hours and low pay or part-time and low pay—I mean no benefits or nothing. And no one wants to hire me—I can tell by the way they look at me. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.

While programs such as LEAP and GRADS attempt to train teen mothers to make rational decisions, service providers reported that working with teen mothers is not a rational process. Or rather, the expectations that programs and policies have of young mothers are not rational given the constraints of parenting under economic stress. Consider the following comments of service providers in the 1994 evaluation report: “These women don’t progress from point A to point B to self-actualization. We need a long-term perspective.” “interviews revealed significant situational and attitudinal barrier to sustained employment” “the young women faced barriers to self-sufficiency that were more formidable than we anticipated”63

The “barriers” are formidable for low-income, low-skilled single mothers, thus why would we assume that their attitudes toward work would not


be critical. A seventeen-year-old teen mother in a separate alternative program for teen mothers who I interviewed put it succinctly: Here [in the school-based program] I have to say all this good stuff about working and getting a job, and I do it and I’m here ’cause I want my high school degree, that’s important to me. But the reality is I won’t be able to find a job to pay for everything, for you know, rent, food, childcare, and everything else. Who is gonna hire me and pay me? Who is gonna watch my baby? Who isn’t gonna fire me when I miss work ’cause my baby’s sick? It’s a joke. But you can’t say this stuff here, she [the teacher] just tells us to “overcome.” Easy for her to say, she has a job.

Based upon post-testing and interviews, this young mother would likely fail—her attitude toward work has seemingly not changed, indeed her identification of the barriers she faces are considered “attitudinal barriers” to getting work. In such ways, the everyday realities of teen mothers are repeatedly silenced. I also found that when teen mothers in separate, alternative school placements sought more than work, they were often described as being unrealistic by teachers; they were dreamers. A highly motivated teen mother of two whom I came to know and followed over a period of two years, cited her goal to go to a local community college with a plan of working in fashion design. This career goal was not on the list of careers for teen mothers; it is not a dependable, wage-earning career. Thus this girl’s choice was labeled as “risky and unreasonable,” and was not visible or viable as a career into which low-income black women go. One of her teachers did not even encourage her to attend to community college. She thought the girl too “unreasonable,” “she needs to focus on reality and learn a skill to get a job after graduation.” Computer processing was suggested to the teen mother and as she said, I don’t mind learning that and getting a job, but I have my goals. Why can’t I do both—work and go to school (college)? I’m practically doing that now.

This student’s choice of dual role, in this case mother/college student was not a dual role her teachers or program promoted—her choice of dual roles was not approved. This raises questions about what is a reasonable occupation for the young, unwed mother and who decides what is “reasonable” in such situations? Do low-income mothers have a responsibility to choose a dependable career (and what might that be in our ever changing economy) or to go with the job at hand? The above findings and narratives raise many questions about continuing programs that emphasize work training for teen mothers, without allowing students in such programs to spend time acknowledging, discussing and analyzing the structural barriers they face—whether the barri-


ers be economic, or deal with child care, transportation, or health care—issues that we know create stress any parent and especially for low-skilled and low-income parents. Yet, despite the repeated problems noted in evaluations of school-welfare-work programs—problems not associated with the teen mother but with the structures and bureaucracies which she interacts—welfare reform without social reform has continued and schoolbased programs training teen mothers to be workers continue to be the norm.

Training to Be a Responsible Mother What does it mean to be a responsible mother? What makes a good mother? School-based programs like GRADS focus on child development, health, and parenting information, as well as are changing the attitudes of teen girls toward taking on the dual role of mother and economic provider. Although GRADS contains many narrative themes about what it means to be a “good” mother, here I focus on the theme of responsibility in the dual role of mother and income-earning worker. Given that GRADS’ emphasis is upon training teen mothers for this dual role, one component of this training is to explain that a responsible mother was child care, thus “enabling” her to work. Here it is obvious that staying at home with one’s child is a privilege one earns and deserves and is not a privilege afforded to teen mothers and low-income mothers. While most schools do not provide on-site daycare programs or coordinate with other daycare centers to provide childcare for its parenting teens, school-based programs stress the importance of daycare to teen mothers and train them in how to choose childcare. This is an acknowledgment that if the teen mother is going to be the economic provider for her family she will have to have childcare. While GRADS provides school-based childcare at the option of the local school district, it provides childcare to less than 10 percent of the teen parents served.64 GRADS includes units on how to responsibly and rationally choose childcare not only when the teen mother is a GRADS student but also when she is engaged in the dual roles of mother and wage earner. GRADS initially attempted to judge impact of its curriculum through the form of a pre- post-test. Recall how you answered the following questions from the quiz at the start of the chapter: Rank the following from poorest type to best type of childcare for your infant/preschooler: relative, close friend in your home babysitter in your home day care center in neighborhood


relative, close friend in their home babysitter in their home While many of us would prefer and choose to have our child at home with a relative or friend, this was the least-correct response. The response GRADS attempts to illicit and to have teen mothers reach via practical reasoning skills is that state-funded childcare centers are the best settings. This correct answer serves two goals: one, to place the teen mother’s child outside of a home setting that is considered inadequate and, second, to place the teen mother’s child in a setting that will be most conducive to her being a reliable, responsible worker. The first goal is based upon an assumption that the teen mother comes from a dysfunctional home that cannot provide the social, cognitive, and developmental needs of the child. The evidence of the teen mother’s home as an irresponsible and deficit site is the fact of the teen mother herself—proof that her home and family is unsuitable and incapable. Secondly, in the ongoing interest in the teen mother as economic provider, state-run childcare centers, which are consistently open for extended hours, are considered the most reliable choice. A center will not call in sick or show up late at your home. This consistency is deemed necessary to the teen mother’s attendance and responsibility as a student and worker. Additionally, teen mothers’ use of state-run childcare centers fits our policies and programs and allows for access to and surveillance of the teen mother and her child. Yet teen mothers are resisting such initiatives, regardless of funding incentives. For example, although childcare and transportation are consistently listed as the two major obstacles a teen mother encounters attending school or maintaining employment, most schools do not offer on-site child care. LEAP, recognizing this absence, incorporated a funded childcare program in Ohio as part of its incentive to attend school. School-age mothers could use funds to place their children in state-run childcare centers. Contrary to expectations, however, evaluators found that “Few LEAP teens have availed themselves of program-funded childcare, primarily because many teens prefer informal care provided by relatives and Ohio rules prohibit payment to unlicensed childcare providers” and only 14 percent of teens in LEAP used childcare arrangements funded by the welfare department. 65 While this low response surprised program developers and administrators, it makes evident that teen mothers, like other mothers, want to choose the child care provider for their child and not be limited to staterun childcare centers.66 As a sixteen-year-old teen mother explained to me,

166 • Unfit Subjects I won’t put my child in day care and that’s what they tell me I would have to do, but I want my baby with her grandmother, someone who I know. Wouldn’t you want to choose where you put your kids?

Additionally, the cumbersome process of setting up childcare may have turned away some teen mothers. In one case, a LEAP staff person referred a teen mother to the day care unit of the human services agency who then met with the teen and set up a referral to a day care agency. Typically, the teen mother could not choose the day care provider but had to use the referral from human services, although some counties did allow the teen mother to find the provider. Even with the low response, the 1991 evaluation also showed that even though “demand for funded childcare has been relatively low, LEAP has not always been able to meet the needs of teens who have requested assistance with child care.”67 For example, in some counties teen mothers could not obtain childcare, particularly infant care, due to a shortage of slots, lack of accessibility, or because a provider was hesitant to provide childcare to the teen mother. Thus, evaluators were forced to note that if all the teen mothers enrolled in LEAP requested state-supported childcare, the costs would be great. Such programs are then left with the knowledge that they will not reach many students or with the possibility that teen mothers, contrary to current practice, should be encouraged to utilize family childcare to keep state costs low. Such evaluations neglect to consider the role of school-based childcare for teen mothers. Schools that do offer on-site childcare services, less than 10 percent nationally, find that teen mothers do utilize this choice. In talking with teen mothers, their desire for on-site childcare was described in the same language as any parent—convenience and closeness to their child. As one fifteen-year-old teen mother noted, It would be nice to have childcare at school so that we [she and her child] could get here together and then I would like to know what he’s doing during the day and check on him.

Again schools and social welfare policies are grappling with issues that as a society we debate intensely. Who should be watching our children? What is the best type of childcare? Who is more reliable as childcare provider? Which type of childcare is better for the child? How does a child’s age impact decisions for childcare? Are “formal arrangements both safer and more likely to offer a stimulating developmental environment for children than informal relative care?”68 Yet, because teen mothers are presumed to be irresponsible, they lose some of their parental autonomy, have choices taken away, and may be


monitored and judged for the choices they do make. Society has a vested interest in the economic viability of the teen mother and this interest justifies prescriptive policy interventions, including where and how the teen mother manages her child.

Paradoxes of “Practical Reasoning” and “Dual Roles” School-based programs like GRADS speak paradoxical messages about pregnant/mothering teens—situating their sexual behavior as immoral and irresponsible and explaining this behavior as the result of a lack of practical reasoning skills. GRADS attempts to refocus the negative perception of teen mothers into one of teens who deserve help and are capable of redemption through dual roles and practical reasoning skills. GRADS situates the school as the primary site for this work to take place. While it is important to understand GRADS, and other programs like it, as creating a place for teen mothers in educational discourse, policy, and practice, we can also understand GRADS as redefining what education for pregnant/mothering teens should be. Pregnant/mother teens need a diploma, but learning is no longer part of their education, learning has been replaced by dual roles training. This is not to deny that GRADS programs are dispensing valuable information about infancy and child development, health care, and nutrition. In some cases, it is not so much the topic GRADS espouses, as the discourse surrounding the topic. For example, GRADS curriculum assumes a “deviancy” model of teen parenting. There seems to be an assumption that teen parents will naturally be irresponsible and “bad” parents and that teen mothers are both at-risk and risky. In this way, information all parents need to know about child development and parenting skills, and many middle-class parents attend courses to find out, becomes available to teens in GRADS filtered only through a deficit model of teenage parents. GRADS curriculum then delineates the characteristics and knowledge necessary to be a “good mother.” It is assumed that these skills can be obtained prescriptively through rational training. GRADS curriculum in no way accounts for cultural differences or practices or alternative family situations. GRADS attempts through its curriculum to develop a clear sense of “right” and “wrong” practices. GRADS, however, speaks several paradoxical discourses entangled with larger social concerns of female sexuality and roles in our culture. For example, GRADS speaks clear messages of teen girls’ independence—economic, encouraging higher-paying, nontraditional jobs as possibilities for young women and emotional independence, emphasizing the importance of individuality and self-esteem. Yet GRADS also counters these messages


with sentimentalized messages of mothering and marriage and homemaking as a pathway to economic independence. Such messages reinforce, as Lesko notes, the tensions in such programs for teen mothers “to participate in waged work, to become self-sufficient and self-disciplined individuals, but to submit to traditional patriarchal norms of solid families and their own dependence.”69 Nathanson, however, suggests that this trend of economic self-sufficiency in teen pregnancy programs is not developed out of some sense of fulfillment for young women but in the “rhetoric of fiscal conservatism.”70 Nathanson suggests that while women are still expected to prepare for “their domestic futures,” there is a “powerful alternative construction” through which female adolescence has been redefined as preparation for occupational attainment and “economic self-sufficiency.”71 The construction of teenage pregnancy as a problem of mothers on welfare has played a primary role in the attention given to their education and preparation as a wage earner. However, the wage-earning potential of teen mothers coming out of programs like GRADS and LEAP has been quite low. In essence, such programs by continuing to focus upon change and reformation of the teen mother instead of addressing societal and structural barriers to earning a living wage, continue to train teen mothers for participation in a secondary economy. That is a deschooling and detraining of teen mothers into low-wage positions that cannot support the “dual roles” of the teen mother. “Dual role” is also a misnomer. Pregnant/mothering teens have more than two roles to assume. They have multiple roles, many that schools wish not to acknowledge. Further reviews of school-welfare-work programs suggest the consequences of preparing the teen mother for a world of work that is unavailable to her due to structural barriers and inequities. What if the dual role you are prepared for and told you have to achieve is not available? Low-skilled and deschooled individuals will not be able to find viable employment, even with a good attitude toward work, armed with practical reasoning skills, and a sense of responsibility. School-based support programs for pregnant/mothering students such as GRADS may be necessary for some pregnant/mothering students to continue to access schooling. Such programs provide important information on pregnancy, childbirth, and child care for the young mother, provide a physical space for the teen mother in school, and offer additional counseling support for the pregnant/mothering student to negotiate the myriad demands upon her life. Programs like GRADS certainly have a role in supporting teen mothers’ access to and success in school, but it is important to investigate the values and norms of such programs and look critically at what such programs attempt to reproduce in teen mothers. Key to any such analysis is how or do such programs help teen mothers obtain


equal education opportunity and further how or do such programs prepare teen mothers for their multiple roles. As this chapter and the preceding one have pointed out, how existing programs are utilized reinforces racial segregation in school placements, perpetuates differential definitions of the teen mother based upon race, and places emphasis upon vocational education and moral retraining of the teen mother. These programs, although developed to aid and encourage the “problematic” teen mother to receive an education, simply promote access to schooling and retraining. Such goals may be appropriate, however, to date debate and research around what the purpose of education should be for pregnant/mothering teens is absent. Regardless, existing school-based programs while necessary are not sufficient. They are not the panacea for “fitting” pregnant/mothering students into schools and should not be seen as a substitute for policies and programs that provide access to equal education opportunity for pregnant/mothering students or programs that provide a more progressive support system for teen mothers.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

See Pillow, The Making of Mothers; Pillow, “Deconstructing Silences/Troubling Irony”; and Pillow, “Exposed methodology.” See also Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption; Lesko, “Implausible Endings”; and Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers.” I did observe two exceptions to this case by teachers who followed the curriculum strictly and did not alter any of the information or lesson plans based upon the girls in her classroom. See Pillow, The Making of Mothers. For specific discussion of the discourses defining teen mothers as “at risk,” see Lesko, “Implausible Endings,” and Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers.” See Ling, “Lifting Voices”; Pillow, “Exposed Methodology.” Ling, “Lifting Voices”; Pillow, “Exposed Methodology.” NFCM, SWHA, Annual Report, 1925, Box 2, Folder 7. NFCM, SWHA, Annual Report, 1925, Box 2, Folder 7, 9. Barrett, Some Practical Suggestions on the Conduct of a Rescue Home, 8–9 Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls. For information on F.C. Homes’ philosophy on the daily operations of the home see Barrett, Some Practical Suggestions on the Conduct of a Rescue Home; and Wilson, Fifty Years Work with Girls. NCAA, SWHA, Executive Director Reports, 1959–63, Box 35, Folder 6. NFCM, SWHA, Member Home—Phoenix AZ, Annual Report, 1941, Box 15, Folder 8. NFCM, SWHA, Field Reporter, 1957, Box 48, Folder 6. Further, there is evidence that when F.C. Homes did link with local schools to provide education to young unwed mothers these services were offered only through Special Education programs. See NFCM, SWHA, Field Reporter, 1963, Box 49, Folder 3; and NFCM, SWHA, Publications and papers, Boyd Nelson, “Elimination of Roadblocks in Educating School-Aged Unmarried Mothers,” 1960, Box 50, Folder 1, p. 3. NCAA, SWHA, Field Reporter, 1964, Box 49, Folder 4. NCAA, SWHA, Field Reporter, 1969, Box 49, Folder 9. NCAA, SWHA, Public Relations—Mass mailings and Press Releases, 1971, Box 54, Folder 1. For discussion of this issue see, NCAA, SWHA, Assembly Delegate Reports, 1966–75, Box 43, Folder 4. “Crittenton Home Admits “Unweds” for 80th Year,” Peoria Jounal Star, April 17, 1963.

170 • Unfit Subjects 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

Peoria F.C. Home papers, Peoria Library, Summary of annual reports, 7. For discussion of delinquency, see for example NFCM, SWHA, Annual Reports and Bulletins, 1936–40, Box 3, Folder 2. For example of policies related to racial integration of homes see, NFCM, SWHA, Florence Crittenton Homes Association Notes, 1949, Box 13, Folder 4. NCAA, SWHA, Field Reporter, 1961, Box 49, Folder 1. NCAA, SWHA, Field Reporter, 1961, Box 49, Folder 1. NCAA, SWHA, Board of Directors Minutes, 1973–74, Box 34, Folder 1. NCAA, SWHA, Reports on Client, Services and Finances, 1960–73, Box 67, Folder 6, p. 3–5, 12. See also NCAA, SWHA, Public Relations—mass mailings 1970, Box 53, Folder 3, p. 5 trends in service requests for comments upon biracial births. See e.g. Pollock, “How the Question We Ask Most About Race in Education Is the Very Question We Most Suppress,” 2–12; and Wells and Crain, Stepping Over the Color Line. GRADS, Program Notes, 1980–81 (Columbus, OH). GRADS, Program Notes, 1980–81 (Columbus, OH). GRADS is available for both the teen mother or teen father and thus my use of “parenting” in this context. GRADS however serves very few male students and there were no male students in any of the classrooms I observed in 1993–1994. GRADS Annual Report, 1991–92, (Columbus, OH), 1. Discussion of history and philosophy of GRADS based upon GRADS program documents and interviews with four GRADS personnel—three teachers and one state level coordinator—conducted in 1993–94. I heard about such practices from teachers during my research but could not determine to what extent this practice occurs or how many girls it effects. As noted previously attendance requirements vary widely from school to school even within the same district or operating under the same program. See e.g. Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers.” For explication of this see Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls. Flick, Adolescent Childbearing Decisions. See Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption”; Pillow, The Making of Mothers. Brake, “Legal Challenges to the Educational Barriers Facing Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents.” Ladner, “Black Teenage Pregnancy”; Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie. Pillow, The Making of Mothers and “Exposed Methodology.” Adolescent Parent Resource Guide, Columbus, OH (1989): 3. Adolescent Parent Resource Guide, Columbus, OH (1989): 3. Adolescent Parent Resource Guide, Columbus, OH (1989): 4–5. Lesko, “Implausible Endings,” 57. Lesko, “Implausible Endings,” 55. Bloom, Kopp, Long, and Polit, LEAP/Implementing a Welfare Initiative to Improve School Attendance Among Teenage Parents, 87. GRADS, Program Notes, 1980–81 (Columbus, OH). GRADS, Program Notes, 1980–81 (Columbus, OH). GRADS, Evaluation Report, 1981–82, (Columbus, OH). GRADS, Program Notes, 1980–81 (Columbus, OH). Whipple, Career Orientation and Preparation for Teen Parents Curriculum. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 60. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 63. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 72. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 73. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 72. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 80. Long, et.al., The Educational Effects of LEAP and Enhanced Services in Cleveland. Long, et.al., The Educational Effects of LEAP. Long, et.al., The Educational Effects of LEAP.

The “Dual-Role” Model of Schooling the Teen Mother • 171 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

Bos and Fellerath, LEAP Final Report on Ohio’s Welfare Initiative to Improve School Attendance among Teenage Parents. Bos and Fellerath, LEAP. For a critique of what the author terms a liberal “ideology of hope” in curriculum for atrisk students that ends up perpetuating individual responsibility and blame, see Hamovitch, “Socialization without Voice,” 286–306. Long, et.al., The Educational Effects of LEAP. GRADS Fact Sheet, 1998–99. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, xix. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, xix. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 109. Bloom, et. al., LEAP, 115. Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers,” 186. Nathanson, Dangerous Passage, 156. Nathanson, Dangerous Passage, 156.

CHAPTER

6

Incitement to Discourse Talking about Sex in Abstinence-Only Education Movements That fetus inside of you growin’ The silent shame is now showin’ Girl ain’t gonna graduate Scheduled for the Jerry Springer Slate Dirty Ho’, Dirty Ho’ Whatcha’ havin’ that baby for Dirty Ho’, Dirty Ho’ Gonna be a Prom Mom on the floor That child ain’t got nothin’ to claim but shame

These song lyrics from an episode of the much watched U.S. television show, Popular, which depicts the lives of high school teens, indicate the extent to which teen sexuality is discussed and portrayed in mainstream media. In this episode, which aired in April 2000, one of the main characters fears she may be pregnant. During one scene, when the young, Caucasian fifteen-year-old is sitting in class worrying about whether she is pregnant, she imagines a black female singing group, modeled after the Supremes, singing the above. While in Popular it is the white girl who is potentially in trouble (and she ends up not being “in trouble”), it is notable that it is middle-age black women who, dressed sexually and moving their curvy, suggestive bodies knowingly, sing to her about sex and the dangers of unwed pregnancy. The

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black women singing to this character appear knowledgeable about the experiences depicted in the lyrics, and the girl (and thus the viewer) is allowed to view them as sexually wise. The references in the lyrics, Jerry Springer and “prom moms,” to the language of the street (ho’), focus upon the potentially pregnant white girl’s downfall—with a pregnancy due to her sexual activity she will endure shame, humiliation, and her goals and aspirations will come to a dead end. The black women singing to this girl are the counterpoint to her life—where she might end up if she is pregnant. The dichotomy between the good, thin, white girl and the voluptuous, sexualized, over-the-top black women singing things we should not talk about (except on Jerry Springer) is obvious and presented as a wake-up call to the sexually active white girl. Like other episodes on teen pregnancy in Dawson’s Creek and Boston Public, this episode is certainly a cautionary tale for the white, middle-class teen girl—a tale told in a language she can understand and by women from whom she can situate herself as different. The cautionary tale in the Popular episode is a narrative based upon the white character (and the viewers of the show) defining and distinguishing herself from the plight of black female sexuality (promiscuity, irresponsibility, and unwed motherhood). Unlike the black female, for whom wantonness is situated as “natural,” the white girl in these situations has agency, can think rationally, and make responsible choices, either by choosing to abstain from having sex or by having it responsibly and invisibly. The portrayal of teen pregnancy and pregnancy scares on these shows, “you show you go” (Boston Public), “Dirty Ho’, Dirty Ho’ “ (Popular) resituates and recirculates concern about the sexual activity of “our girls” offering present-day morality tales for white, middle-class students and a public focus upon the virtue of “our girls.” The time period these shows aired between 1999 and 2001 corresponds with increased public and policy attention on the morality of teen girls and on rescue efforts for such girls. In fact, the teen pregnancy episodes were endorsed by the National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy, who served as consultant for the story lines and offered online chats and response pages about the episodes on their website.1 The song lyrics from the Popular episode and storylines of the other television shows remind us that female bodies, lives, and sexuality are particularly prey to public scrutiny and display. Teen girls continue to be faced with the dichotomy between good girl/bad girl identities. As Deborah Tolman notes, when girls enter adolescence, when their bodies take on women’s contours, girls begin to be seen as sexual, and sexuality becomes an aspect of adolescent

Incitement to Discourse • 175 girls’ lives; yet ‘nice’ girls and ‘good’ women are not supposed to be sexual outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage.2

In order to define who and what a “good girl” is, it is necessary to circulate stories and images of the “bad girl.” There are a prolific number of stories about “bad girls” in our media and research. As discussed in earlier chapters, teen mothers are defined through bad girl discourses and are themselves asked to participate in discourses of redemption. This emphasis upon what Deidre Kelly calls “stigma stories” recirculates sexual stories and keeps the sexually active teen girl and the teen mother hypervisible in our consciousness.3 Consider for example Nancy Lesko’s description of a 1985 Time magazine cover story on teenage pregnancy: The image of a young girl with swollen belly dominates the discourse on the problem of teenage pregnancy . . . She stands sideways, to accentuate her fully pregnant, fully sexual body. Her ripe body is juxtaposed with her child’s face, which communicates sadness, pessimism, and confusion. Her face forecasts uncertainty—the apparent consequences of irresponsible sexuality. This image signals “disorder” or “alarm”: a child having a child, a young woman too soon sexual, a spectacle, a grotesqueness.4

As Lesko notes it is the sexualized image of the pregnant girl that allows us to both consume and condemn her. Further this image reproduces the “heterosexual gaze . . . and overtly sexual gaze of the ‘popular culture.’”5 This chapter works out of the “incitement to discourse” that surrounds sex and female sexuality in particular.6 Specifically the rise of abstinenceonly education as an effective policy solution is traced. Through analysis of media, abstinence-only curricula, and U.S. congressional hearings on teen pregnancy and abstinence education, a portrait of how sex is being talked about and how teen female sexuality is defined under abstinence discourse is constructed.7 In particular, a close look at the testimonials and narratives by witnesses at congressional hearings on teen pregnancy and abstinence education provide a way to trace present-day constructions of abstinenceonly education as not only viable and successful, but necessary. This analysis is a shift from my previous work, which explores how teen mothers talk about sex, to analyze what stories are being told about sex and how these stories impact political and policy discourse? This analysis reveals a continued incitement to discourse surrounding sex and sexuality in order to situate abstinence-only policy as necessary. In other words, in order to argue for the necessity of abstinence-only programs there must be explicit talk about sex, sexual immorality, and lewdness. Similarly, in order for abstinence-only education programs to work they must engage in explicit talk about sex to situate abstinence as not simply a choice but a necessity. In such ways, the abstinence-only discourse is


overtly sexual—it is a highly sexualized discourse and one that uses alarmist strategies to continually refocus attention upon sex. I work to expose the sexual focus prevalent within abstinence-only discourses and programs not only to show the irony of this incitement within abstinence education discourse but to highlight how teen sexuality and teen pregnancy make apparent the limits of a presupposed rational policy process and traditional policy analyses. This analysis exposes what Linda Singer terms “the limits of existing political discourse” and works toward a “call for new forms of sexual political discourse, currency, and struggle.”8 To put it pointedly, sex is typically not a rational activity—it is laden with expectations emotional and physical. Policies that attempt to rationalize the decision making around sex often fail because they do not take into account that sex is often not about rationality. Further, although curricula attempts to rationalize sex, policy decisions made around issues of teen sexuality are, like sex, not rational, but driven by emotions observable in ideological stances and alarmist discourses. Like the rise of the problem of teen pregnancy, which occured through epidemic discourse and logic, teen sexuality and what to do about it also occur through such epidemic discourses. These alarmist discourses (re)create a climate of incitement to control. An analysis of the incitement to discourse surrounding teen sexuality and pregnancy reveals several troubling themes that can be found in abstinence-only narratives: • Discourses of alarm —Sex is dangerous/sex education is dangerous —Sex is dirty/sex education is dirty • Discourses of heteronormativity —Reassertion of traditional gender roles —Marriage as a solution • Discourses of control —Norplant Each of these discourses relies upon “erotic welfare” logic to reproduce themselves—that is, a proliferation of alarmist discourses in order to control and contain, in this case, female sexuality. Discourses of control expose a troubling outcome of sexual policy—the forced control of women’s ability to reproduce. Although all these discourses are about controlling female sexuality, they highlight that some women are regarded as being outside of the regulatory realm of discursive control and moral reformation. For these girls/women I observed during my research Norplant was used, at times by force, at times voluntarily to control their fertility and reproduction. I con-

Incitement to Discourse • 177

clude with these stories to show the kinds of actions that seem justifiable when we reach the limits of existing sexual discursive practices.

Lets Talk (about) Sex—Situating the Rise of Abstinence-Only Discourses Abstinence-only discourse is not new and has often focused upon the role public schools should play in talking about sex. Although the reported rate of sexual activity (defined in this case as heterosexual intercourse) by teens has decreased slightly over the past decade, 46 percent of teens have sex before graduating from high school.9 Thus, close to half of the student population is engaged in heterosexual intercourse while in high school. This number does not include the number of teens who may be participating in other sexual activities that do not include heterosexual penetration. The fact is teens are sexually active. What to do about sexual activity among teens remains a topic of alarm and debate. Similar to teen pregnancy, teen sexuality is psychologized and tabulated and what to do about it remains confusing. A myriad of approaches have been tried, from doing nothing to providing comprehensive sex education, family life courses or abstinence-only programs. Research on the effects of sex education are inconclusive. At best they show that, while such programs may not decrease sexual activity, they also do not encourage sexual activity, a fear and common critique of sex education programs. For example, a 1982 Johns Hopkins study determined that “the data seem to provide overwhelming support for the claim that the decision to engage in sexual activity is not influenced by whether or not teenagers have had sex education in school” and “they also found no association between sexual activity and courses that cover contraception.”10 Such conclusions have led other researchers to state that “the evidence that sex education leads to a reduction in teen pregnancies is not compelling, but there is also no evidence that sex education is connected with an increase in teen pregnancies.”11 In other words, there is strong evidence that “instruction has no impact.”12 Regardless, public perception and political debates perpetuate the idea that sex education in schools increases teen sexual activity. In 1986 William Bennett argued against school-based programs that provide information on birth control because, “they teach young people the wrong lesson with regard to sexual responsibility, and they go beyond the primary role of the schools, which is to teach academics.”13 However, arguments such as that schools should stick to academics, do not seem to include abstinence education, which is supported by the same persons who argue that sex education does not belong in school classrooms.


Here is where abstinence-only supporters have been very effective— shifting public discourse from a debate about what should be included in sex education curricula to one stating that if schools are going to provide any form of sex education, then it should be abstinence-only education. Abstinence-only became situated as not only a policy option but the necessary policy solution to the “rampant immorality of our youth” out of a climate of crisis surrounding female sexuality, unwed mothering, teen pregnancy, and welfare reform. Further, abstinence-only discourse effectively shuts down any contrary opinions by situating opposition to its goals as always looking “pro-sex.” In other words, if you are not for abstinence-only education, then you are for and supporting teen sexual activity. Abstinence-only education has gained momentum and clout as a policy solution despite any research supporting the effectiveness of abstinenceonly programs.14 There is no research supporting the effectiveness of abstinence and abstinence-only programs and a large scale evaluation study of such programs will not be completed until 2005. Regardless of the lack of research demonstrating any positive effects, abstinence-only education is becoming the most funded and utilized program in schools. Abstinence-only discourse received a huge push in 1996 and was clearly linked as a policy solution to the problems of teen pregnancy and the need for social welfare reform. During 1996 congressional hearings on preventing teen pregnancy, Representative Nancy Johnson puts this more specifically, “many of us believe that the issue is not just teen pregnancy, but sex outside of marriage.”15 In these hearings, the problem of teen pregnancy and teen sexual activity is linked with a “breakdown of the American family,” a prevalence of “dysfunctional families,” and a rise of “single parent families.”16 Representative Eva Clayton cited that “our current teen pregnancy crisis evolved over several generations when the social fabric became worn and tattered and began to unravel.”17 The hearings included a call to bring morality through “abstinence” into “public housing developments” and cited the need to “teach certain values that are irreplaceable in developing and sustaining committed and faithful marital relationships that can withstand the nearly 50 percent American divorce rate.”18 The linkage of abstinence-only programs as a solution for teen pregnancy helped situate abstinence-only within policy debates. The result of recommending abstinence education to combat the immorality of teen pregnancy and welfare dependency was dramatic. Although little attention was paid to it at the time, an amendment in the 1996 PRWORA Welfare Reform Act vastly increased federal funding for abstinence education programs. The new law provided a five-year 250-milliondollar block grant and contained specific guidelines for what could be included in abstinence education (abstinence only until marriage) and


what could not (any discussion of contraception).19 The abstinence-only amendment, supported by conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, the Family Resource Council, and Concerned Women for America, was added into the welfare reform legislation at the last minute thereby avoiding specific attention and debate.20 The 1996 Abstinence Education Law established eight federal guidelines for abstinence education: 1. Abstaining from sexual activity has social, psychological, and health gains 2. Abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage is the expected standard for all school-age children. 3. Abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems. 4. A mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity 5. Sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects 6. Childbearing out of wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society. 7. Alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances 8. It is important to attain self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.21 Although groups such as Planned Parenthood spoke out against the abstinence education legislation, as Sandra Vergari details, “several conservative morality groups advised members at the grass roots to contact state agencies and urge them to apply for the abstinence funds.”22 Additionally, former president Bill Clinton had originally planned on restructuring the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFL) into an Office of Adolescent Health, which would provide comprehensive health education, including contraception education for teens, yet AFL soon became a vehicle for funding abstinence-only programs. President Bush and his administration have been instrumental in promoting and providing funding for abstinence-only education. As a presidential candidate, Bush repeatedly announced that abstinence-only would be an “urgent goal” for his administration. Despite the lack of research supporting the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs, President Bush has proclaimed “abstinence is a sure-fire program,” noting that “abstinence is the surest way, and the only completely effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. . . . When our children face a choice between self-restraint and self-destruction, government should not be neutral.”23


Bush’s stance was influential in the inclusion of $50 million for abstinence-only programs into the reauthorization of the welfare reform bill in May 2002. It is important to understand that in order to receive funding, programs are barred from discussing any form of contraceptive use except to emphasize their failure rates. Although in the present political climate domestic social issues have received little attention, the implications of abstinence-only policies will have immediate and long-term consequences. For instance, the ramifications of abstinence-only discourse are considerable and are beginning to be realized. Consider for instance how abstinence-only discourse impacts the provision and distribution of information about sexual activity—what is an allowable narrative under abstinence-only and what is not allowable? How will information about sexually transmitted diseases be distributed under abstinence-only discourses? If prevention is based solely upon abstinence, how will a decadelong struggle to disseminate information about preventing AIDS be handled? Since President Bush took office in 2000, the Department of Health and Human Services has enforced an abstinence-only discourse by removal of information on its website, including information on condom use and AIDS prevention, on the lack of a link between abortion and breast cancer, and on effective programs, outside of abstinence-only programs, to reduce teen sexual activity.24 The control regulation, and containment of information under abstinence-only ideology and policy has also discursively located what information will be authorized and continually shifts blame upon the “fallen” individual. For instance, abstinence-only discourse creates a vacuum of information—if you are abstinent there is no need for information about, for example, birth control or sexually transmitted diseases—while on the other hand abstinence-only discourses cause a proliferation of information on the dangers of sex. As traced below, the stories about sex that are authorized and proliferate under abstinence-only discourse contain information that is distorted to meet the needs of abstinence-only discourse. Further, such discourse places blame back upon the individual—if you become a teen mother or are HIV positive, it is your own fault. Your condition, like a teen pregnancy, is visible and evidence that you were not abstinent. Michael Males offers a point worthy of consideration. He argues that due to recent findings showing 71 percent of teen pregnancies occur between a teen mother and an adult male partner over the age of twenty that teen and adult sexual behaviors are “intermixed” in ways that schools have not acknowledged. While paying attention to this fact, which reflects trends in relationships in the general public, is useful, the images such knowledge has produced maintain the female teen as childlike. Consider


figure 6 published to accompany an article on teen pregnancy in Phi Delta Kappan in 1994. In this image the girl is clearly situated as a “school-girl” complete with a sweater over her bulging stomach, books in hand, and a bow tied atop her head. The male smirking in the background is obviously no good—his casual stance given the plight of the school-girl and the trashy environment let us know he is irresponsible. This discourse of innocent girls being preyed upon by older men was prevalent in the congressional hearings on teen pregnancy. The problem of teen pregnancy was defined at the opening of the hearings as a problem where our “youngest girls are coerced into having sex by much older men” by “grown men, who are victimizing the immaturity of these girls.”25 Such definitions situate sexually active girls as either innocent victim or wanton aggressor, a binary that reinforces prescriptive policy intervention and reification of traditional expectations about female sexuality. Further, while I think that Males exaggerates the percentage of teen girls who are having sex with “older” men (what is probably more accurate is that the fathers of children born to teen mothers are young men in their teens and early twenties, three to seven years older than the teen mother), Males does raise important questions about the gender-role assumptions in abstinence education programs. Males argues that “by denying the definitive reality of adult/teen sex, school prevention programs, in effect, assign girls as young as junior high school age the responsibility of preventing pregnancies typically involving much older adult partners.”26 This means that strategies such as “just say no” are focused upon young teen girls taking responsibility for adult male behavior—an issue that has not been fully addressed in policy debates. Perpetuation of the female, even the young female, as responsible not only for her own morality but also male morality, reproduces traditional gender roles in sexual relations between men and women. Males also challenges that “what we call ‘teenage’ sexual behavior is virtually identical to ‘adult’ sexual behavior.”27 There is evidence to support Males’ claims. Teen pregnancy and birthrates closely mirror trends in women of all ages. Close to 60 percent of all births that occur annually in the United States are unintended, a rate higher than in any other developed country.28 The problems associated with teen’s having sex are not specific to teenagers. Incidences of what are noted as the consequences of early sex—STDs, unplanned pregnancies— happen at the same rate for teens as for adults. The U.S. ranks high on such problems with the highest rate of any industrialized country of STDs, reported unplanned pregnancies, number of abortions, and births to unwed mothers.29 It is commonly known that over half the marriages in


Fig. 6

Phi Delta Kappan, January 1994.


the United States end in divorce and up to half of married persons admit to having sexual affairs outside of their marriage. Acknowledgment of such trends resituates the problem of teen sexuality and pregnancy to an overall U.S. problem with sexuality. My point is not to discount the impact upon teens of early sexual involvement or childbearing, but to question why we expect teens to do better at something that the adult population of the United States is not, by these standards at least, doing well on. Certainly abstinence-only supporters argue that such trends in the United States are evidence of the decline of morality and family values and that the place to start re-instituting traditional values is with our youth. Regardless of where the locus for the above trends is situated—a lack of morality due to a decline in family values, including traditional gender roles, the lack of open discourse in the country about sex and sexuality, and the lack of programs and information to support healthy sexual development—the past ten years have seen the development of several nationally disseminated abstinence-only programs supported under PRWORA and AFL, including Project Reality, Clean Teens, Pure Love, Teen-Aid, Choosing the Best, the Art of Loving Well, Worth the Wait, True Love Waits, and Reasonable Reasons to Wait, Save Sex, Sex Worth Waiting For.30 In debates about the decline of morality in the United States, about social welfare reform, about what sex education should be or could be or how it should be presented to each age group, it has become easier to “just say no” to sex education and work with abstinence-only programs that seemingly offer solutions with very clear principles and guidelines. The rules governing abstinence-only are easier to implement in the present climate of standardization and accountability in schools. Abstinence-only programs promise to offer a definitive answer to the problem of teen sexuality and teen pregnancy, to bring clarity to ongoing debates about sex education, and to address the decline of values and welfare dependency seen as rampant in some communities. The solution is simple, teach kids not to have sex until marriage. The remainder of this chapter questions the supposed clarity of the abstinence-only discourse. During my research I was not looking for abstinence-only programs, they found me. In the schools I visited I saw abstinence-only education worked into health education, home economics, and family life classes. Looking at course descriptions of these classes gave no indication that abstinence-only education would be discussed and unlike many components of sex education courses, abstinence-only programs require no notification to parents or permission from parents for their children to participate. Keep this last point in mind in the review of what is included in abstinence-only programs that follows.


Discourses of Alarm Discourses of abstinence are all about sex—often titillatingly so. In order to establish that abstinence is best, is necessary, sex has to be talked about and situated as harmful and immoral. The amount of information about sex given in abstinence-only education can feel shocking. When I looked at abstinence-only education materials and listened to abstinence-only supporters I heard much more information about sexual activity than in many sex education classes. The kind of information that is shared and what narratives of sex are allowable under abstinence-only discourses can be identified by looking at a widely used abstinence-only curricula program and the discussion from the 1996 Senate hearings on Abstinence Education and from the 1996 congressional hearings on Preventing Teenage Pregnancy. While this focus does not analyze what happens in individual classrooms, it does identify what narratives are authorized in abstinence-only curricula and narratives.31 The widely used abstinence-only curricula program, Game Plan, is analyzed as a case example. Game Plan is disseminated by Project Reality a group based out of Illinois where state law mandates that abstinence education be taught in middle and high schools, is analyzed as a case example. Through analysis of Project Reality’s curricula and other classroom materials a picture of what discourses about sex are authorized and reinforced in abstinence-only programs emerges. Additionally, the Senate and congressional hearings provide texts of narratives that are practiced, prepared, rehearsed, and authorized in a public policy arena. The Senate and congressional hearings provide insight into what stories were made allowable and possible within this context and the implications for not only defining abstinence-only policy but to situate the need for abstinence-only education through an incitement to discourses of alarm. Senator Arlen Specter made clear his view of absolute support of abstinence-only programs at the start of the abstinence education hearings. Senator Specter opened the hearings on abstinence education by situating the problem of teen pregnancy and cost to taxpayers as epidemic, noting that “while abortion is the most divisive issue facing America” there are places “where we can all agree . . . where we can come together and unify the country” namely on abstinence education or “at the other end of the spectrum, on adoption, to encourage women to carry to term.”32 Abstinence-only supporters rely upon epidemic logic to situate abstinence-only programs as not simply a choice, but a necessity. The discourses of alarm evident in abstinence-only curricula and the Senate and congressional hearings have two major themes: one that sex and sex education is dirty, the other that sex and sex education is dangerous.


Before looking closely at these themes it is important to first define what abstinence-only programs define as “sex.” Project Reality’s school-based abstinence-only curriculum provides a definition of sex through abstinence that is characteristic of proponents of abstinence-only: To abstain means to voluntarily choose not to do something. When referring to sex, it means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse. Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective protection from the possible physical, emotional, mental and social consequences of sex before marriage.33

Abstinence-only means just that—abstinence only until marriage; anything else sends a mixed message.

Sex Is Dirty One way to make abstinence seem necessary is to make sex (outside of marriage) dirty. If, as abstinence-only supporters claim, a flippant and immoral attitude has been developed toward sexual activity, then the response is to declare sexual activity (outside of marriage) dirty. Common strategies in abstinence-only programs include films that emphasize how sex is dirty. For instance, one film shows teens chewing cheese snacks and then spitting into glasses of water. A New York Times article describes the film this way: The dirty water represents bodily fluids, which the teenagers share by pouring their water into one another’s glasses . . . the murky water even if passed through a strainer, can never be clean again.34

Such films or classroom exercises are certainly also attempts to reach a youth considered to be jaded and hooked on quick, MTV-sound bites, computer images, and choices. Most youth are overly familiar with media, from fashion magazines, to billboards, to the myriad of shows available on television. Abstinence-only programs attempt to address today’s youth by attempting to make abstinence sexy, make it cool. This is evident in the campaigns directed at teens—posters, fliers, advertisements, curriculum materials, episodes on popular television shows, and internet websites that are designed to grab the teen’s attention and then get the message across. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy 2001 poster campaign symbolizes this shift, incorporating images that are familiar to teens in other places. For example, the teens portrayed on the posters resemble models— their casual poses, stylishly rumpled hair, and fashionable looks resemble


the heroin chic ads of the early 1990s (see figures 7–10). The girls are beguilingly thin, making it seem improbable that they are pregnant or have had a baby. The large, block print words running under each female model—CHEAP, NOBODY, DIRTY, REJECT—are meant to attract attention and while not part of a solely abstinence-only message, make clear the fear and sensationalism present in abstinence-only campaigns. The choice of words on each poster reflects popular sentiment and the stigma surrounding teen girls who are sexually active and could have been a campaign from any decade in the twentieth century. The posters exemplify the incitement to discourse surrounding teen pregnancy. They reinforce and reproduce constructions of sexually active teen girls as sluttish, as not upholding female morality and femininity, and as deserving the consequences of their behavior. Two campaign posters feature teenage boys, who also are depicted as hip with an edge. They feature Caucasian males with the words PRICK and USELESS and are meant to be eye-catching but do not carry the sexual stigma of the girls posters.35 Crossing between discourses of “sex is dirty” and “sex is dangerous” are the detailed lessons, including films, used in abstinence-only programs, graphically portraying the dirty and dangerous side of sex outside of marriage. Thus, learning about the “epidemic” of sexually transmitted diseases is key in abstinence-only programs and explicit detail about the emotional and physical pain of STDs is provided. Epidemic talk is also gendered in abstinence-only curricula. For example, Project Reality curricula used in seventh grade classrooms describes the consequences of sexual activity outside of marriage as “more severe and more frequent for girls than boys.”36 Films that reinforce material in abstinence-only curricula are also approved for use in abstinence-only classrooms. The films use personal testimonies and visual images of the physical evidence of STDs to reinforce to students that sex is dirty and dangerous. The images in these films are exceedingly graphic—male and female genitalia infected with an STD are shown in close-up detail. The genitalia are disembodied; the closeness of the camera view yields no indication of the body behind the genitalia, yet the images remain overtly sexual. Visible are red swollen organs and open sores, with an off-camera hand manipulating the genitalia, prodding and lifting with a long pointer-like instrument to draw attention to specific sores. These images are combined with interviews by subjects providing testimony about how a one-time encounter left them “scarred” and “dirty” for life. In addition to films, overheads or pictures of infected genitalia may be displayed or passed around the classroom. Again, although research does not link such practices with a decrease in teen sexual activity, adults assume such practices do deter premarital sex. Consider the following exchange during the Senate hearings on abstinence education:


Fig. 7 “Sex Has Consequences” poster campaign. Copyright The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001. Used by permission. Senator Specter: Did the instruction on diseases tend to discourage young people from having premarital sex? Witness: They showed pictures, and I think I do not have to say any more.37

As students in an abstinence-only state, my children, seventh graders, were subjected to a film similar to the one described above and other


Fig. 8 “Sex Has Consequences” poster campaign. Copyright The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001. Used by permission.

graphic images. As their parent I was not notified that they were viewing such films or given any knowledge they were receiving abstinence-only education as part of their school day. There is nothing in the school or district manual given to parents to indicate that all students in our school district receive abstinence-only education in the seventh and again in tenth grade. I



raise this personal experience with abstinence-only education to highlight two major issues and inconsistencies in abstinence-only programs. First, is the lack of parental notification much less parental permission for children to participate in such a program. While parents typically must be notified about their children’s involvement in sex education programs



and provide permission for specific components of such a program, abstinence-only programs often operate invisibly—under the guise of a health class as in my children’s case. I found that many other parents in my children’s school wrongly assumed that that an abstinence-only program would focus little upon sex. As this chapter indicates that assumption is


wrong as explicit discussions about sex, through messages and images of alarm, are prevalent in abstinence-only programs. The lack of openness and clarity by abstinence-only supporters about what is included in such programs is contrary to this same group’s requirement for notification and debate about every aspect of sex education programs. A second inconsistency in abstinence-only programs is the explicitness of the messages about the dirtiness and danger of sex (outside of marriage), while proponents of abstinence-only education, as detailed below, base their arguments on the notion that discussions of contraceptive options have been too explicit in schools. How is it that close-up video images of genitalia are allowable in abstinence-only programs, while a discussion of how to use a condom, for example, are not?

Sex Is Dangerous Abstinence-only programs situate any sex outside of marriage as dangerous—dangerous emotionally and physically. Abstinence-only supporters and curricula argue that sex (outside of marriage) has drastic consequences—such behavior may lead to depression, suicide, and death. Kathleen Sullivan, of Project Reality, provided testimony during the Senate hearings describing the “emotional trauma” of “promiscuity,” noting that when the physical relationship ends “rejection, depression, stress, loneliness endures.”38 Sex outside of marriage is also situated as dangerous physically, a decision that can end up “costing you the rest of your life.”39 Sex outside of marriage is linked with other “high-risk” or “risky” behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse. Project Reality’s abstinence curriculum encourages students to do reality checks when watching television, noting that in the movies, people can • Jump off a building, land in a dumpster, and walk away. • Jump from a train onto a helicopter onto a boat, while being shot at. • Have sex with lots of different people, and have no problems.40 As discussed above, abstinence programs often show slides or videos depicting graphic images of infections and disease in female and male genitalia. Some abstinence-only education also includes drastic fear tactics to link sexual activity with crime, emotional pain, illness, and death. For example, as the project “Sex, Lies, and Politics” reports, “in one educational video a student asks, ‘What if I want to have sex before I get married?’ The instructor replies, ‘Well, I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.’” In another video cartoon when a girl agrees to have sex with her boyfriend, the car they are in rolls to the edge of a cliff, teetering, their lives hanging in the balance. Time is reversed and the girl is shown by Wendy the Good


Witch how having sex “could mess up your life forever” forecasting scenarios of death, physical impairment or destitution as an unwed mother left in the lurch by her “boyfriend.” Flashback to the car scene and this time the girl resists her boyfriend’s advances, including kissing, and they drive happily off. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has designated May as teen pregnancy prevention month and initiated the first “National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy” on May 8, 2002. Part of the initiative includes an online quiz teens can take (complete with incentive gifts for completing the quiz) about sexual attitudes and behaviors. The quiz clearly linked teen sex with “risky situations” affirming the theme of the National Day, which was “sex has consequences.” (see figure 11). Similar to the theme “sex is dirty,” strategies to prove that sex is dangerous include testimonials by teens and young adults who relate how one sexual encounter (outside of marriage) forever impacted their life—through a teen pregnancy, emotional break down, or leading to other risky behaviors that led to an accident confining the person to a wheelchair for life. In such testimonials, similar to the use of the “confessional tale” of the teen mother,41 the attempt to sway the opinion and behavior of those listening, also works to reproduce cautionary tales about sex (outside of marriage). In the 1996 Senate hearings on Abstinence Education such a cautionary tale is reproduced. A student is asked by Senator Specter if there are any “role models” who could talk about how their life was “ruined” by having sex and the student relates this story of the tragic teen mother as a cautionary tale: Well, recently just this year, there is this one girl and she was a senior who has a two-year-old baby. And in the paper they had a column about how mainly it ruined her life, how she has not been able to really go out with her friends and do what she really wanted to do and how she wished she waited until she got married or at least got out of school and did what she mainly wanted to do.42

Abstinence-only discourse not only situates sex as dangerous but also situates any conversation about sex, including any discussion of birth control, as “encouraging teen sex,” and as dangerous. From an abstinence-only stance any discussion of contraception sends a “mixed message.” In the 1996 Senate Hearings all of the witnesses, except one, stated that abstinence education must not include information on contraceptives or provide access to contraceptives. As one chastity educator and “mother of eight” noted, If you are going to do it anyway, that would be your choice, but in no way would I offer you condoms because in no way does it have anything to do with abstinence.43




Another abstinence educator working with “at-risk kids . . . in housing authorities” raised concern over how “abstinence” is being defined given that the term abstinence-education has been hijacked by liberal social scientists who twisted it to meet their own agenda. It goes a little like this: Spend the first 30 seconds telling students that the only 100 percent guarantee from preventing pregnancy, SID’s, AIDS, etc. is abstinence. Then you spend the other 59 and a half mintues demonstrating condoms and talking about whipped cream and hot-oil massages.44

The Senate hearings provide further provocative and alarmist stories about what occurs in sex education classrooms. As one witness challenged, Is advising 13-year-olds that it is OK to stick their tongues in each other’s bellybuttons, abstinence education, or mutual masturbation, or pouring whipped cream over each other and licking it off, or giving each other hot oil massages?45

This witness did not observe such practices in classrooms but based his comments upon a conversation he had with a director of a local health care facility in New York City who focused upon AIDS education, “she told me without hesitating, yes, these are all forms of abstinence-based education.”46 It could be that this director was responding specifically to questions about alternatives to intercourse with penetration, AIDS prevention, or focused upon adult behavior—the witness did not clarify his conversation with the director nor is that his point. The message clear from the hearings is that there are adults who will teach our children wanton sexual practices if we do not clearly define abstinence-only education. Two students provided further testimony that sex education is dangerous, by noting how sex is pushed upon them at school not only by their peers but by adults. One fourteen-year-old girl after relating a story she had heard about a girl who got pregnant at fifteen ran away from home, miscarried, went to reform school, and is now pregnant again at age eighteen comments upon why she thinks “schools should support families in teaching abstinence,” but does not feel like this is happening. Ms. Bissol:

When teachers are getting up there and advertising, like, sex and handing out condoms and stuff and families are trying to teach their children to abstain— Senator Specter: Do they hand out condoms at your school? Ms. Bissol: Not in my school because my school is just a small school and like my church, but a lot of my friends’ schools they do.47

Although none of the student witnesses attended schools that offered sex education courses or distributed contraceptives, with prompting all but one related a story of how schools reinforce the idea that teens will be sexually active and in some cases seem to be encouraging sexual activity, by as the above witness stated, “advertising” sex and “handing out condoms.”


This type of student testimony was based not upon their own experiences or observations but stories they had heard. For instance, one student related a story and it is unclear whether he had heard it or had read about it. Student:

I saw a case where a pastor’s daughter in the area, she was confronted in class, and they were handing out condoms and she says, I do not want any. And they says, well, you might as well take them, you are going to do it sooner or later, you might as well get it over with. And they literally told her, you are going to have sex, you might as well get it over with and just do it now. Senator Specter: Who told her that? Student: A teacher.48

The work of such narratives, and their repeated retelling, situates any discussion of sexuality and contraception as dangerous and as creating an environment where adults not only expect students to be sexually active but force such expectations upon students. The lone student witness who did speak up for abstinence but also cited the need for information about contraceptives for students was shut down in his testimony when Senator Specter turned to a student who he knew was in favor of abstinence-only education to respond to this student—a strategy Senator Specter utilized a few times in three days of hearings and only when witnesses were providing information clearly in conflict with the Senator’s stated position. Student:

Being a teenager, I think I have a pretty good insight on to what goes on in a teenager’s mind. Abstinence is good for some people, but a lot of teenagers will not have abstinence in their lives . . . I think we just said that we should teach abstinence as a viable solution, but if we cannot reach all of the kids, which I think is—we cannot reach all the kids, I think we should teach them that if you are going to have sex, here is the safest way if you are going to do so. Senator Specter: Shar Brissol, what do you think about that? Ms. Bissol: I really do not think that they should even discuss much the alternative because when you discuss it, then the kids think, oh, there is safe sex, you know, and why should I wait, let us have fun now and just go ahead and do it. And then they end up ruining their lives because a condom may help control birth, but it does not guarantee anyone against diseases.49

Senator Specter was thus able to refocus testimony upon a basic tenet of abstinence-only education—that there is no such thing as safe sex outside of marriage. Kathleen Sullivan of Project Reality describes, however, how abstinence-only programs do discuss contraceptives but “the manner in which


it is presented is what makes the difference.” Clarifying her point, Sullivan describes how any discussion of contraceptives will focus upon “failure rates” and how “not one contraceptive will stop the emotional trauma” of premarital sex.50 Indeed, this is Project Reality’s slogan captured on posters in offices and classrooms, “condoms do not protect the heart.”51 Describing an exercise that is a part of Project Reality curricula, where students come up with a list of “all the different things that might happen as a result of being sexually involved,” Sullivan states that one classroom came up with a list of the consequences of sexual activity (outside of marriage) that contained “42 different items.” 52 As another witness emphasized, the message we want to communicate today is that “No matter how much safety equipment you put on your body or in your body, you will still be hurt by being sexually active before marriage.”53

Abstinence-only programs offer specific advice to teens on how to avoid the dangers of sex. Such advice includes not engaging in any intimate activity with a partner as “even kissing can lead to sex,” and staying out of “closed, dark rooms of your home or [avoiding] watching movies at your home or perhaps even in a movie theatre” with a member of the opposite sex.54 Such prescriptions cannot be fulfilled without regulatory surveillance by parents, other adults, and peers, and continues an emphasis upon policing and controlling sexual activity versus acknowledging and understanding sexual feelings and behaviors.

Counter Testimony in Senate and Congressional Hearings— Mixed Messages Made Clear or Hidden Testimony countering the prevalent endorsement of abstinence-only messages made its way briefly into both the Senate and congressional hearings. Each time an alternative view or challenge to abstinence-only education was made, however, the witness was questioned until a statement was made supporting some component of abstinence-only programs or the witness’ testimony was ignored. It is interesting, for example, to look closely at testimony by teens in the Senate hearings. Sometimes their responses did not support the tone and line of questioning of the hearings and Senator Specter would interrupt them and ask questions until he got the answer he was looking for at which point he would end the student’s testimony. Senator Specter thus clarified student testimony making it intelligible within the prevalent abstinenceonly discourse of the hearings. Listen to the following exchange: Senator Specter: You had a child when you were 15? Ms. Bradford: Uh-huh. Senator Specter: And what kind of an effect did your having a child at 15 have on your own life?

Incitement to Discourse • 197 Ms. Bradford: Well, in fact, I couldn’t do as much. Senator Specter: Did it interrupt your education? Ms. Bradford: No; it didn’t. It didn’t interrupt my education, I just couldn’t do certain things. Senator Specter: Did you miss any time from school at all as a result of having a child when you were 15? Ms. Bradford: No, I didn’t miss any school. I was on homebound, so I was still getting my education. My teacher came to my house. You know, I got times when I got cold feet where I just wanted to give up, but, you know, I had to do it for my son and for me . . . I have to make future for my son now. Senator Specter: Well has it has any sort of a disruptive effect on your life to have had a child at the age of 15? Ms. Bradford: Well, not really, I mean, I have a lot of support. Senator Specter: Do you recommend to other 15-year-old girls to avoid that situation? Ms. Bradford: Yes. Senator Specter: And why do you recommend to other 15-year-old girls that they avoid that situation? Ms. Bradford: Because it cuts out from their—15-year-old girls, they need to be going out, having a nice time, you know, they don’t need to be worrying about no kid being sick, they need to be out there experiencing other things than experiencing worrying about a kid. Senator Specter: And did you find that having a child at 15 eliminated your opportunity to have those other experiences of a growing young adolescent? Ms. Bradford: Yes, I did.55

This teen mother did not tell the right story, the intelligible story, until she reached the question all teen mothers are rehearsed on and asked— would you recommend other girls be teen mothers? It is notable that until that question she refutes that having a child has been disruptive for her life or her education and notes that being a mother motivated her to complete her education. Another teen mother also questioned whether abstinence programs could be effective: Ms. Russell: Senator Specter: Ms. Russell: Senator Specter: Ms. Russell: Senator Specter: Ms. Russell: Senator Specter:

I’m 18 and I’m also a teen parent. You are? I’m a teen parent of twins. You’re a single parent? Uh-huh. And how old are your children? They’re 2. You have twins. And what do you have to tell other young women based on the experiences you’ve had of having twins? You had twins when you were 16?

198 • Unfit Subjects Ms. Russell: Fifteen. Senator Specter: What advice would you have for other 15-year-olds? Ms. Russell: Well, I’d just basically tell them what I went through and how hard it is to be a teen parent, but the only thing you can do is give them advice, but its up to them whether they’re going to take it or not. They’re still going to do what they want to do. Senator Specter: Well, do you think you can have any influence on them as to what they will do? Ms. Russell: Somewhat, but it really depends upon the individual themselves, just like the programs we have. I mean, it’s good that we have the programs that we have, but it really depends upon the person themselves, if they want to, you know, abstain or not. Senator Specter: Do you think that those programs are helpful in encouraging other young people to abstain from teenage premarital sex? Ms. Russell: Only if they’re involved in the program, but it’s like they’ll draw certain people and, I mean, it doesn’t draw everybody, you know, to the program. . . . But everybody doesn’t want to join the program . . . Senator Specter: Do you think the program should be compulsory, like an English program, that you have to take it whether you like it or not, but once you take it, you might learn something? Ms. Russell: I don’t know. Senator Specter: When you talk to young women who are 15 and tell them about your own experiences of having twins when you were 15, do you try to persuade them not to go through what you went through? Ms. Russell: Uh-huh. Senator Specter: You do? Ms. Russell: Yes. Senator Specter: Why? Ms. Russell: Because it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot on them and they have kids or whatever. And I’m just trying to tell them that there’s other things to do besides having sex, there’s other ways you can look for love besides having sex.56

Finally, she got to the “right” answer. After not taking a firm stance on how beneficial the abstinence program in her school is, Specter returns to, resorts to the question—would you recommend other teen girls have twins? Of course the response is no. No teen mother I have talked with would ever say, “Yes, I think teens should be pregnant,”57 however, neither does any teen, like any mother, want to situate herself and her child as a mistake and failure. Another student, who was a graduate from a school with an abstinence-only program and attending Penn State, noted that while the abstinence-only program helped her it did not help everyone: Senator Specter: Has it helped other boys and girls you know?

Incitement to Discourse • 199 Ms. Vanda: Senator Specter: Ms. Vanda: Senator Specter: Ms. Vanda:

Well, yes; some and then some it hasn’t. Some it hasn’t, but some it has? Yes. Why do you think it has not helped some boys and girls? Because like Cassandra said, the person’s going to do what they want to do anyway, what you want to happen. You have your own mind, people can teach you not to have sex, but it’s what the individual wants to do. Senator Specter: But while it hasn’t helped some, on the other had, it has helped some? Ms. Vanda: Yes.58

After the student’s testimony, despite the mixed messages the student’s were providing, Senator Specter concludes by stating, “I believe the education on abstinence is very, very positive.”59 Between both hearings, there was only one adult who provided a critical message about the state of sex education in the United States. This witness, Ms. Barbara Huberman, Director of Training and Sexuality Education for Advocates for Youth, noted that while “abstinence is an important message . . . we also know that in this country over 90 percent of adult marriages are not virginal marriages” and that the “average age of marriage in this country is now over 27 years.”60 Ms. Huberman encouraged a hard look at the high U.S. rates, in comparison with other industrialized countries, of sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancies, teen pregnancies, and abortion rates. She argued that “while we debate on WHOSE values are right or wrong; teenagers hear us preach one thing and do another when it comes to sex.”61 Citing research that demonstrates that “the American public—parents, voters, and citizens—support . . . comprehensive sexuality education,” Ms. Huberman goes on to detail the differences between the U.S. system and other countries with much lower rates of teen pregnancy, highlighting the presence of, age-appropriated, comprehensive sexuality education . . . taught by trained, competent educators . . . access to contraceptives and general health care for adolescents . . . in other countries, local and national policies and leaders recognize and acknowledge the normalcy of being a sexual person. The allocation of resources reflects the national philosophy of respect for healthy and responsible sexual behavior.62

Contrary to all the other witnesses during the preventing teen pregnancy hearings, Ms. Huberman’s comments yielded silence. There was no discussion of her testimony and no one else reiterated the points she made. Abstinence-only has effectively captured much of the debate around teen sexuality and teen pregnancy. Reviewing the testimony from the hearings reveals that there is no room for testimony like the students who questioned the efficacy of enforcing abstinence-only for all teens or for the


comments of Ms. Huberman. While their testimony was allowed, they were the lone voices in each hearing and their views were either immediately countered or ignored. Once dismissed as too conservative, abstinence-only discourse has now pushed comprehensive sex education supporters into a discursive corner. How does one speak “liberally” or “comprehensively” about teenage sex? Abstinence-only education has, at least for now, captured the upper hand situating any discussion of sexuality and contraception as expecting and contributing to the problems of promiscuity, immorality, teen sexual activity, unwed teen pregnancy, and welfare dependency. Once sex outside of marriage is effectively situated as “dirty” and “dangerous” abstinence-only further provides a fix for what ails us by offering further solutions to problems of teen pregnancy, unwed mothering, and welfare dependency.

Discourses of Heteronormativity Abstinence-only programs are all about heterosexuality—there is no allowance for or acknowledgement of any other sexual feelings, any other sexual behaviors, or any type of family outside of the heterosexual nuclear family. Compulsory heterosexuality is assumed within abstinence-only educational curriculum. To do this abstinence-only discourses and curriculum work hard on reasserting the unique role girls and women play in enforcing and participating in a compulsory heterosexuality that exists alongside patriarchical gender roles. Abstinence-only discourses walk a fine line when it comes to women’s roles. After situating sex as dirty and dangerous, particularly for girls, how does abstinence-only also make a case for the duty of sex and reproduction within marriage? Project Reality addresses this issue in its abstinence curriculum: Abstinence doesn’t mean: Sex is bad. Abstinence means: Sex is good. Save it, protect it, and preserve it, so that you can enjoy it in a marriage relationship.63

Testimony at the abstinence education hearings echoed this theme and the importance of abstinence until marriage: Sex is a wonderful gift. . . . It is like a really strong glue, bonding two people together. . . . And when you go to bond the second time, the glue doesn’t work as well. The bond is weaker. Each time you bond and break up, the bond grows weaker and weaker. And when you finally meet the person of your dreams and you marry and you want to enjoy deep intimacy in your relationship, the bond simply does not work as well.64


Abstinence-only discourse is careful to situate and understand the special and unique place and role of women in order not only for abstinence to work, but also wants to reinforce the desire for women to fulfill their natural role and engage in appropriate reproduction in heterosexual marriage. Seemingly abstinence-only supporters fear that freedom from heterosexual sexual activity, freedom from reproduction, could slip into promotion of lesbian identity or feminist discourses of equality for women having the effect of even more women pursuing their own careers and putting marriage and childbearing on hold. This is neither the intent nor the desire of abstinence-only discourse. In response to feminist messages of equality for women, abstinenceonly discourses situate the women’s movement as having gone too far and abstinence-only discourse reinforces women’s place as childbearers. This point is made clear in the testimony of Allan Carlson, president of the Rockford Institute in Illinois, during the abstinence education hearings: we need to remember that there is, in fact, a good to be found within the adolescent pregnancy problem, namely, the desire to bear a child. We must recall that the desire to have a baby is natural to our species, rooted in human nature, a healthy acceptance of the biological urge to reproduce.65

Here the desire to “bear a child” at whatever age is positive. The behavior simply needs to be positioned to occur within heterosexual marriage. In this way, through abstinence-only education, we could, take the healthy natural urge of young women to bear and rear babies and work to channel that urge into the building and maintenance of stable marriage.66

Key to abstinence-only discourses is the reification of traditional gender roles and specifically control of female sexuality and reproduction by promoting marriage as a solution.

Reassertion of Traditional Gender Roles: Women as Flowers, Men as the Necessary Tool Abstinence-only discourse and programs contain many messages about controlling female sexuality. The loss of family values and increase in promiscuity are directly linked to a decline of traditional gender roles, specifically for girls/women. Although abstinence-only educational programs do not claim direct links with Christian groups, the Senate and congressional hearings on abstinence education and preventing teen pregnancy make clear the linkages between Christian organizations and churches with these programs. As Catholic leaders involved in abstinence education testified at the abstinence education hearings: [T]his is what we do every day in our Catholic schools, teach our young people the value of abstinence and chastity and saving sexual activity for marriage.67


Many religious affiliations have developed and disseminated abstinenceonly education programs and implemented them in community settings. Recognition of this relationship is even more vital now with President Bush’s emphasis upon providing funding to community organizations, including religious organizations, to provide social services to communities. Although abstinence education curricula are not supposedly linked with Christian beliefs, during the hearings several individuals made explicit references to God and the Bible, to explain how they understood and practiced abstinence. Pastor Roland Smith of the United Pentecostal Church International noted: Sex was a subject that confused the wisest man in scripture, Solomon. Sex was the opponent that humbled the strongest man in scripture, which was Sampson, and sex was a trap that ensnared even a man after God’s own heart, and that was David.68

What is unsaid but prevalent in the mind of those familiar with the above biblical stories is that in each case it was a woman, a wanton, willful, lying, sinning woman behind men’s confusion and downfalls. This view is expressed by later testimony noting, Teenage pregnancy is as old as the daughters of Lot who were educated in the schools of Sodom and Gomorrah.69

Abstinence-only education while it claims to promote abstinence for both males and females clearly situates female sexuality as problematic and in need of regulation and control. One means of controlling female sexuality is to reassert traditional gender roles in males and females. In abstinence-only discourse women become “ladies” and their role is to protect and honor their virtue. As one young man testified at the congressional hearings, I would like to say women are blossoms. They make everything beautiful. But it takes a man to build the foundation to hold all of that up.70

The woman’s role is clearly specified in such a relationship as in this testimony of a twenty-year-old female, we want young ladies to be good wives to their husbands, to be good mothers to their children, and to live and to have happy and healthy lives.71

Ignoring that most families find it necessary to have two incomes in order to support their children, abstinence-only seeks to resituate the male, the father, as provider. Replicating the attention given in earlier decades to and presumed deficiency of the “black family,” many of those providing testimony were identified as being from the “inner city.” These witnesses, teens and adults,


made the case that abstinence-only programs and pursuit of traditional roles can occur in “minority communities.”72 One witness testified of the need to bring morality through “abstinence” into “public housing developments” and that programs piloted in middle-income schools can be moved into “urban settings” to “foster self-respect by promoting self-restraint.”73 Witnesses noted that questions should be raised about how the teens who leave “these communities were able to make it out drug free, crime free, and their virginity intact.”74 During the congressional hearings on teen pregnancy an African-American adult female witness testified that she has heard too many times that “premarital abstinence is a white-class value, one that is in discord with the African-American’s culture” something she refutes.75 This sentiment was echoed in the abstinence education hearing by the testimony of another African-American woman, You see, I discovered, after two children, two abortions and also being afflicted with herpes, I finally discovered that sexual intercourse, protected or unprotected, brought devastating consequences I did not want to experience ever again. So that left me with only abstinence.76

This same witness after noting that she was currently “not on welfare, though I have been” goes on to detail how: Unlike some who believe it’s an impossibility for African Americans, well, I have successfully maintained a celibate life for over 8 years, and I do know other African Americans who have chosen this way of life too.77

Such testimony affirms that abstinence-only will work to solve welfare dependency problems. The benefits of abstinence-only education on reasserting traditional gender role performance in urban settings was also often noted. One teen girl, enrolled in an abstinence program, provided testimony about girls she knew who were sleeping with their boyfriends, explaining: We went to a party Saturday, and the shooting started. My boyfriend took care of me, looked around, and made sure I got out of there, and so did my best friend’s boyfriend do the same for her. Our other friends, the boys left them flat. They got out of there, and they didn’t look back.78

This young woman’s testimony contains several themes, including that when you sleep with a boy he loses respect for you and reassertion of male as protector, all of which work to reinforce traditional gender roles. It is telling that it was not the girl’s attendance at a party where “shooting started” that was of note here (situating such an occurrence as natural given who she is, a black teen girl, and where she lives, an urban setting), but rather her gendered story that fit the purpose of the hearings. Interestingly, one urban-based program focusing specifically upon the plight and condition of the African-American male called COURT—Chaste,


Outstanding, Urban, Righteous, Teens—encourages inner-city teens to not be another “urban statistic.” As a representative of COURT testified kids like us are lucky to get one chance in this world . . . let us face it, our world is not exactly colorblind. You get one chance to make it in this world . . . and chastity helps us do that.”79

This linking of abstinence as a tool to counter institutional racism may be more prevalent than the hearings indicate and provides an interesting context for looking at “urban” abstinence programs, however, any program that reasserts gender roles prescribed under patriarchy will not be emancipatory for either males or females. Further, testimony by those involved with “inner-city” programs focused attention upon what to do about the number of teens who have already had sexual intercourse or are an unwed teen mother. What is the role of abstinence-only education in the lives of teens that are already sexually active? Abstinence programs do not want to turn such students away, but following a Christian edict such teens can admit their “sin” and reform their ways. Project Reality abstinence curriculum has a chapter entitled “Half-Time” explaining that “half-time is a chance to review your game and make adjustments in order to win.” This chapter notes that, It is always possible to stop unhealthy behavior and to start over, especially when it comes to sexual activity . . . Whether you or someone you know has become sexually active, it is never too late to start over again.80

However, while this message of reform is geared toward male and female students, much of the language describing reformation is focused upon the female. Note the gender pronoun used in the testimony below, just because a person stole something as a child, she doesn’t have to grow up to be a cat burglar. She can change. In the same way young people can change their sexual behavior.81

Further, many programs have terms for teens who were once sexually active but are not abstinent, including “secondary virgins,” “renewed virginity,” “second virginity,” and “rewrapping your gift.” These terms are highly feminized and some girls wear “chastity rings” to signify their commitment.82 The onus of responsibility is clearly upon the female, the girl, to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage. It is the woman who needs to be pure, to be virginal, to, as one young woman testified,“save myself for my husband.”83 Girls and women are once again situated as the keepers of sexual morality. This message is further reinforced by reasserting binary understandings of how sex is different for males and females. The idea that boys are governed by hormones while girls are not, that male responses are biological


and girls are choices, is prevalent. Consider this quote from an Atlantic Monthly article published in 1994, which stated, “girls’ sexual conduct, unlike that of boys, is governed less by hormones than by social controls.”84 A spoken word play performed by two young men at the abstinence hearings echoed this sentiment: When a girl has sex with a guy, she is making an emotional investment in him. When it is all over and the relationship becomes basically just sex, she becomes jaded. She becomes very cynical and begins thinking every guy comes to expect some action. Or some girls will become resentful and carry this resentment, this idea of being used, this feeling of being there to make him happy into every relationship. Even into a relationship that leads to marriage. And, well, I do not know about you, but I do not want to marry some chick who already resents me for something somebody else did with her. Remember, there is no condom big enough to protect you from a broken heart, see. Guys look at having sex a little differently.85

Such binary constructions continue to situate any control of male sexuality as unrational—males are driven by biology, hormones, and natural urges that they cannot control, thus their teenage sexual experimentation (and indeed during their lifetime) is seen as “natural.” However, female sexual curiosity and desire is situated as unnatural, as wanton, not biological and thus within a female’s realm of control and society’s realm of interest and surveillance. Females do not need to have sex; they can choose whether or not to have sex. In this way, females, girls who do express interest in sexuality or engage in sexual behavior are situated as out of control. Alarm over girls who are out of control is prevalent in both the abstinence education and teen pregnancy hearings. Leon Dash’s articles on unwed mothers were noted by one witness for the: girls 12, 13, 14, 15 trying to become pregnant, when even the men do not want them to be pregnant. That was frightening.86

Several national newspaper articles have featured stories on how it is girls who are the (sexual) aggressors in relationships with boys.87 Project Reality’s abstinence curriculum offers two case studies where girls are the aggressors, wanting sex with their boyfriends who do not want to have sex. These girls’ desires are situated as unnatural and dirty, while in the two case studies where boys are the aggressors, the boys are presented as either emotionally disturbed or physically abusive—again boys’ behavior is understood as controlled by biology, by destiny, while girls’ sexual behavior is deviant.88


Such discourses reinforce the idea that sexual activity is really a woman’s responsibility as clarified by one witness who noted the “breakdown of the family” is women’s responsibility and women’s work.89 Responsibility for the protection of female sexuality and thus the fabric of society is repeatedly placed upon girls and women. William Raspberry argues in a 1996 commentary that attempts to place equal responsibility on males to prevent teen pregnancy have not been effective. He concludes: the direct consequences of sexual imprudence fall most directly on girls. We used to acknowledge that fact and gear our advice to accommodate it. Then we decided it was unfair to put the burden of sexual responsibility principally on the girls, and our public discussions changed to accommodate our new nonsexist attitude. The results have not been encouraging.90

What is most disturbing about such commentary is its reassertion of female responsibility not only for female behavior but for male behavior also. This reassertion of female responsibility is not a female emancipation; it is instead a call for girls and women to accept and perform their roles as women, wives, and mothers and the reinstitution of traditional heterosexual gender roles for girls and women.

Marriage as the Solution Is marriage the solution for adolescent sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy? Does the presence of a man in the house alleviate the problems associated with teen pregnancy? Is sex within marriage safe? Replicating recent social welfare reform initiatives, abstinence-only discourse has situated marriage not only as a solution, but as the solution to our sex problems in the United States. Mr. Charles Ballard, founder of the Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization, reminisced about the time when men took care of family issues—when, If a girl got pregnant, her father marched down to the guy’s father and said listen, let’s talk. And together, those two fathers ensured that this girl and this boy got married.91

In the present, minus such locus of control by patriarch’s, Project Reality’s abstinence education curriculum repeatedly emphasizes that the only way to avoid the dangers, emotional and physical of sex, is by avoiding all forms of sexual activity before marriage, marrying an uninfected person and being faithful to your spouse.92

Project Reality curriculum also tells students that living together is not enough, arguing that: Couples who lived together before marriage had a 50% higher chance of divorce than couples who did not live together before marriage.93


Project Reality’s message goes beyond arguments of the emotional and physical safety marriage provides to repeated descriptions of marriage as the ultimate goal. In a chapter, “Winning the Prize,” marriage is situated as the ultimate award. Under a “Go for the Gold,” heading, marriage, “the ultimate relationship, is like winning a championship game.”94 The use of sports metaphors and emphasis upon winning in this curriculum may be meant to speak to male students but these metaphors also perpetuate an ideology of gender roles in heterosexual relationships where the woman is the prize and the man is to be caught. The stories about marriage in Project Reality’s curriculum also reflect traditional gender roles after marriage. Consider for example the following story of Steve and Karen. Steve had been introduced in the curriculum earlier for losing a girlfriend because he did not give into her pressure to have sex before marriage. Six years later, Steve met his future wife Karen in college. Steve and Karen were both abstinent and shortly after they graduated from college, they were married. Steve and Karen have now been married for over 17 years and have four young children. Steve is a teacher, and Karen enjoys caring for the children. Steve and Karen never worry about sexually transmitted diseases, or unwanted pregnancy, or emotional issues. Sex is a normal, natural, and exciting part of their lives together.95

The image of the intact heterosexual nuclear family, with dad at work and mom happily taking care of the kids, presented throughout Project Reality’s curriculum harkens back with nostalgia to an earlier era, before the women’s movement, when women went to college not for a career but to find their husband, and when America did not have the dependency upon welfare prevalent within some families today. The message, replicating debates arising out of racial fears and crisis talk surrounding unwed mothering and welfare reform, is clear—marriage is the only responsible way to be a family and be a good citizen. This message reinforces the emphasis upon abstinence and marriage within PRWORA. Although earlier chapters in Project Reality’s curriculum have students focusing upon their goals, including career goals, it is evident by the later chapters that particularly for girls the ultimate goal should be marriage and motherhood. The production of four children in Steve and Karen’s story is also an important part of an abstinence-only movement, placing an emphasis on the production of many children in heterosexual marriage as the right thing and right roles for males and females to perform. Marriage for the unwed mother, including the teen mother, is also presented as a viable option. Several witnesses at the congressional hearings on abstinence education and teen pregnancy clarified that they did not want to find fault with a female’s desire to reproduce, rather what needs to


change are the circumstances of such births. As one witness at the abstinence education hearings put it: Our central problem is not adolescent pregnancy per se, but rather the breakdown of cultural and moral guideposts that for generations channeled this healthy natural urge into stable marriage. Every successful human society in all times and places has ordered its educational, legal, and cultural practices to ensure that sexual communion, pregnancy, and childbearing would normally occur within marriage.96

Another witness at the teen pregnancy hearings emphasized that “marriage can be promoted in households where the mother may have children by several different men.”97 Such comments and the policies that develop from such ideology continue to ignore that “economic pressures—not cultural patterns—cause African Americans to form nonnuclear family arrangements.”98 Social welfare reform initiatives of the 1990s relied upon conservative ideology that welfare payments somehow created “perverse incentives” for low-income women not to marry, yet many researchers have continued to find no relationship between “the generosity of welfare payments and the rate of outof-wedlock births.”99 Such findings continue to challenge marriage as a fix, particularly for low-income women and present a different portrait of the, deleterious effects of nontraditional family structures (such as out-of-wedlock births to a young parent) on life chances as indicated by educational attainment are not a result of culture or values but rather are merely a statistical reflection of the lower levels of economic resources found in these families.100

Further, although social welfare policy focused upon marriage as a solution to the problems associated with unwed teen pregnancy, a large-scale longitudinal study done in 1994 revealed that teens who marry are more likely to have a close second birth, while teen mothers who remain unwed but who continue in some form of educational program are less likely to have a closely spaced second birth.101 If the focus for young women is to decrease the rate and risk of second pregnancy, then education is more effective than marriage. The fact that education has not been and is not central to such debates demonstrates that public and policy concern is on unwed mothering, not closely spaced second births. Closely spaced second births are only a concern if they occur to the unwed teen mother. However, such an emphasis upon marriage ignores the high rate of divorce overall in the United States and research indicating that divorce is even higher (close to 70 percent) for young women who enter marriage as a teen mother.102 These factors suggest that encouraging young unwed mothers to marry as a solution to their economic and cultural problems is not viable policy.


Abstinence-only discourse, fed by epidemic logic, feeds the necessity of regulatory and limited policy solutions, and delimits exploration of alternative policy options. For example, what would it mean instead to ask the following questions: What supports do unwed mothers need in order to parent? What additional supports do low-income single mothers need? What would it mean to build a community of parents, of mothers, instead of relying upon individualistic notions of responsibility and the instability of the heterosexual, nuclear family? Such questions work to “move the debate away from discussion of the values of single parents—either black or white—and toward a discussion of how to foster wealth accumulation among nonnuclear family units.”103 This focus acknowledges the historical, economic, and racial structural barriers and inequities facing low-income mothers, empowers mothers to mother in “non-traditional” units (e.g., singly or in combination with other mothers or other couples) without social stigma or economic punishment, and does not simply situate marriage and traditional gender roles as a solution.

Discourses of Control—Norplant As noted previously, a climate of crisis engenders epidemic logic, which reinforces quick, ill-thought out, limited, and regulatory policy recommendations and decisions. For instance, past AERA president Julian Stanley’s comments at the beginning of chapter 3 calling for the use of enforced birth control, makes this extreme recommendation without any knowledge of what the effects of his recommendations would be. Instead, he notes that “researchers could determine whether the strategy that I have proposed increases educational levels, reduces delinquency and crime, and promotes vocationally self-sufficiency.”104 Despite the fact that the contraceptive methods Stanley endorsed have not been studied or in some cases approved for use by women under the age of seventeen and that long-term effects of the use of such contraceptives at an early age are not known, such ethical considerations are overridden by the sense of “emergency” surrounding teen pregnancy. Additionally, Stanley does not address how decisions would be made about which teens to put on contraceptives— presumably we will just know which girls are at risk. There are obvious problematics with such policy recommendations, but before we dismiss Stanley’s views as far fetched, consider that several judges in the early 1990s prescribed as part of women’s sentences for child abuse, drug use, or welfare fraud, mandatory birth control, through insertion of Norplant, or they would have to serve a jail sentence.105 Norplant was seen by some as the answer to a growing “underclass”—an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer of December 1990 asked and answered affirmatively, “Poverty and Norplant: Can Contraception Reduce the Underclass?”


While the editorial sparked a debate and the author faced charges that his argument was racist and classist, several states moved to include “incentives” to use Norplant as part of their social welfare systems. Such programs include full payment or reimbursement for Norplant insertion and programs that offer a “cash bonus to those women who agreed to be implanted with the device.”106 By 1995, all states and the District of Columbia provided Norplant at no expense to poor women and some states offered cash incentives for the use of Norplant.107 Norplant, six, match-stick size, silicon cylinders, releases a steady dose of the synthetic hormone levnorgestill into the bloodstream, thus preventing pregnancy. The tubes are surgically inserted, typically in the inner upper arm, and can be left in for up to five years. Once inserted Norplant cannot be removed by the woman without great pain and injury—they must be surgically removed. Norplant is barely noticeable and when touched feel like small bumps under the skin. These characteristics of Norplant made it especially attractive to some judges: Norplant presents a special temptation to judges because it’s so long lasting and doesn’t require any cooperation after its implanted, and can be monitored by a parole officer just by looking at a woman’s arm.108

Corresponding to judicial decisions, I found that in the mid-1990s many young women, specifically those teen mothers in alternative schools, almost exclusively African Americans, were counseled to use “long-term, maintenance-free” birth control, the most popular at that time being Norplant. In two states I studied, over 60 percent of county health clinics either offered teen mothers Norplant for free or at a reduced rate and some clinics provide cash incentives to teens having Norplant inserted. In one alternative school for teen mothers that I visited 80 percent of the girls (18 out of 23) were “on” Norplant. All of the girls using Norplant were age sixteen or under, were African American or mixed-race Black/White, and each girl received a $50 cash incentive for having Norplant inserted. The attraction of Norplant for these teen girls wasn’t simply the “longterm and maintenance-free” characteristics of Norplant but rather as the girls told me, “it’s invisible, no one has to know you are on it.” While all of these girls were teen mothers and sexually active, they still succumbed to pressure and perceptions about being a “bad girl” by being “prepared for sex” by “being on the pill or carrying around condoms in your purse.” As one sixteen-year-old girl “on Norplant” explained: Y’know how like the boys grab your purse in the hallway and look to see if you have birth control pills and then they tell everyone you’re on the pill—now you won’t have to worry about that anymore.


For these girls the allure of a birth control method that was for the most part also invisible to them allowed them to separate themselves from the “bad girls” who plan for sex or sleep around. The girls talked to each other about Norplant—about where to get it, if the insertion hurt, and which clinics offered the bonus payment—showed and touched each other’s insertion sites, and when faced with a skeptical response such as “oh, that’s gross,” noted that Norplant was “less gross and less messy than condoms or foam.” While the development of Norplant was signaled as the most significant contraceptive development for women since the pill, offering further sexual freedom, evidence of the enforced use of Norplant as well as the attraction of Norplant for the girls in my study based on Norplant’s invisibility, are not indicative of an advanced sexual freedom for women. As Dr. Sheldon Segal, one of the developers of Norplant, noted, We created a method to enhance reproductive freedom and people keep finding ways to use it for the opposite purpose. . . . The team that worked on Norplant had been concerned that a government would misuse the device to enforce birth control. But they were worrying about China, not California.109

The prescribed use of Norplant in cases of low-income and minority women, or in my research teen mothers, is not to provide these women with sexual freedom, but rather is about the control of their sexuality and reproductive freedom. Darci E. Burrell notes that while the constitutionality of enforced sterilization and contraception among low-income and raced women has been questioned, we have not focused upon “analyzing the motivations behind such proposals or the reproductive history of women of color in America.”110 While Norplant did not become the next pill and in July 2002 was recalled from the market, due not only to implementation and removal problems but also to the controversies surrounding its enforced use, the quick rise of the use of and link of Norplant with control of “unfit mothers” should be a cautionary tale.111 Norplant fed our ongoing obsession with the welfare mother and regulatory control of such women, including teen mothers who are often seen most at risk for being the worst type of welfare mother. In this way, Norplant is one of the most recent episodes in a long history of control and enforced regulation not only of female sexuality but of motherhood, in particular the motherhood of racialized and low-income women in the United States.

Concluding Thoughts on Incitements to Discourse As this chapter traces, an incitement of discourse surrounding female sexuality linked with the problems of teen pregnancy and welfare dependency


not only allows for but makes necessary abstinence-only discourse and policy. Abstinence-only further proliferates talk about sex in order to contain it by explicitly situating “sex as dirty” and “sex as dangerous.” These discourses further necessitate a reassertion of traditional gender roles, particularly for girls and women, and marriage as the solution to what ails us morally and fiscally. These discourses occur in highly racialized contexts; both protecting the white female and family, while also aiming at reforming the deficit racialized female and her family and community. For those “deficit” females, those girls/women who by race and class are constructed as unreachable by the reform efforts of the previous discourses, discourses of control seem justified. Discourses of control feed regulatory uses of reproductive technology like Norplant and seem necessary in times of crisis surrounding female sexuality, unfit mothers, and fiscal insecurity. Multiple policy discourses converge to reinforce a climate of epidemic logic and containment. Epidemic logic drives a proliferation of discourses of control creating sites of incitement to discourse about sex in order to regulate, survey, and control female sexual activity and mothering. Incitements to discourse focused upon female sexuality, unwed mothering, and welfare dependency, coalesce with and through abstinence-only discourses delimiting alternative discourses and policy options and rendering what is most hegemonic to seem most natural and most necessary.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy initiated a “pregnancy-free adolescence” message that has been incorporated into soap operas, public service announcements, and MTV. Tolman, “Doing Desire,” 324. See Kelly, “Warning Labels,” and Pregnant with Meaning, 67–90, 161–184. Lesko, “Implausible Endings,” 49. Walkerdine, Schoolgirl Fictions, 122. Michel Foucault’s work is integral to identifying incitement to discourse as a means of proliferation in order to regulate and control that which the state wants to contain. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. While the analysis in this chapter is not specifically focused upon sexuality within school settings, it is informed by my experiences as a researcher in schools and understanding of schools as one setting responsible for controlling teen sexual behavior. Schools, while highly sexualized and sexual institutions, attempt to negate this by desexualizing adults and students through “neutral” pedagogy, policy, and practice. Schools however can be read as sites of sexual incitement—from sports to cheerleading, to dances and assemblies with sexual themes, to pajama/lingerie days where girls show up in Victoria Secret-style states of un-dress, to dress codes attempting to contain teen bodies. The extent of what schools approve and encourage in sexual behavior and what they discourage is beyond the scope and intent of this chapter but an understanding of schools as highly sexualized sites (both in what they [re]produce and what they attempt to control) is integral to critically examining abstinence-only education programs. Singer, Erotic Welfare, 120. Lewin, “Virgins Outnumber Sexually Active Teenagers, Study Reports,” Section 1, 27. Kenney and Orr, “Sex Education,” 494. Kenney, “Teen Pregnancy,” 732.

Incitement to Discourse • 213 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

Kenney, “Teen Pregnancy,” 732. Education Week, “Here They Come, Ready or Not,” 8. See, Vergari, “Morality Politics and Educational Policy,” 290–310 and Levin-Epstein, Teen Parent Provisions in the New Law. U.S. Congress. Subcommittee on Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations. Preventing Teen Pregnancy: Coordinating Community Efforts, 104th Cong., 2nd sess., 30 April 1996, 23. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 42, 45, 58. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 20. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 26, 36. Vergari, “Morality Politics and Educational Policy.” Vergari, “Morality Politics and Educational Policy.” In Vergari, “Morality Politics and Educational Policy,” 297. Source Abstinence Education, Pub. L. No. 104–193, 510, 42 U.S.C. 710 et seq. 1997. Vergari, “Morality Politics and Educational Policy,” 297. Stolberg, “Grants Aid Abstinence-Only Initiative,” A18. For other articles on President Bush’s comments on abstinence-only initiatives see: Editorial, “Morality Issues Returns”; Stolberg, “Bush Pushing Teen Abstinence,” A11; The White House, “Working Toward Independence.” Clymer, “Critics Say Government Deleted Sexual Material From a Web Site to Push Abstinence”; Clymer, “U.S. Revises Sex Information and a Fight Goes On,” A15. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 1–2. Males, “Poverty, Rape, Adult/Teen Sex,” 408. Males, “Poverty, Rape, Adult/Teen Sex,” 408. Law, “Sex Discrimination and Insurance for Contraception,” 363–401. See Males, “Poverty, Rape, Adult/Teen Sex.” U.S. Congress. Senate. Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. Abstinence Education. 104th Cong., 2nd sess., 11, 22, 29, July 1996, 15; 87; 130. While in this chapter I do not discuss student response and agency in such programs, I do not deny the potential of teen girls to find spaces of resistance within restricted discursive spaces. See e.g., Pillow, “Exposed Methodology,” and Weis, “Learning to Speak Out in an Abstinence-Based Sex Education Group,” 620–650. For alternative view see Holm, “Handled but not Heard,” 253–264. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 2. Phelps and Gray, A.C. Green’s Game Play/Abstinence Program, 35. Schemo, “Sex Education with Just One Lesson: No Sex,” A1, A18. Are such posters effective? No research has been done. When I showed the posters to my children and some of their friends they had mixed views. While they said yes they would read the poster once, they did not think the posters would have an impact on teen behavior, and frankly the students I showed the posters to, middle schoolers, were more into how the poster subjects looked and what they wore—the models hairstyles and accessories—than in the message. What they did understand is that the posters “should make you feel bad about sex.” Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 33. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 142. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 19. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 79. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 15. Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiation as Social Redemption.” Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 138. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 108, 131. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 127, 129. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 127. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 127. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 135–136. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 140. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 138–139. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 29. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 20. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 29.

214 • Unfit Subjects 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 95. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 51. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 56–57. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 59–60. I did however encounter several “older” teen mothers (age seventeen and older at birth) who told me they believed it was better to have children when the woman was younger and healthier. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 63. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 65. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 104. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 106. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 108. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 10. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 96. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 3. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 3. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 41. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 69; see also 57, 69, 87, 102, 122. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 123. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 147. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 120. For discussion of the historical and economic forces shaping the black family in the U.S. See Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 26. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 40. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 43. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 48. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 48. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 79. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 81. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 42–43. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 96. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 91, 95, 97, 100, 109. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 24. Whitehead, “The Failure of Sex Education,” 74. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 79–80. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 27; Leon Dash’s work was also referred to in teen pregnancy hearings, “the upshot was that there were girls 13, 14, and 15 trying to have babies when the fellows did not want them to have babies” Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 57. See e.g., Kuczynski, “She’s Got to Be a Macho Girl,” 12. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 11, 45, 55, 75. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 30. Raspberry, “Strip the Myths from Teen Pregnancy.” Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 90. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 39. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 60. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 59. Phelps and Gray, Game Play/Abstinence Program, 12. Senate Subcommittee. Abstinence Education, 3. Congress. Subcommittee. Preventing Teen Pregnancy, 43. Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, 113; see also pp. 109–32. See Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, 115–16. Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, 131. Kalmuss and Namerow, “Subsequent Childbearing among Teenage Mothers,” 149–153, 159. Kalmuss and Namerow, “Subsequent Childbearing among Teenage Mothers.” Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, 131. Stanley, “‘The Vision Thing,’ “ 34.

Incitement to Discourse • 215 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

Burrell, “The Norplant Solution,” 401–444. Burrell, “The Norplant Solution,” 402. Burrell, “The Norplant Solution,” 430. Burrell, “The Norplant Solution,” 437. In Goodman, “Norplant Dilemma,” 3C and Goodman, “Editorial,” A13. Burrell, “The Norplant Solution,” 410. For a discussion of the demise of Norplant and recent contraceptive devices see Berger, “After Long Hiatus, New Contraceptive Emerge,” D5.

CHAPTER

7

Education for Teen Mothers

Can a public school justify a policy that encourages students to drop out? —Donald Warren “Pregnant Students/Public Schools” (1972)

The challenge embedded in the above question asked in an article on pregnant students in Phi Delta Kappan remains pertinent for school policy and practice today. Although it has been thirty years since Title IX was passed, school policies and practices continue to delimit educational access and opportunity for pregnant/mothering students. As this book indicates education for teen mothers cannot be separated from historical, political, and ideological constructions of the teen mother and the problems of unwed teen pregnancy. Discourses constructing the problems of the unwed mother and teen pregnancy are historically consistent but have undergone key shifts over time. Early F.C. ideology focused upon benevolency discourses and laid a foundation for understanding unwed pregnancy among white women as treatable. A further professionalization of treatment for white unwed mothers reinforced growing trends toward understanding and situating black unwed mothers as deviant, individually and culturally deficit. The understanding that white unwed mothers, unwed and later white teen mothers, were treatable, yielded legislative policies such as Title IX that reinforced teen mothers’ entitlement to education. Yet differential racialized definitions of teen mothers proliferated, culminating in the perception of low-income and specifically black unwed teen mothers as “Welfare Queens.” Racialized discourses of teen mothers, specifically black teen mothers, as unfit single mothers, as immoral and infectious, as indicative of all that 217


is wrong with social welfare, and as a site of alarm over a “browning” of America, signaled the need not for further policies and programs of entitlement but policies and programs of regulation, containment, and control. Legislatively, these discourses were enacted when the link between welfare and teen pregnancy became solidified in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and its reauthorization in 2002. The Welfare Reform Acts constituted a shift from treating teen mothers as entitled subjects (as Title IX did) to punishing them through social welfare regulation. Programs for teen mothers developed under and through racialized discourses of welfare and teen pregnancy emphasize training unwed teen mothers to fit into a lowwage economy and attempt to control their attitudes, morals, and values. At the same time, policy discourses in education have been co-opted and controlled by conservative ideology, which emerged during the first term of President Reagan’s administration. Teen pregnancy is just one of the many issues that have been redefined by right-of-center policy analysts resulting in educationists being shut out of many education policy issues.1 The explicit absence of educationists in developing national policy, program development, and evaluation led to a decreased role by those who are most involved with teens and pregnant/mothering students. School personnel are not, however, immune to the racialized, political, and popular culture discourses constructing who the teen mother is and what her problems are. When faced with the presence of pregnant/mothering students in their schools, they enact such discourse in policy and practice. These discourses both influence and reflect the absence of school policy about the pregnant/mothering student, the presence of restrictive policy, and unwritten school policy about where and how pregnant/mothering teens should be provided an education. In practice then this means that decisions affecting pregnant/mothering students’ access to and experiences of schooling are left up to individual school personnel decisions and often arbitrarily made. As noted, teen pregnancy—particularly when it involves black unwed pregnancies—is linked with moral decay and welfare dependency. In response, white teen girls, “our girls,” must be protected from the risks of immorality and irresponsibility of black female sexuality and illicit reproduction. Differential historical constructions and understandings of the problems of unwed mothers based upon race have engendered and made necessary differential responses to the problems of teen pregnancy in the United States. These differential constructions—from white unwed mother as “fallen” yet redeemable and black unwed mother as “wanton” and dangerous, to white teen mother as entitled and black teen mother as responsible for her plight—dramatically impact educational discourse, policy, and practice surrounding pregnant/mothering teens.

Education for Teen Mothers • 219

Thus some pregnant/mothering teens are entitled to an education—are entitled to return to their regular track after giving birth—while other teen mothers are treated through a discourse of education as a responsibility. This responsibility is not only about individual responsibility but responsibility to society to become a productive, fiscally responsible, mother. Education as a responsibility is linked with social welfare reform emphasizing school-to-work tracks for unwed teen mothers. This emphasis has caused school-based programs for teen mothers that orient the teen mother to the world of work to gain in influence. Despite evaluations that demonstrate the many problems and failures of such programs, emphasizing vocational education for some teen mothers is not only the accepted approach but viewed as the only viable approach for educating teen mothers. Lesko argues that if “school-aged mothers are to fare better, educators must stop reducing the concept of independence to employment” and consider more fully and critically what pregnant/mothering teens need in order to be independent.2 Lesko reframes the present emphasis upon discourses of responsibility and independence by asking: “In order to create independent young single mothers, what kinds of programs are necessary?”3 The challenge of Lesko’s question cannot be underestimated—that is do we want young single mothers, particularly young unwed black mothers, to be fully independent? Unfit Subjects suggest that we do not—that independence in such young women has been and continues to be seen as a threat. Discourses of moral and fiscal independence are proliferated not to grant low-income, racialized unwed teen mothers agency but rather to necessitate control and containment of their lives. In this way, discourses of independence necessitate the need for “dual-role” programs, training for employment in low-wage positions, and “abstinence-only” education, including a reorienting of such girls to traditional gender roles and marriage. Compounding these discourses, questions of “whose responsibility is the teen mother?” continue to linger. Are schools, the community, the city, state or nation responsible for the teen mother? Is teen pregnancy a health issue, psychological issue, an educational issue, or a social welfare issue? The problem for social and educational policy is that teen pregnancy cannot be easily contained within one discourse, within one policy solution. Teen mothers, like all mothers, have needs that cross roles, disciplines, and discourses. However, regardless of the multiple needs of teen mothers, schools specifically under Title IX remain the primary and frontline service providers for pregnant/mothering teens. What would it mean for educationists to rise to this challenge? As Donald Warren argued in 1972,

220 • Unfit Subjects equal educational opportunity for pregnant students, if that right is to be affirmed through school policy, requires more than business as usual, more than refraining from excluding them from regular academic programs.4

Warren stated that what is needed are “explicit signals” from the school “that encourage pregnant students to view continuing in school as a practical—and desirable—possibility.”5 What would these “explicit signals” look like? Returning to the interests that shaped this book and thinking with Warren’s call for “explicit signals,” I conclude by considering how we might do research differently, how we might reconceptualize teen pregnancy as an educational gender and race equity issue, and consider the potential of existing separate school settings to operate as productive single-sex spaces. These interests focus attention upon what education for pregnant/mothering teens might look like.

Interrupting Discourses of Contamination and Control Pregnant/mothering teens interrupt set understandings of adolescence, female sexuality, mothering, and education. Their interruptions have made them unfit educational subjects. What would it mean instead view these girls as sites of potential; to interrupt how pregnant/mothering teens do not fit by making visible the constructions and experiences of their unfitness. This exposure works not simply to make visible but to interrogate the productions and silences surrounding teen mothers. Entailed in such a move are counter stories of teen mothers—counter stories that expose the hypervisibility of discourses surrounding teen mothers, while also exposing how existing narrative structures do not fit with pregnant/mothering teens’ experiences. For instance, how does knowing that up to 40 percent of pregnant/mothering teens in school are school returnees—that is girls who returned to school because they were pregnant? One approach, I acknowledge, could be a continued emphasis upon control and regulation of such girls; they have repeatedly failed, have dropped out of school and gotten pregnant and now need to be trained to be morally and fiscally responsible. However, other policy options also arise from knowing many girls return to school when pregnant. That is, as girls themselves indicate, pregnancy and mothering may be a time of refocusing and commitment. Pregnancy and mothering may represent a unique opportunity for schools to intervene in proactive and positive ways in girls’ lives. This would mean providing an education that is defined as doing more than reforming teen mothers and preparing them for pinkcollar, low-income “careers.” Here educationists have to enter discussions and debates surrounding what does “equal” look like for pregnant/mothering teens? Although Title


IX does offer some direction on this, societal attitudes toward the protection and vilification of unwed pregnant women and teen mothers impacts the provision of education to them. How can we interrupt and disentangle present-day discourses of “at-risk,” contamination, and separation, and get to questions of what equal opportunity might look like for pregnant/ mothering teens? Such a shift in thinking necessitates doing educational research and policy analysis that reflects historical, political constructions of teen mothers and acknowledges barriers—structural and ideological—that face teen mothers. The racialized discourses constructing teen mothers and impacting how their educational needs are defined, who is deserving and of what, are not linear. They are multiple, interwoven across history, time, space, impacting ideology, policies, and practices. Tracing such discourses requires research methodologies that are themselves multimodal and multivocal. As Lee Quinby argues “decentered power relations require decentered political struggle.”6 Research that explicitly details the experiences of pregnant/mothering students in schools is necessary in order to begin to interrupt existing discursive structures defining the teen mother and her educational needs and to understand how teen mothers currently access and experience educational opportunity. Such research may for example include pregnant/ mothering students’ educational histories and narratives, including their access to and engagement with education prior to, during, and after pregnancy; or may offer close analysis of what type of education pregnant/ mothering students receive in separate school programs, addressing questions of comparability under Title IX.7

Making Teen Pregnancy a Fit Educational Equity Issue Why hasn’t teen pregnancy gained attention as an educational equity issue? Racialized discourses connecting teen pregnancy with social welfare reform have effectively removed teen pregnancy from the educational policy arena. However, given that teen mothers report disengagement from school prior to becoming pregnant, and research indicates that one characteristic teen mothers’ overall share is placement in lower-level courses prior to becoming pregnant, it is vital to define teen pregnancy as a gender and racial equity issue in education. For instance, knowing that many girls become pregnant when they leave school, one way to prevent teen pregnancy is by focusing upon decreasing school drop out rates for girls. As a gender and racial equity issue this would mean, for example, paying close attention to who is gaining access to academic track courses and who is not, who has access to school engagement activities and who does not, and interrogating the structural gender and racial barriers prevalent in current


school practices. However, at present the link between school drop out rates and teen pregnancy simply identifies girls who are “at-risk” for maladaptive behaviors. “At-risk” approaches identify at-risk girls based upon the girl’s psychological, social, and cultural attributes locating its emphasis upon changing this girl. For example, mentoring programs are popular for teen girls identified as “at-risk” or for pregnant/mothering teens and often get high marks both from the girls in the programs, the mentors themselves, and research evaluations. Yet they also remain focused upon supporting and changing the individual problem girl.8 Such individualistic approaches, while they may be helpful, do not address the structural barriers in schools and in society that girls’ face. These approaches continue to ignore larger questions of equal education opportunity for all girls in school. In this way, these types of interventions meet a liberal impetus to help while continuing to ignore the structural constraints and barriers of “at-risk” girls.9 As Patricia Mann notes in such instances it is the embodied aspects of the social differentials of gender and race that have “exposed some very ragged edges of liberal univeralism in the U.S.”10 When faced with the “jagged edges of liberalism” sometimes the only thing to do is work those edges. For instance, Title IX has been severely underutilized in development of school-based programs and policies for pregnant/mothering teens. If schools were held accountable to the minimal components of Title IX, there would be tangible changes in teen mothers’ access to and experiences in schools. To this end, Wendy Wolf, in her paper “Using Title IX to Protect the Rights of Pregnant and Parenting Teens,” has compiled checklists and quizzes, from the National Women’s Law Center and others, for pregnant/mothering students and school personnel. These checklists offer the pregnant/mothering teen a quick look at whether she is being discriminated against and offers school personnel the opportunity to see if they are engaging in policies and practices that are discriminatory and illegal under Title IX. The checklists are proactive in their protection of the rights of pregnant/mothering students and hold schools and school personnel responsible and accountable for providing equal education opportunities to pregnant/mothering teens.11 While it is vital to hold schools accountable for policies and practices toward pregnant/mothering students, it is equally important to understand the experiences of teen mothers as gender and race educational equity issues. This moves beyond conversations about what is “equal” for teen mothers to questions of what is equitable for the pregnant/mothering student. Such an approach interrupts present-day constructions of providing no special services to the pregnant/mothering student as “we treat her equal to any other student.” As noted previously, this “pregnancy as a cold”


discursive model makes it possible to ignore the physicality of pregnant teens’ bodies thus making it seem “equal” that pregnant students are not provided with desks they can fit into or allowed excused absences during pregnancy. Similarly, equality discourses under a “pregnancy as a disease” model argue that in order to have equal education opportunity pregnant/mothering teens must be removed from the regular school setting. Equality discourses in these uses, then, keep the focus again upon the individual teen girl and not the structural—both physical and ideological— barriers in schools. Further, situating the education of pregnant/mothering teens as a gender and racial equity issue, argues for not simply provision of basic education to teen mothers, but for an opportunity to provide them with equitable education. Here, then, I briefly raise two issues that merit further consideration in discussions about teen pregnancy as a gender and racial education equity issue—the role of involvement in sports on teen girls and separate programs for pregnant/mothering teens as single-sex spaces.

Athletic Girls as Fit Subjects A few years ago I came across a 1999 study suggesting that access to participation in sports could be used as a strategic tool to prevent teen pregnancy. The authors argue that while male athletes do not exhibit lower rates of heterosexual sexual activity, female athletes are less likely to engage in heterosexual activity thus reducing their risk of a teen pregnancy. Conceivably, pregnancy for a female athlete would disrupt her athletic training and goals, while involvement in a pregnancy will not deter boys from pursuing their athletic goals. After reading this article I began to think about whether any of the teen mothers I talked with had been involved in sports or described themselves as “athletic.” I did not recall sports ever coming into our conversations. Could participating in organized sports be a means to decrease teen pregnancy? Does being an athletically “fit” girl make you unfit for teen pregnancy? What about teen mothers themselves, could access to athletics contribute to their sense of independence and well-being? These questions hung with me as my own children moved into middle school and I began to look closely at who was participating in sports and in which programs. These observations led me to question whether athletic girls “fit” into school and which girls “fit” onto school sports teams. I observed few opportunities for girls to participate in team sports and further saw racial disparities in the sports programs in our local district. My observations were noted by the authors of the 1999 study who found that at present, particularly for girls,“most high school athletes come from middle- and upper-class backgrounds.”12 This again raises questions of access and equity


for all girls to educational opportunity, including athletics and the need for a continued presence of access to athletic activities and team sports for girls. This is an area worthy of study. What would it mean for schools to provide more sports programs for girls, particularly at the elementary- and middle-school level that are not based on traditional “cuts,” but rather on providing sports programs that allow all girls to pursue athletics. What would it mean to provide participation in “nontraditional” sports for atrisk youth—tennis, golf, lacrosse, women’s rugby? This would involve schools actively participating in breaking down gendered, classed, and racialized barriers that determine who does what. Schools have the potential opportunity to use involvement in sports as a way for more young women to become engaged in schools, and also to combat stereotypes held by students and society at large. The potential relationships between “woman as athlete” and “woman as mother” are numerous. Given that female athletes often do not “fit” within our conceptions of what a girl/woman should be like, look like, act like, I wonder who is less fit—the girl athlete or the girl who performs her heterosexuality by reproducing? Raising such questions are not simply playful but begin to help point out the many paradoxes in our constructions and expectations of the teen mother and who she should be as a girl, a mother, and a student. Further, the possible link between access to athletics for all girls in school and the “fitness” of teen mothers’ foregrounds how the myriad of focuses under Title IX are interconnected across gender equality. As teen pregnancy is a gender equity issue, any de-emphasis upon gender equality has the potential to negatively impact pregnant/mothering teens’ experiences in school. The impact of Title IX has to reach beyond male-female parity in sports to increased and innovative outreach toward young women who have been typically underserved and deschooled; to a focus upon gender and racial equity in schooling for young women.

Teen Pregnancy Spaces as Single-Sex Spaces Many school-age mothers, particularly low-income and racial “minority” teens, are served in special separate teen pregnancy classes or schools. As pointed out in earlier chapters, there are many problems with how girls are referred to such programs and well-grounded concerns about the type of education girls receive in such programs. Yet, I have also observed the potential of these single-sex spaces, under the direction and pedagogy of a committed educator, to be critically empowering spaces for the pregnant/parenting teen.13 When I initially observed such classrooms, I focused upon the pedagogy and possibilities of these spaces in terms of the bodies of pregnant teens and the kind of talk that occurred in such spaces. I did not think about or ask whether these spaces could be considered le-


gally as single-sex schooling and if so what this would mean for the education of teen mothers. I was not the only one missing that classrooms and schools for teen mothers are single-sex spaces; in my research I interviewed only one teacher who talked about her teen pregnancy classroom as a “girls’ space.”14 Thus, in these classrooms and schools, there was a lack of identification of these spaces as “single-sex” or “girl-centered” spaces, even though as Stamm notes such programs are de facto single-sex environments. Why are these separate programs for pregnant/mothering students not identified as single-sex schools or classrooms? Single-sex schools and classrooms have had a history of privilege and elitism or equity attached to them. Traditionally single-sex schools have been private schools, entailing messages of privilege and choice. While single-sex classrooms have been implemented by some school districts to address equity issues related to gender in access to professions of science and math, these models of single-sex education continue to promote an ideology of privilege, a discourse not attached to pregnant/mothering teens. While the single-sex schooling situations proffered by separate schools and classrooms for teen mothers could be considered as a remedy for prior inequitable education for teen mothers based upon racial and gender inequities in schools, or as necessary given the unique and gendered needs of pregnant girls, to date, the basis for these programs has not been explored. Not only do we need to know the practices and effectiveness of separate programs for pregnant/mothering students, and we need detailed information on the curricula and pedagogy utilized in such programs.15 One initial key question to ask, however, is: Are separate schools for pregnant/mothering students legal? The development of separate classrooms and schools for pregnant teens did not arise out of the same impetus as the single-sex schooling movement. As this book traces and as Stamm points out, a history of “special treatment” for pregnant students, in the form of separate schools, “is historically linked to invidious discrimination against pregnant girls” and the many proffered rationales for separate schools, such as discourses of “pregnancy as disease,” when examined closely are seen to be “built upon deeply embedded stereotypes and assumptions.”16 Certainly, when we look at these schools within the historical treatment of pregnant students continuing stereotypes of pregnant girls and unwed mothers are evident. However, I do not wish to write these separate spaces as inherently unequal. Stamm argues that pregnancy schools should be at the center of debates on single-sex schooling noting the “dearth of legal scholarship on the subject of pregnant students in the context of single-sex education or gender equity.”17 Further, Stamm argues that by looking at questions of


equality through separate school programs as single-sex spaces focuses attention upon exploring the question of “whether equal protection requires that pregnant students be treated identically to nonpregnant students or allows school districts to accommodate their special needs.”18 What would it mean, then, to look at separate schools/classrooms for school-age mothers as single-sex education spaces? Is there something unique in the needs of the teen mother that can only be served in a singlesex space? Does the fact that many girls in school-based teen pregnancy programs return to school while they are pregnant, suggest that their needs could best be met in single-sex schooling? This would entail separate provision of education to teen mothers not out of discourses and practices of separation and containment, but out of educational equity. In this sense, we could begin to ask whether the separate teen pregnancy school is a potentially feminist space? At present this does not seem to be occurring. As indicated most school personnel in separate school settings for pregnant/mothering students, which are single-sex schools, do not identify their schools as single-sex schools or claim to be influenced by the fact that they are educating all female students. Further, as Lesko notes of the separate school program she studied, “although it is an all-female school, women as a social category are absent from the curriculum except as mothers.”19 This absence of gender, of woman-centered talk, curriculum, and pedagogy, in the face of schools that are so obviously about female bodies is glaring yet unaccounted for in educational research. Discourses that structure pregnant/mothering teens in separate school settings as “unfit,” in need of control, containment, and regulations, have effectively silenced progressive usages of these educational spaces. Certainly society’s discomfort with pregnancy and female sexuality affect disparate treatment of pregnant/parenting students and set up potentially disparate educational experiences and opportunities in separate pregnancy schools. The present lack of debate, lack of contextual educational research, and entrenchment of racialized discourses of contamination reinforcing differential treatment of teen mothers limits education opportunity for all pregnant/mothering teens. Existing discursive and program emphasis on reforming the teen mother led Lesko to declare that “a school program that helped school-age mothers understand how they are discriminated against, illuminated the sexist and racist nature of society, and provided opportunities to develop a sense of unity and linked futures is an equally implausible story of school success.”20 What would it take to help make Lesko’s scenario plausible? How might support programs for pregnant/mothering teens be used to address questions of opportunity and equity? What role might single-sex programs


play in this process? Beginning to take such questions seriously is not about identifying young women as “at risk,” rather it is about providing serious, challenging, and viable education to all young women. Educational policy makers and professionals have a responsibility to look closely at the education of school-age mothers not as a mandated task linked with welfare reform, but as an educational equity issue. Separate schools and programs for pregnant students should no longer exist as unexplained and unquestioned anomalies, but face the same scrutiny as other single-sex schools—are they viable, do they serve a specific equity educational need, and do they yield results that address gender and racial inequities? So what does educational opportunity look like for a teen mother? Or rather what is equitable education for pregnant/mothering students? Are programs that are integrated with the school at large more equitable or do pregnant teens need a separate school experience geared to their needs in order to have access to equitable education? What types of support services like childcare provision are necessary to provide equitable educational opportunity? What types of curricula and extracurricular activities do pregnant/mothering students need access to in order to experience equitable educational opportunity?21 When we have the research to address and confound our understandings of such questions we will finally begin to meet the challenge of Title IX to provide equal educational opportunity to school-age mothers.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11.

See e.g., Lugg, For God and Country. Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers,” 197. Lesko, “The ‘Leaky Needs’ of School-Aged Mothers,” 199. Warren, “Pregnant Students/Public Schools,” 113. Warren, “Pregnant Students/Public Schools,” 114. Quinby, Anti-apocalypse, 42. Here I think it would be interesting to look at school desegregation research and cases which are similarly looking at indicators of equal opportunity and comparability as one model of doing a comparative analysis between separate schools for pregnant/mothering students and the regular school. See e.g., Oldenburg, “Teen Mothers and Supportive MOMS,” D5, as indicative of media coverage on mentoring. While this seems obvious, it has not been a given in development and evaluation of programs for pregnant/mothering teens. For example, a study focusing on African-American pregnant teens’ use of prenatal services and girls’ self-esteem concluded by noting there needs to be “more attention to structural factors that may contribute to use of prenatal services.” Spence and Adams, “African-American Adolescents and Use of Prenatal Services,” 551. Mann, Micro-Politics, 158. Wolf, Using Title IX to Protect the Rights of Pregnant and Parenting Teens. See specifically attachment A-1, a handout from the National Women’s Law Center, and attachment C from Margaret Dunkle and Maggie Nash, Does Your School Make the Grade? Wolf ’s report and the attachments are also available online at www.wested.org.

228 • Unfit Subjects 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Sabo, et. al. “High School Athletic Participation, Sexual Behavior and Adolescent Pregnancy,” 213. See Pillow, The Making of Mothers; and “Exposed Methodology.” See Pillow, The Making of Mothers. This is especially important as the AAUW report countered previous report recommendations of single-sex schooling for girls, finding that single-sex schooling does not increase girls access and achievement. American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. How Schools Shortchange Girls. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” 1207, 1227. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” 1206. Stamm, “A Skeleton in the Closet,” 1205. Lesko, “Curriculum Differentiations as Social Redemption,” 133. Lesko, “Implausible Endings,” 59. I recognize that these questions all beg the question of pregnant/mothering teens’ education comparable to who. Who is the pregnant/mothering teen’s peer? Other teen mothers? Students from the regular school she attended while or before she became pregnant? Students within the pregnant/mothering teen’s academic track? Some district or state average peer group norm? These questions are yet to be debated, however, the history of racialized definitions and differentiated treatment of teen mothers based upon race requires that issues of race equity always be addressed when considering equal education for pregnant/ mothering teens.

Bibliography

Archives Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. National Council on Illegitimacy Child Welfare League of America Florence Crittenton Association of America Florence Crittenton Mission

Newspaper and Magazine Articles Berger, Leslie. “After Long Hiatus, New Contraceptives Emerge.” The New York Times, December 10, 2002, D5. The Center for Population Options. Adolescent Sexual Behavior, Pregnancy, and Parenthood. Washington, D.C.: The Center for Population Options, 1994. “Children Having Children.” Time, December 9, 1985. Clymer, Adam. “Critics Say Government Deleted Sexual Material from a Web Site to Push Abstinence.” New York Times, November 26, 2002, A18. ———. “U.S. Revises Sex Information and a Fight Goes On.” New York Times, December 27, 2002, A15. Cohen, Richard. “Significant Mothers.” The Washington Post, August 30, 1987, W3. “The Crisis of the Black Family.” Ebony August, no. 10 (1986): 33. (This is a special issue devoted to “The Crisis of the Black Family”) “Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown.” Time 139, no. 22 (1992): 20. Evans, Sandra. “Teen Mother Can’t Get to Class.” The Washington Post, October 1, 1987, A1, 9. “Five Years Later/Babies Having Babies/Revisiting ‘the Baby Trap.’ “ People, October 11, 1999, 54–76. Goodman, Ellen. “Norplant Dilemma: Choice vs. Coercion.” St. Louis Post Dispatch, February 20, 1991, 3C. Gorman, Christine. “Dollars for Deeds/How Do You Keep Teens From Getting Pregnant or Motivate Students to Make the Grade? Offer Them Cash.” Time, May 16, 1994, 51. “Here They Come, Ready or Not.” Education Week, 34, May 1986, 3. Herbert, Bob. “GOP ‘Big Tent’ Is Shrinking.” New York Times, May 1, 2000. ———. “Sneak Attack.” New York Times, February 4, 2002, A27. Howard, Janice. “Baby-Toting Teen-Agers Learn Lessons in Life.” The Washington Post, March 31, 1988, A1, 7, 13.

229

230 • Bibliography Kuczynski, Alex. “She’s Got to Be a Macho Girl.” The New York Times, November, 3 2002, section 9, 1; 12. Lewin, Tamar. “Birth Rates for Teen-agers Declined Sharply in the 90s.” The New York Times, May 1, 1998, A27:4. ———. “Virgins Outnumber Sexually Active Teenagers, Study Reports.” New York Times, September 29, 2002, Section 1, 27. Loconte, Joe. “A City’s Assault on Teen Pregnancy.” Policy Review, 1996, 12–13. Longcope, Kay. “Liz Walker is Expecting.” Boston Globe, June 6, 1987, 9–10. McQueen, Michael. “Md. Panel Urges Family Responsibility for Teen-Aged Parents.” The Washington Post, October 5, 1985, C5. Melton, R.H., “Va. Panel Sidesteps Pregnancy Issues.” The Washington Post, December 17, 1986, D3. “Morality Issues Returns.” Detroit News, October 3, 2000. Morrison, Dan. “ ‘Rank Discrimination’/NYCLU: City Schools Permit Bias against Pregnant Teens.” Newsday/Sunday Queens Edition, December 3, 2000: A07. Newsmakers. “Black Boston TV Anchor Goes Public on Pregnancy.” Jet, 72 July 6, 1987, 32. “Not your typical teen mother.” Ebony August, no. 10 (1986): 67–68, 70, 74. Oldenburg, Don. “Teen Mothers and Supportive MOMS.” The Washington Post, March 28, 1989, D5. “Prepared Text for the President’s State of the Union Message.” New York Times, January 24, 1996, A9; A14. Raspberry, William. “Strip the Myths from Teen Pregnancy.” The Washington Post, 1996. Sanchez, Rene. “Nursery at Junior High Holds Teen Mothers’ Hope for Future.” The Washington Post, October 31, 1988, A1, 19. Schemo, Diana J. “Sex Education with Just One Lesson: No Sex.” New York Times, December 28, 2000, A1, A18. “Steady Drop in Teen Birth Rate Has Many ‘Proud Parents’.” Editorial, USA Today, April 30, 1999, A12:1 Stolberg, Sheryl G. “Birth Rate at New Low as Teen-Age Pregnancy Declines.” The New York Times, April 29, 1999: A26: 3. ———. “Grants Aid Abstinence-Only Initiative.” New York Times, February 28, 2002, 18. ———. “Bush Pushing Teen Abstinence: Funds Back Sex Education Programs that Exclude Condoms.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 3, 2002: A11 Terry, Don. “Fewer Teen-Age Mothers? Maybe.” The New York Times, May 5, 1998, A18: 4. Trescott, Jacqueline. “The War Over Motherhood/In Boston, Unmarried Anchor Liz Walker and Her Controversial Choice.” The Washington Post, August 5, 1987, C1, C10, C11. Vobejda, Barbara. “President Limits Teens on Welfare.” The Washington Post, May 5, 1996, A1. “‘Welfare Queen’ Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign.” New York Times, February 15, 1976. Welsh, Patrick. “High School Confidential ‘91/Sex, Teens, and Tots: How America’s Young Generation Is Rehearsing for Adulthood.” The Washington Post, March 24, 1991, C1; C4. Whitehead, Barbara. “The Failure of Sex Education.” The Atlantic Monthly, October 1994, 55–80.

Organizations Cited that Are Tracking Teen Mothers and Title IX American Civil Liberties Union 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York, N.Y. 10004 www.aclu.org Center for Assessment and Policy Development 111 Presidential Boulevard, Suite 234 Bala Cynwyd, Pa. 19004 www.capd.org National Women’s Law Center 11 Dupont Circle, NW Washington, D.C. 20036 www.nwlc.org

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Index

ABE/GED program, 160 abortion, 3, 27 access to, 36, 39, 49, 146 breast cancer and, 180 for Caucasians, 28 counseling, 31–33, 39 debates about, 6, 32–33, 109n65 information, 53n110 rates, 28, 52n54, 181, 199 on TV shows, 56, 114–115 absences, 9 dealing with, 95, 124–125 excusing, 11, 99–100 Title IX on, 61–62 abstinence, 46, 53n110. See also chastity morality through, 44 PRWORA on, 48, 178–179 Republicans on program reduction and, 39–40 abstinence education, 219. See also congressional hearings; senate hearings African Americans on, 203–204 films on, 185–191 sex education v., 6, 177–183 sexuality and, 175–176, 212n7 stories about sex in, 14 abuse, 135n5 child, 83, 209 by parents, 44 sexual, 116

of social welfare, 41, 43 accommodations, 124–125, 134 or special services in separate schools, 101–103 as special treatment, 99–100 acculturation, 120–122 ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) advertising by, 69, 70f on discrimination, 63, 68 administrators interviews with, 83 on pregnancy as cold, 99–100 training for, 59 views of, 87–88, 89–92, 102, 104 adolescence as developmental stage, 26, 51n34 pregnancy-free, 212n1 Adolescent Family Life Act (AFL), 39–40, 183 Adolescent Family Life Program, 48 Adolescent Health, Services, Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act, 1978, 32, 39 Adolescent Parent Resource Guide (APRG), 152, 154–155 adolescent unmarried mother, 27 adoption, 74n10, 115, 131 adults advocacy, 127 attitudes of, 124, 126 teens and, 180–181, 182f, 183

239

240 • Index advertising by ACLU, 69, 70f Caucasian babies in, 23–24, 25f pregnancy in, 33, 34f public opinion and, 23–24, 25f, 29, 69–71, 70f advocacy, 59–61, 127 AERA. See American Education Research Association AFDC. See Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFL. See Adolescent Family Life Act African Americans, 16n26 and absence of subjects in case law, 57–58, 71, 74 on abstinence education, 203–204 birth rates for, 50 dropping out and returning to school, 117–119 fertility rates of, 37 and issues affecting whites, 45, 53n104 Norplant use by, 210 school response to, 108n12 in separate schools, 72–73, 103, 131–133 served by F.C. Homes, 146–149 study of, 227n9 traits of, 112–113, 148, 154 use of school-based programs, 58 age for childbearing, 37 and racial classification, 94 aggressors, 181, 205 AGI. See Alan Guttmacher Institute Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 33 costs, 37 laws affecting, 40–41 PRWORA and, 47 AIDS/HIV, 180, 194 Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), 17, 28, 94 alarm discourses of, 176, 184–200 and fear of “brown to black” America, 37–38 alcohol use, 153, 179, 191 Allen, Mary Louise, 29–30 ambivalence towards education, 13, 86, 97 and uses of Title IX, 88–92

American Education Research Association (AERA), 79, 82–83 American indians, 16n26 analyses, 8–12, 123 Angelou, Maya, 42 antiabortion activity, 53n110 APRG. See Adolescent Parent Resource Guide Archer, William, III, 45 the Art of Loving Well program, 183 “at risk” girls, 222. See also “risky” behavior teen mothers as, 153–154, 167, 169n3, 194 welfare dependency and, 142 “at risk” programs, 92, 123 athletes, 223–224 The Atlantic Monthly, 66–67, 205 attendance barriers to, 60 data on, 80–81 regulations/requirements, 95, 106, 124, 153 restricting, 100 attitudes adults’, 124, 126 communities’, 96, 97 school personnel’s, 4–5, 14, 87 societal, 11, 59–61, 167 babies, 23–24, 25f Ballard, Charles, 206 Barrett, Kate Waller, 17, 23, 144 barriers, 222 to attendance, 60 to education, 13, 98, 111, 113, 119 identifying, 123–129, 137n44, 209 to work, 159–160, 163–164 bathroom breaks, 11, 62, 100, 124 behavior disorders, 86, 95 monitoring, 153 “risky,” 115 Bell, Derrick, 53n104 benefits changing rules for, 105–106 from Title IX, whites v. blacks and, 71–72, 73–74 Bennett, William, 177 biracial births, 30, 52n51 birth. See also childbirth; conception; miscarriages

Index • 241 homeschooling until, 115 premature, 37 returning to school after, 58–60, 62, 65, 101, 134 birth control, 6. See also condoms; contraception; diaphragm; Norplant; the pill access to, 31, 36, 49 debates/discussions on, 6, 156 information, 53n110, 177, 180 mandatory, 83, 209 women’s rights and, 26 birthrates decline of, 26–28, 35 economy and, 37, 50 increase in, 43 Planned Parenthood and, 49–50 by race, 38, 50 trends in, 36–38, 181, 183 in U.S. v. Japan/Western Europe, 44 Bissol, Ms., 194–195 black families, 3 cultural poverty within, 37–38 decline of, 35, 41–45, 202 black schools, 131 black(s), 41–45, 72–74. See also African Americans; Negro as bad influence on whites, 38 female professionals, 43 fertility rates of, 30 and Latinas staying in school, 120–122 morality of, 30 as welfare queens, 33–34, 41–42, 53n90 blacks, whites v. access to higher education/careers, 36–37 and benefits from Title IX, 71–72, 73–74 birthrates, 38 defining unwed mothers, 28–29 dropout rates of, 118 graduation rates of, 72, 73, 119 morality of, 24, 26 sexuality on television, 173–175 support networks for, 136n27 treatment options for, 10, 16n26, 20–26, 30, 217–219 unwed pregnancies of, 24, 51n32 blame, 39, 171n62 bodies, 2 analysis and role of, 10–11

control, restriction and regulation of, 20 books, on education, 15n3 Boston Public (TV show), 56, 114–115, 135n3, 174 boys v. girls, 205 Bradford, Ms., 196–197 Brake, Deborah, 49, 133, 134 breast cancer, 180 Britzman, Deborah, 7 Brown, Murphy, 43, 53n96 browning of America, 36–37, 218 Buie, James, 87–88 Bureau of Census, 94 Burrell, Darci E., 211 Bush, George, Sr., 45 Bush, George W., 45, 46 on abstinence education, 179–180 on fairness and equal opportunity, 55 on health care and contraceptives, 49–50 Cadena, Nora, 77n56 Campbell, Nancy, 18 Carlson, Allan, 201 Carter, Jimmy, 27 case law, 15n8 absence of, 13, 92, 119 absence of subjects in, 57–58, 71, 74 on discrimination, 5, 13 interpretation and implementation of, 57–58, 62 cases legal, 89 separate but equal, 64–68 Caucasians, 16n26, 28. See also whites “at-risk” traits for, 154 babies in advertising, 23–24, 25f birth rates for, 50 choices for, 130–132 at F.C. Homes, 20–26, 21f, 147–148 graduation rates for, 134 CDF. See Children’s Defense Fund Center for Analysis and Policy Development, 88 chairs, 11 character education, 89 chastisement, 22 chastity, 39–40 rings, 204 Chastity Center programs, 40 checklists, quizzes and, 222

242 • Index cheerleaders, 68, 75n25, 212n7 child abuse, 83, 209 childbearing age for, 37 costs of, 27 delaying, 43, 117, 201 regulation of, 39 childbirth, 21 childcare access to, 11–12, 124, 153, 155, 156 choosing, 164–167 in schools, 89, 92, 104, 108n38, 166 tests/quizzes regarding, 139–140, 164–165 childhood, at conception v. birth, 49 children. See also adoption; babies employment with, 162 problems resulting from single parenting, 39 children, keeping Barrett on, 51n23 as disability, 104 F.C. Homes on, 22, 144 children having children, 35 as epidemic, 47, 64, 87 media on, 18, 42 Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) on birthrates, 35 brochure, 33, 34f on education and prevention, 87 on GRADS, 95 Children’s Health Insurance Program, 49 Children’s Welfare League of America (CWLA), 75n11, 86–87 Chipman, Somer, 69–70 choice, 129–130, 142 Choosing the Best program, 183 Christians, 22, 201–202 civil rights, 64, 146. See also Office of Civil Rights Civil Rights Act, 1964, 26 class(es), 6. See also courses, low-ability v. high-ability; middle-class/upper class extra time to get to, 62 G.E.D., 65, 76n34, 92 lower-, 38 mothering, 95 parenting, 128 prenatal, 151 race and social policy in U.S., 52n64

at regular schools, 85 Walker’s, 43 classrooms, separate, 13, 14 separate schools v., 66–67 as single-sex spaces, 224–227 Clayton, Eva, 178 Clean Teens program, 183 climate, unwelcome, 124 Clinton, Bill on AFL, 179 National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and, 46, 54n111, 79 club activities, 68–71, 126 cold, pregnancy as, 83, 85, 97–101, 105, 132, 134, 222–223 college, 27, 29 community, 128, 163 preparatory students, xiv, 113, 131, 136n17 scholarship, 56, 77n56 two-year, 133 vocation training v., 107 communities attitudes, 96, 97 pressure from, 104 support, 136n27 on unwed pregnancies, 24, 51n32 comparability, 92, 132–135 to peers, 2, 5, 12, 61, 82, 113, 123 of separate facilities, xiii, 32, 61–62 complaints, 89 to Office of Civil Rights, 62, 75n22, 127, 128 conception, 15n1, 49 Concerned Women for America, 179 condoms, 180, 191, 192, 194–196 congressional hearings, 184 counter testimony in, 196–200 on teen pregnancy/abstinence education, 14, 31, 44, 175, 178, 181, 201–203, 207–208 contamination by black women of white women, 26, 30 discourses of, 13, 57, 63–71, 73–74, 220–221 inclusion or, 11 NHS and, 68–72, 70f separation and exclusion, 101–103, 131 teachers as targets of, 76n35 contraception, 3, 109n65 attitude toward, 27

Index • 243 availability of, 39, 146 Bush, George W., on health care and, 49 information about, 48, 180, 191, 192, 194–196 as mixed message, 192, 194–196, 200 recommendations for, 79, 82–83 Contract with America, 47–49 control discourses of, 176, 209–212, 220–221 epidemic logic in, 18–20 of fertility, 14, 176 of information, 180 prevention and, programs for, 89 regulation and containment, 218 of sexuality, 39–40, 63–64, 69, 76n55, 176, 201–202, 211 surveillance and regulation, 67, 83 counseling, 11, 22 abortion, 31–33, 39 through schools, 88, 92, 98 counselors barriers and, 126 on excusing absences, 99 restrictions on, 39 courses, low-ability v. high-ability, 122, 133 COURT (Chaste, Outstanding, Urban, Righteous, Teens), 203–204 crime, 135n5, 209. See also inmates crisis, 47 black family, 3 in education, 46–47, 64 epidemic logic and, 64, 82–83, 209 school-based programs development during, 149 teen pregnancy as, 27, 34f, 36, 38 Cuban, Larry, 87 cultural deficit theories, 80 cultural poverty, 30, 37–38, 41 culture. See also acculturation black women’s, 24, 28, 30 of Hispanics, 45, 121 popular, 3, 63 curricula, 15n8, 227 differences in, 133 ideology of hope in, 171n62 programs and, 73, 82, 85–88, 96 regular, v. vocational job training, 11, 113 school-based programs’, 140, 142–143, 150, 155–156, 158

Dash, Leon, 205 data, 15n8, 116, 122 accuracy of, 122–123 lack of, 4–5, 13, 80–82, 92–97 Dawson’s Creek (TV show), 114–115, 174 daycare programs, 164–166 death, 191. See also suicide debate teams, 68, 90 debates about abortion, 6, 32–33, 109n65 about welfare, 5–7, 17 binary discourses and, 9 on gender and race, 134 national policy, 2, 3 over equal opportunity, 11 over needs, 11–12 on women’s role and unwed mothering, 44 deficit model, v. reform model, 154 delinquency, 117, 147, 170n20, 209 Department of Health and Human Services, 180 dependency, 116. See also independence welfare, 40–41, 142, 183, 200, 211, 218 Depo-Provera, 79 depression, 162, 191 desegregation, 148, 227n7 desires, 10 desk, fitting into, 1, 100, 103, 134, 223. See also chairs Detroit News article, 23–24, 25f diaphragm, 49 disability, 85 education provision models on pregnancy as cold or, 97–98 pregnancy as, 63–64, 83, 85, 101–104, 105, 141, 223 treatment of, 62 discourses, 9. See also racialized discourses of alarm, 176, 184–200 analysis of, 1–3, 4, 7 black family, 41–45 of contamination, 13, 57, 63–71, 73–74 of contamination and control, 220–221 of control, 176, 209–212 of education, 13, 71–74 of heteronormativity, 176, 200–209 incitement to, 175–176, 211–212, 212n6 micro-level policy and, 12 on teen girl as “other,” 35

244 • Index discrimination, 124 ACLU on, 63, 68 case law on, 5, 13 complaints for, 75n22 proof of, 137n44 by school districts, 128–129 Title IX on, 55 discursive tracing, 2–3 disease. See AIDS/HIV; breast cancer; cold, pregnancy as; illness; sexually transmitted diseases disease, pregnancy as, 63–64, 83, 85, 101–105, 141, 223 disenfranchisement, 117–119 divorce, 178, 181, 183, 206, 208 doctors notes from, xiv, 125 orders of, 62 testimony by, 66 “dollars for deeds” program, 89 dropping out, 103 bad girls, 116 G.E.D. programs and, 130 for pregnancy v. nonpregnancy, 136n25 rates, 37, 80–81, 117–121 staying in and returning to school, 117–122, 123–129 drug policy, gender and, 18 drug use, 135n5, 136n12 bad girls’, 116 characteristics for, 153 impacts of, 179, 191 sentences for, 83 D’Souza, Dinesh, 45 dual roles. See also multiple lives/roles of mother and worker, 13–14, 141–143, 157 practical reasoning and, 167–169 dual-role training, 219 F.C. Homes on, 143–149 school-based programs and, 141–143 dysfunction, 6, 165, 178 East Germany, 52n54 Ebony magazine, 42, 111, 112 economy, 39, 44 birthrates and, 37, 50 Edelman, Marian Wright, 42 education. See also abstinence education; pedagogy; research, educational; sex education access to, 36–37, 42 ambivalence towards, 13, 86, 97

barriers to, 13, 98, 111, 113, 119 books on, 15n3 character, 89 crisis in, 46–47, 64 defining, 119, 133, 220, 228n21 discourses of, 13, 71–74 employment and, welfare restrictions on, 40–41 family life, 88, 89, 183 focus on, 45–50 regulation/training v., 10 as right v. responsibility, 57 as social welfare issue, 105–107 states on, 91, 106 education, special, 145 nutrition and, 88 programs, 169n13 education provision models, 91–92, 97–98 Education Week, 36 educational journals, 82, 97 educational opportunity, 10–12 educational policy, 9 on pregnancy as disease/disability, 101–104 studies, positivistic methods assuming neutrality in, 15n18 educationists participation by, 220 policy and, 80, 81, 83, 96, 218 educators, 79–81, 83. See also school personnel; teachers 11 Million Teenagers: What Can Be Done About the Epidemic of Adolescent Pregnancies in the United States (AGI), 28 employment, 155 skills as goal, 87 staying in F.C. home prior to, 144 training, 91, 106 of unwed mothers, 22 welfare restrictions on education and, 40–41 engagement, 120–122 English (language), 121 entitlement and access policies, 20, 219 for “our girls,” 72, 133–134 epidemic children having children as, 47, 64, 87 Children’s Defense Fund brochure on, 33, 34f teen pregnancy as, 34–35, 38

Index • 245 epidemic logic with abstinence education, 184, 209 on black families, 41, 45 contamination and, 64 crisis and, 64, 82–83, 209 impacts of, 176, 212 needs talk and, 19–20 Singer on, 18–20 with social problems, 19, 34–38 equity educational, 221–223, 226 gender, 11, 14, 55–56, 220, 222–223, 225 race, 11, 14, 220, 222–223 erotic welfare logic, 176 ethnicity, 122 ethnography, 6–7 exclusion(s). See also inclusion access v., 31–32, 59–60, 66 expulsion and, 123–129 gender, 76n48 separation and contamination, 101–103, 131, 221 expulsion, 56, 57, 65, 85, 86 exclusion and, 123–129 extracurricular activities, 227 access to, 62 banning from, 75n24, 90 club and, school districts on, 68–71 contamination and, 68 states on, 88 families, 6. See also black families breakdown/decline of, 35, 206 single parents in, 39 support of, 121, 136n27 two-parent heterosexual, 42 family caps, 48, 83 family life education, 88, 89, 183 family planning services, 89 Family Resource Council, 179 Family Support Act, of 1988 (FSA), 40–41 fathers, teen, 68 F.C. Association conferences, 26–27, 29 on education for unwed mothers, 58–61 on keeping children, 22, 144 F.C. Home for Colored Girls, of Topeka Kansas, 144 F.C. Homes. See Florence Crittenton Homes for Unwed Mothers

fears, 10 and alarm of “brown to black” America, 37–38 and denial of policymakers and educationists, 81, 83 of immorality spreading to other students, 57 of interracial sexual activity, 52n51 racial, stereotypes and, 149 of sexuality, 42, 63–64, 69, 75n30, 76n55, 89 Federal Court of Appeals, 137n44 females. See males v. females feminism, 35 on dual-role ideology, 142 on equality, 201 on unwed mothering, 43 views on pregnancy, 99, 101 on work/equal pay, 152, 159 feminist genealogy, 4, 8–10, 16n20 feminist victim/victory, 6 Ferguson, Kathy, 8 fertility control of, 14, 176 rates of blacks/African Americans, 30, 37 as social problem, 71 fetus, unborn, 49 field notes, 1, 129–130 Field Reporter, 148 films, 29, 185–191 First Interhemispheric Conference on Adolescent Fertility, 31 fit into desk, 1, 100, 103, 134, 223 of teen mothers and schools, 4 Florence Crittenton Homes for Unwed Mothers (F.C.), 20–26. See also F.C. Association on adoption, 74n10 on dual-role training, 143–149 education at day school v., 58, 60 influence on public opinion, 20–21, 29 Negro, 51n28 segregation by, 24, 26, 30, 51n28 unfortunate mother approaching, 21f Foster, Dr., 44 foster care, 135n3 Foucault, Michel on genealogy, 16n20 on incitement to discourse, 212n6 on sex as political issue, 18–19 fourteenth amendment, 58

246 • Index Fraser, Nancy, 19–20 FSA, 48 funding for abortion counseling, 39 for abstinence education, 178–180 for birth control information, 53n110 for education, 45–46 for evaluation research, 81 initiatives for Title IX implementation, 86 and legislation for preventative measures, 31–33, 46 relation to teen mother definition, 95 for religious organizations, 202 “gag rule,” 54n110 Gales, Mary, 104 Game Plan program, 184 G.E.D. (General Equivalency Degree) classes, 65, 76n34, 92 data on, 93 dropping out and, 130 preparation programs, 106 separate schools and, 103 work and, 160–162 gender, 6 and drug policy, 18 equity, 11, 14, 55–56, 220, 222–223, 225 exclusions, 76n48 gender roles, 35, 43 abstinence education and, 181, 183, 201–207, 209 marriage and, 207, 219 genealogy, 8–9 feminist, 4, 8–10, 16n20 Foucault on, 16n20 girl(s). See also white pregnant girl next door, 28–33, 35 pregnant, defining, 18 sexuality of boys v., 205 stories by, v. analysis of discourses, 1–3 white, on television and pregnancy scares, 114–115, 173–175 girls, bad, 6, 32 good girls v., 63, 72, 112–113, 115–116, 174–175 Norplant use by, 210–211 girls, good, 6 bad girls v., 63, 72, 112–113, 115–116, 174–175

in F.C. literature, 21 and good students, 131 welfare queens v., 3 Glass, Chastity, 69–70 goal(s) commitment to, 136n12 differences in, 133 educational, 146 employment skills as, 87 working toward, 131, 207 Goals 2000, 46 Goldberg, David Theo, 15n4 Goldberg, Whoopi, 54n115, 79 Goldsmith, Steve, 75n24 government intervention, 18, 69–70, 70f grades, absences and, 62 graduation, 150, 151 rates, 72, 73, 92–93, 95, 116, 119, 134 from separate schools, 103 Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills (GRADS). See also Adolescent Parent Resource Guide CDF on, 95, 109n58–59 on dual-roles training, 143, 149–162, 167–168 on graduation, 150, 151 use of role models, 156–157 guardians, 40, 48, 128 Haley, Alex, 42 harassment, 100–101. See also teasing Haraway, Donna, 1 Hatch, Orrin, 39 health care access to, 11, 42, 73, 155 Bush, George W., on contraceptives and, 49 GRADS on, 150 prenatal, 89, 150 workers, 39 health clinics, community, 2 health education, 183, 190 hearings. See also congressional hearings senate, 14, 184, 186–187, 191–202 with superintendent, 65–66 Heritage Foundation, 179 heteronormativity, 176, 200–209 Hispanics, 16n26 culture of, 45, 121 dropout rates of, 118 historical themes, identifying, 3

Index • 247 home economics, 92, 123 abstinence education with, 183 school-based programs coordination with, 141, 152 home tutoring, 72, 85, 131–132 homeland security, 50 homeschooling, 4 during last trimesters, 101, 131 until birth, 115, 134 hormones, 204–205 households head of, 41, 42 low-income, 39 housing, 38, 42, 155 “How to implement a mandatory stay-in-school program for Teenage Parents on Welfare,” 73 Huberman, Barbara, 199–200 humiliation, 174 Hyde Amendment of 1976, 39 hypervisibility, 134, 175, 220 illegitimacy, 75n24 illness, 125, 155 immigration, 36–37 immorality, 81, 200 abstinence-only programs and, 175 and irresponsibility of black unwed mothers, 72–74 poverty and promiscuity, 34–35 spreading to other students, fears of, 57 unaccountability and incapacity, 149 incest, 109n65 inclusion, 11 income, 12, 40. See also wages independence, 219 indians, American, 16n26 information, 124 abortion, 53n110 about contraception, 48, 180, 191, 192, 194–196 birth control, 53n110, 177, 180 initiatives funding, 86 limiting access to birth control/abortion information, 53n110 National Conference on State Legislatures report on, 81 inmates, 22, 51n21 Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization, 206

integration, 146–149 intercourse, 177, 194 interest conversion, 53n104 interest groups, 15n8 interviews. See also congressional hearings; senate hearings quotes from, xiii–xiv with school personnel, 80–81, 83, 90, 97–98, 107n6 with teen mothers, 105–106, 115, 139 invisibility, 126, 131, 134. See also hypervisibility involuntary placement, 4 irresponsibility, 149, 166–167 bringing pregnancy on self through, 109n65 and control of sexuality, 39 McClain’s models of, 37 IUDs, 49, 79 Japan, 44 Jerry Springer (TV show), 173–174 job training, 11, 42, 73, 113. See also vocational education; vocational training Johns Hopkins study, 177 Johnson, Nancy, 178 “just say no” campaigns, 40, 181, 183 Kansas Supreme Court, 58 Kelly, Deidre, 175 Kennedy, Edward, 31 kin networks, 121, 136n27 Kunzel, Regina, 24, 144 labeling, 103 Lagemann, Ellen, 80, 96 Latinas, 16n26. See also Hispanics and absence of subjects in case law, 57–58, 71, 74 birthrates for, 50 and blacks staying in school, 120–122 dropping out and returning to school, 117–119 immigration of, 36–37 on marriage, 121 overcoming hardships, 77 school response to, 108n12 in separate schools, 72–73, 103, 131–133 teen pregnancy rates, 45 use of school-based pregnancy programs, 58

248 • Index laws, 47. See also case law on living arrangements, 40–41 Lawson, Annette, 27 Learnfare program, 73, 142–143 Learning, Earning, and Parenting (LEAP) program, 142–143, 168 childcare and, 165–166 welfare and, 160–162, 165 leave policy, xiv legal cases, 89 legal policy, 3 legislation. See also specific legislation and funding for preventative measures, 31–33, 46 from racialized discourses, 11 regulating teen mothers, 39–41 Lesko, Nancy, 36 on independence, 219 on rites of redemption, 155 on self-sufficiency, 168 on separate schools, 226 on sexuality, 175 on single mothers, 39 lewdness, 175 Liberals, 40 life skills training, 106 Linden, Ruth, 7–8 living arrangements, 40–41 loud, quiet v., 112–113 lower-class kids, 38 low-income households, 39 low-income single mothers, 2 low-income teens, 132 disability and, 103 dual-role ideology of, 142 health care to, 49 opportunity link to, 117 support for, 136n27 low-income unwed black mothers, 43 Luker, Kristen, 12 make-up work, 62, 100, 124–125 males, 20, 203–204 Males, Michael, 104, 180–181 males v. females. See also boys v. girls function and pleasure of, 63 in GRADs, 170n28 poster campaign with, 186 sexuality of, 204–206 treatment of, 69–70, 76n55 Malone, Sarah H., 144 Manlove, Jennifer, 121

Mann, Patricia, 222 marriage. See also divorce abstinence and, 178–179, 181, 183, 185, 191, 200–201, 204 delaying, 43 increasing, 42 Latinas on, 121 -minded men, 144 v. self-sufficiency, 22 as solution, 206–209 Marshner, Connaught, 40 Maternal Child Health Block Grant, 48 matrons, 22–23 Maynard, Rebecca, 117 McCarthy, James L., 72, 120 McClain, Linda, 37, 71 media. See also advertising; television attention on social policy issues, 3 campaigns to prevent pregnancy, 15n8, 185–191, 187f, 188f, 189f, 190f on equal educational opportunity, 55–56 power of, 19 on students, 114–116 on teen pregnancy, 17–18 on Walker, 43 medical services, 11 men. See also fathers, teen; males marriage-minded, 144 as necessary tool, 201–206 older, 135n5, 180–181, 182f, 183 mentoring, 42, 106 metaphors identifying, 3, 7 power of, 15n6 sports, 207 methodologies policy studies, 4, 8–10 representation and, 2 social educational policy, 16n18 middle-class/upper class birthrates for, 36–37 girl next door as, 28, 31, 33 minorities. See also specific minorities birthrates of, 37 cultural inferiority of, 45 programs for, 73, 132, 203 miscarriages, 52n54, 117 Mittelstadt, Jennifer, 31 mixed messages, 192, 194–200 Moffet, Toby, 40 Moral Majority, new, 38

Index • 249 moral retraining, 141–149 morality, 174. See also immorality of blacks, 30 debates about, 6, 17 decline in, 89 and responsibility as values, 38 through abstinence, 44 treatment options and, 24, 26 morning-after pill, 109n65 mothering, 9 classes, 95 parenting v., 15n1 training for, 164–167 unfit, 37 unwed, 43–44 mother(s). See also fathers, teen; prom moms; teen mothers; unwed mothers average school-age, 116, 135n5 bad v. good, 9, 142 as caretakers, 131 parent v., 15n1 role as worker and, 13–14, 131, 141–143, 157 single, 17, 38 Moyer, Bill, 42 Moynihan Report, 30 multiple lives/roles, 126, 168 Nathanson, Constance, 38, 168 A Nation at Risk, 46 National Advocates for Pregnant Women, 49 National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 185–186 posters for, 187f, 188f, 189f, 190f National Campaign to Reduce Teen Pregnancy Clinton and, 46, 54n111, 79 on TV shows, 174 National Center for Health Statistics, 94 National Conference on State Legislatures report, 81 National Council on Illegitimacy (NCI), 59–61, 87 National Honor Society (NHS) banning from, 56, 126, 134 contamination and, 68–72, 70f membership in, 62, 75n25, 115, 119, 132 National Research Council report, 93 National School-Age Mother and Child Health Act, 31

National Women’s Law Center, 222 NCI. See National Council on Illegitimacy needs debates over, 11–12 defining, 2, 11, 140 response to, 99 talk, 19–20 Negro, 16n26 Florence Crittenton Home, 51n28 Moynihan Report on, 30 New Chance program, 161–162 New Right group, 40 New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), 128–129 New York Times, 69, 70f, 185 New Zealand, 52n54 newspaper articles, 103. See also specific publication The New Republic, 69, 70f NHS. See National Honor Society No Child Left Behind, 46 Norplant, 79 control with, 176, 209–212 with welfare system and family caps, 83 nutrition, 88 NYCLU. See New York Civil Liberties Union occupations, 159, 163 OCR. See Office of Civil Rights Office of Adolescent Health, 179 Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Program, 32, 40, 46 Office of Civil Rights (OCR) on comparability, 133 complaints to, 62, 75n22, 127, 128 Omni, Michael, 15n4 opportunities, 10–13, 14 evaluation of circumstances and, 116–117, 135n8 of low-income teens, 117 Ordway, Fay, 56, 65, 119 other girls, 28, 33–39 girl next door v., 28, 33, 35 “our girls” v., 35, 108n12, 149 “other” teen mother, 58, 71 “our girls,” 31 entitlement for, 72, 133–134 other girls v., 35, 108n12, 149 outliers, 7

250 • Index Paige, Rod, 55 Paltrow, Lynn, 49 paperwork, 95, 127–128, 129–130 parent education, 89, 92 parenting. See also single parenting classes, 128 invisibility of, 126 mothering v., 15n1 parents abstinence education and, 183, 188–191 abusive, 44 living with guardians or, 40, 48 mother v., 15n1 Parents Too Soon program, 142–143 Patai, Daphne, 7 pedagogy, 133 of single-sex spaces, 224–226 teacher impacts on, 140, 169n2 peers berating in front of, 124 comparability to, 2, 5, 12, 61, 82, 113, 123 effects on, 96 influences from, 121 separation from, 66–67 People magazine, 118 Perry v. Grenada Municipal Separate School District, 64–65 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), 46–50, 72, 133, 156 abstinence education and, 178–179, 183, 207 Title IX and, 105–107 Phi Delta Kappan on data, 96 on education and school-age mother, 82–83, 84f on girls with older men, 181, 182f on Indiana policy, 65–66 on middle-income white teens, 33, 107n12 on pregnant students, 217 on programs, 85 Philadelphia Inquirer, 209–210 pill, morning-after, 109n65 the pill, 211 pity, 9, 29 Planned Parenthood on abstinence education, 179 birth rates and, 49–50 “gag rule” for, 54n110

plays, 29 Plummer, Ken, 14 policies, 1. See also educational policy; social policy analysis, 10–12 bio-power in, 19 as discourse, 15n6 discourses’ impact on practice and, 2–3 documents, 15n8 educationists and, 80, 81, 83, 96, 218 fetuscentric, 49 gender and drug, 18 issues and debates, 109n65 leave, xiv for “our girls” v. “other” girl, 35 programs and, 13, 36, 97 reports, 81, 88 school, 99 tracing, 8–10 “Policy Statement on Continued Schooling for Pregnant Girls and Young Mothers” (NCI), 59 policy studies methodology, 4, 8–10 popular culture, 3, 63 Popular (TV show), 114–115, 173–174 population, school-age, 36 posters, 185–191 impacts of, 213n35 for National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 187f, 188f, 189f, 190f Poussaint, Alvin F., 42 poverty cultural, 30, 37–38, 41 cycle of, 44 link with immorality, promiscuity and, 34–35 pregnancy link with, 37–39, 46, 49, 116–117 welfare link with cycle of, 33, 35 power/knowledge relationships, 7 practical reasoning skills dual roles and, 167–169 training in, 153–156, 165 practices, 1. See also voluntary practices separate but equal, 64–71 pregnancy, 21. See also teen pregnancy; white pregnant girl in advertising, 33, 34f bringing on self, 104, 109n65 for Caucasians, 28 as cold, 83, 85, 97–101, 105, 132, 134, 222–223

Index • 251 as disease/disability, 63–64, 83, 85, 101–104, 105, 141, 223 dismissal for sexual activity v., 68 feminists views on, 99, 101 rates, 48 repeat, 73, 141, 153, 208 scares and TV, 114–115, 173–175 schools in New York, 108n25 temporary nature of, 62, 126 unplanned, 28, 181, 199 unwed, blacks/whites on, 24, 51n32 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 76n48 pregnant teens, 14n1, 119 prenatal classes, 151 prenatal health care, 89, 150 “Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy: What Schools Can Do” (CDF), 87 prevention, 39–40, 93 of AIDS/HIV/STD, 180–181 legislation and funding for, 31–33, 46 programs for, 89 of repeat pregnancy, 73 principals, school on alternative school placement, 100, 102, 130 barriers and, 125–128 on teen mothers in public schools, 56, 79, 90, 114 professionals, black female, 43 programs, 13–14. See also abstinence education; specific programs and curricula for schools, 73, 82, 85–88, 96 development, 8, 13, 32, 97 policies and, 13, 36, 97 for prevention, 89 Republicans on abstinence and reduction of, 39–40 school districts’, 130 Special Education, 169n13 state, 15n8 welfare to work, 156–168 Project Reality, 183–184, 186, 191, 195–196. See also Game Plan on marriage, 206–207 on sexuality of boys v. girls, 205 prom moms, 135n3, 174 promiscuity, 34–35, 200 prostitution, 21 PRWORA. See Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act

public housing, 38 public opinion advertising and, 23–24, 25f, 29, 69–71, 70f F.C.’s influence on, 20–21, 29 focus on white teen mother, 28 on overcoming hardship, 77n56 on teen pregnancy as crisis, 27 Puerto Ricans, 16n26 Pure Love program, 183 “push-out” strategies, 123 qualitative research, 3, 6, 15n8, 123 Quayle, Dan, 53n96 Quinby, Lee, 221 quizzes, 222. See also tests/quizzes race, 2, 6. See also biracial births; integration; minorities; segregation; specific race abstinence education and, 202–204 birthrates by, 50 changes at F.C. Homes, 146–149 class and social policy in U.S., 52n64 classification of, age and, 94 and dropping out/returning to/staying in school, 117–122 equity, 11, 14, 220, 222–223 link to “at-risk” traits, 153–154 and school-based programs, 115, 142 theory, critical, 135n2 treatment options and, 12–13, 20–26, 30, 71–74, 111, 113–114, 130–134, 217–220 two-tired system and, 58, 132 racial formation theory, 15n4 racial/ethnic groups, 16n26 racialize, as term, 15n4 racialized discourses, 3 binary discourses and, 9–10 impacts of, 37, 53n76, 221 legislative acts from, 11 racism, 36–39 RAND study, 86 rape, 109n65 Raspberry, William, 206 reading, 144, 145 Reagan, Ronald on cuts in funding, 46 on education, 218 on welfare queens, 33–34, 41

252 • Index reformation, 149 APRG on, 154–155 separation and removal as key to, 144–145 regulation(s) attendance, 95, 153 of childbearing, 39 control and containment/restriction, 20, 218 stress and surveillance, 124, 126 and training v. education, 10 relationships, power/knowledge, 7 religious groups, 75n24. See also Christians representation, 2 impacts of, 5–8, 112, 135n5 power/knowledge relationships and, 7 in qualitative research and policy analysis, 4 reproduction, 200–201 Republicans, 39–40 rescue, 22 research, 221 organizations, 15n8 qualitative, 3, 6, 15n8, 123 Title IX in, 80, 107n4 research, educational, 1, 2, 4–5 absence in policy arenas, 79–83 resiliency, 127 responsibility, 2, 39, 41, 206. See also irresponsibility blame and, 171n62 education as, 57, 71–74, 219 and morality as values, 38 schools’, 2, 60, 86, 92, 104 for sexuality, 6 social, 23–24, 25f retraining moral, 141–149 values, 73 Rhodes, Deborah, 27 rights, 26, 57. See also civil rights; Office of Civil Rights groups, 55, 63 “Risking the Future: Adolescent Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Childbearing” (National Research Council), 93 “risky” behavior, 115 rites of redemption, 155 Roe v. Wade, 31 role models GRADS’ use of, 156–157 Specter on, 192

Romania, 52n54 Russell, Ms., 197–198 Ruth, Krista, 17 Save Sex program, 183 schedules, flexible, 12 school, home attendance at, 91 dropping out and returning to, 118 school boards on contamination, 64–65, 76n35 decisions by, 75n25 on schools as social workers, 79 school districts decisions by, 62, 75n25 discrimination by, 128–129 on extracurricular and club activities, 68–71 programs of, 130 RAND study on, 86 separate but equal cases with, 64–68 school personnel. See also administrators; principals, school; superintendent; teachers attitudes of, 4–5, 14, 87 decisions by, 88–91, 97 interviews with, 80–81, 83, 90, 97–98, 107n6 role of, 83, 108n12 school-based programs curricula of, 140, 142–143, 150, 155–156, 158 dual-role training and, 141–143 emphasis of, 139–141 with home economics, 141, 152 initiation and implementation of, 119 race and, 115, 142 use of, 58 work and, 219 school(s). See also absences; classrooms, separate; college; curricula; dropping out; expulsion; graduation; homeschooling; makeup work; principals, school; suspensions; truancy accountability, 5, 222 black, 131 challenges on policy design, 88–89 childcare in, 89, 92, 104, 108n38, 166 completing, 41, 141 dismissal from, 68, 85, 86 failure, 116, 124 night, 65, 76n35, 103, 127–128

Index • 253 policies, 99 pregnancy, in New York, 108n25 removal from, 102–103 responses, 83, 84f, 85, 108n12 responsibility of, 2, 60, 86, 92, 104 role of, 18, 81, 89, 93, 108n12 services provided by, 92 sexuality in, 212n7 on Title IX, 80–83 schools, alternative, 86–88 availability of, 97–98 data on, 93 graduation rates from, 120 placement in, 106 principal on, 100 schools, returning to, 220 after birth of child, 58–60, 62, 65, 101 dropping out and staying in school, 117–122, 123–129 schools, separate, 75n24 African Americans/Latinas in, 72–73, 103, 131–133 curriculum/course schedules at, 4 placement in, 106 programs for, 13, 14 regular v., 5, 11, 15n8, 15n11, 66–67, 227n7 separate classrooms v., 66–67 as single-sex spaces, 220, 224–227 special services or accommodations in, 101–103 Title IX on, 32 transfer to, 127–128 scorn, 9 seating, appropriate, 62, 124. See also desk, fitting into Segal, Sheldon, 211 segregation, 24, 26, 30, 51n28, 169. See also desegregation; integration Select Committee House of Representatives report, 1986, 92–94 self-esteem, 136n12, 148 self-sufficiency encouragement of, 41, 73, 158, 167–169 marriage v., 22 before sexual activity, 179 social welfare reform on, 106–107 Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 74n1 senate hearings, 14, 184, 186–187, 191–202 separate but equal practices, 64–71 separate facilities, xiii, 32, 61–62

separation disenfranchisement and, 122 exclusion and contamination, 101–103, 131, 221 from peers, 66–67 and removal as key to reformation, 144–145 services access to, 39–40 accommodations or special, in separate schools, 101–103 family planning, 89 medical, 11 policy discussion on, 32–33 provided by schools, 92 social, 39, 73 special, 101–103 Warren on types of, 85 sex. See also intercourse consequences of, 181, 193 as dangerous, 184, 186, 191–192, 193f, 194–196, 200, 212 as dirty, 184–192, 187f, 188f, 189f, 190f, 200, 212 reproduction and, 200–201 stories in abstinence education, 14 by unmarried persons, law banning, 47 unmarried teen, 40 “Sex, Lies, and Politics” project, 191 sex education, 88 v. abstinence education, 6, 177–183 sexuality in, 63 Sex Worth Waiting For program, 183 sexual abuse, 116 sexual activity abstinence education and, 177–183 approval of, 35 decrease in, 42 dismissal for pregnancy v., 68 increase in, 28, 33, 38, 39, 43 interracial, 52n51 promotion of, 40 in schools, 177 societal morality and belief surrounding, 69 sexual mores, 63 sexual revolution, 26 sexuality attitudes towards, 36, 121 control of, 39–40, 63–64, 69, 76n55, 176, 201–202, 211 female, 3, 9, 10

254 • Index sexuality (cont.) rationalization of, 176 responsibility for, 6 in schools, 212n7 of teenage girls, 14, 205 sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), 199 abstinence and, 179–181, 186–191 shame, 10, 174 Singer, Linda, 18–20, 176 single mothers, 17, 38 single parenting, 2, 39, 155 children’s problems resulting from, 39 rise in, 28 support for, 11–12 single-sex spaces, 224–227 Smith, Roland, 202 social policy race and class in U.S., 52n64 racialized discourses impact on, 37, 53n76 social problems, 37 black unwed mother linked to, 44 epidemic logic with, 19, 34–38 social responsibility, 23–24, 25f social science, 3 education v., 80, 96 journals, 80, 82–83, 84f treatment options and, 24, 26 social services, 39, 73 Social Welfare History Archives at University of Minnesota, 15n8 social workers, 98, 144–145 barriers and, 125–126 on excusing absences, 100 Solinger, Rickie, 24 Some Practical Suggestions on the Conduct of a Rescue Home” (Barrett), 23 song lyrics, 173–174 Spanish (language), 121 special education. See education, special special services, 101–103 Specter, Arlen, 184, 187, 192–200 sports, 223–224 barring from, 90 metaphors, 207 rights groups on, 55 Stamm, Monica, 62 on discrimination, 124 on single-sex spaces, 225–226 Stanley, Julian, 82–83, 209

State Board of Education, 98–99 state(s). See also welfare-state on data, 92–94 on education, 91, 106 policies of, 88, 97 programs, 15n8 on TANF, 105–106 STDs. See sexually transmitted diseases stereotypes, 225 of “bad” teen mothers, 72 defying, 77n56 racial, fears and, 149 of welfare queens, 112, 217 stories, 14 confessional, 155–156, 192 counter, 112, 135n2, 220 girls’, v. analysis of discourses, 1–3 stigma, 175 telling and not telling, 5–8 stress, 124, 126 student(s) on abstinence education, 187, 195, 213n31 at-risk, 116 on black schools, 131 councils, 68 media on, 114–116 profile of, 111–117 tracking, 5 subjects, 57–58, 71, 74 suicide, 191 Sullivan, Kathleen, 191, 195 superintendent, 65–66 support, 227 community, 136n27 family, 121, 136n27 F.C.’s training and, 22–23 networks for blacks v. whites, 136n27 for single parenting, 11–12, 209 Supreme Court, 31, 76n48 surveillance, 19, 49, 64 on black families, 41 regulation and control, 67, 83 regulation and stress, 124, 126 of sexuality, 38 suspensions, 124 “The Sweet Potato Vine” play, 29 tales, confessional, 192 TANF. See Temporary Assistance to Need Families

Index • 255 TAP. See Teenage Pregnancy Program taxpayers, 38–39, 41, 73, 140 teachers fear and discomfort of, 75n30 of GRADS, 152 impact on pedagogy, 140, 169n2 married, pregnant, 85 restrictions on, 39 as targets of contamination, 76n35 training for, 59 teasing, 103 teen mother(s) as “at risk” girls, 153–154, 167, 169n3, 194 as child, 33 debates and racialized constructions of, 7 defining, 2–3, 10, 44, 169, 169n3 as drain on society, 69 emergence of, 26–28 as girl next door, 28–33 interviews with, 105–106, 115, 139 legislation regulating, 39–41 married v. unwed mothers, 76n42 “other,” 58, 71 pregnant/mother teen v., 14n1 young v. older, 15n1 teen pregnancy, 64 consequences of, 116–117, 135n8 as crisis, 27, 34f, 36, 38 defining, 12, 17–18, 94–95 as educational policy issue, 2–5, 12 as epidemic, 34–35, 38 as historical, social, economic and moral issue, 56–57 media on, 17–18 as moral and personal problem, 46 as policy issue, 33 as problem, 2–3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 28, 71 social welfare issue, 81 Teen Pregnancy: What Is Being Done? A State-by-state Look” (Select Committee House of Representatives), 92–94 “teen years,” 51n34 “Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood Issues under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972” (U.S. Dept. of Education Office for Civil Rights), 89–90 Teenage Pregnancy in Ohio (CDF), 95 Teenage Pregnancy Program (TAP), 151

Teen-Aid, 183 teens adults and, 180–181, 182f, 183 pregnant, 14n1, 119 television, 56, 135n3. See also specific programs abstinence education and, 185, 191 white girl on, pregnancy scares and, 114–115, 173–175 Temporary Assistance to Need Families (TANF), 48 Title IX and impact of, 105–107 work and, 156, 159 tests/quizzes, 124–125 GRADS, 157–158 for National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 192, 193f regarding childcare, 139–140, 164–165 theories, 1 critical race, 135n2 cultural deficit, 80 racial formation, 15n4 “Thoughts on Planning for Education of Pregnant Teen-Agers” (F.C. Homes), 146 Time magazine, 36, 175 Title IX on absences, 61–62 ambivalent uses of, 88–92 impacts of, 2, 3, 32, 57, 85, 224 language of, xiii–xiv, 32, 57, 61, 71, 89–90, 130 laying foundation for, 58–61 mandates of, 61–63, 123 pamphlets on, 123 passage of, 5, 11, 12, 32, 61, 64, 86, 91, 97, 217 pregnancy as cold affect on, 100 PRWORA/TANF and, 105–107 in research, 80, 107n4 role of, 81, 87, 93, 220–221 schools on, 80–83 thirtieth anniversary of, 55–56 whites’/blacks’ benefits from, 71–72, 73–74 Tolman, Deborah, 174–175 tough love approach, 41, 99, 104, 153 trades, 144–145 training. See also dual-role training; retraining; vocational training for administrators/teachers, 59 employment, 91, 106

256 • Index training (cont.) F.C.’s support and, 22–23 life skills, 106 for mothering, 164–167 in practical reasoning skills, 153–156, 165 programs, 41, 73 and regulation v. education, 10 for trades, 144–145 transportation, 12, 65, 92, 124, 165 treatment of disability, 62 of males/females, 69–70, 76n55 special, accommodations as, 99–100 worthiness for, 23, 31 treatment options deficit model v. reform model, 154 race and, 12–13, 20–26, 30, 71–74, 111, 113–114, 130–134, 217–220 truancy, 116 Trudell, Bonnie, 38 “True Confessions” series, 29 True Love Waits, and Reasonable Reasons to Wait program, 183 tutoring, 72, 85, 92, 131–132 TV. See television two-tired system, race and, 58, 132 United States (U.S.) birthrates in Japan/Western Europe v., 44 race/class/social policy in, 52n64 STDs in, 199 teen pregnancy ranking, 31, 52n54 unmarried persons, law banning sex by, 47 unmarried teen sex, 40 unmarried women, birthrates to, 28 unwed mothers, 3, 20–27. See also white unwed mothers arguments for education for, 58–61 black v. white, 10, 16n26, 20–26 defining, 8, 43 F.C. Association on education for, 58–61 as lazy and irresponsible, 45 married teen mothers v., 76n42 rate of, 64 young, 15n1 Upchurch, Dawn M., 72, 120 upper class. See middle-class/upper class U.S. See United States

U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights pamphlet, 89–90 U.S. welfare state, social histories on, 20, 50n15 values abstinence education and, 178, 183, 199 blame on, 39 changing, 34–35 F.C. Homes on, 22 retraining, 73 white American, 38 values, family debates about, 17 decline of, 3, 7, 35, 38, 43–45 lack of, 64 Vanda, Ms., 199 Vergari, Sandra, 179 victim(s) aggressors or, 181 feminist, 6 unwed mothers as, 20–23, 32 video cartoon, 191–192 Vinovskis, Maris, 27 virgins, 204 vocational education GRADS and, 151–152 moral retraining and, 141–149 vocational training, 2, 88, 89 data on, 92, 93, 123 placement in, 106–107 regular curricula v., 11, 113 voluntary practices, 129–132. See also involuntary placement administrators on, 90–92 as mandate, xiii, 61–62, 123 wages, 42, 152 Walker, Liz, 43 Warren, Donald on education, 217, 219–220 on Indiana policy, 65–66 on service types available, 85 Washington Post, 38 welfare abuse of, 41, 43 block grant program, 48 on controlling sexuality, 40 debates about, 5–7, 17 dependency, 40–41, 142, 183, 200, 211, 218

Index • 257 educational policy issue v., 12, 14 fraud, sentences for, 83, 209 high school degree requirement for, 73 immorality and irresponsibility, 72–74 issue, education as, 38, 105–107 link with cycle of poverty, 33, 35 Norplant with, 83 responsibility of, 2 to work programs, 156–168 welfare queens blacks as, 33–34, 41–42, 53n90 good girls v., 3 stereotypes of, 112, 217 welfare reform, 3. See also Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act act, reauthorization of, 11 education link with, 46–50, 72–73, 133 marriage and, 206, 208 on self-sufficiency, 106–107 Welfare Reform Act of 1996, 46–50, 218 welfare/school/job training program, 73 welfare-state, 19, 20 Western Europe, 44 white pregnant girl illustration of, 83, 84f, 107n12 on TV shows, 56, 114–115, 173–175 white slave traffic, 21, 51n18 white unwed mothers defining black v., 28–29 rate of, 64 treatment options for black v., 10, 16n26, 20–26, 30

Whitehead, Barbara, 66–67 white(s). See also blacks, whites v. abortion/adoption rates of, 115 African Americans’ issues affecting, 53n104 American values, 38 dropout rates of pregnant v. nonpregnant, 136n25 limitations on opportunities, 58 Wilson, Otto, 21 Winant, Howard, 15n4 Wolf, Wendy, 88, 222 women, 9. See also feminism; males v. females as flowers, 201–206 role of, 200–201 unmarried, birthrates to, 28 Women’s Equity Resource Center, 128 women’s rights, 26 Women’s Rights Project, 63 work. See also employment; income; job training; occupations; trades; wages GRADS on, 150–152 school-based programs and, 219 schooling for, 156–164 by teen mothers v. nonparenting teens, 117 welfare to, programs, 156–168 worker(s). See also social workers health care, 39 role as mother and, 13–14, 141–143 work/training programs, 41 Worth the Wait program, 183 worthiness, 23, 31

Unfit Subjects: Educational Policy and the Teen Mother

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Educational Research and Policy-Making: Exploring the Border Country Between Research and Policy

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Unfit Subjects: Educational Policy and the Teen Mother

Unfit

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Handbook of Educational Policy (Educational Psychology)

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Unfit to Practice

Teen Genreflecting:

The Twins And Mother

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Educational Research and Policy-Making: Exploring the Border Country Between Research and Policy

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Policy research in educational settings: contested terrain

Teen Prostitution

Teen Idol

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Teen Rights (and Responsibilities), 2E

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