Teen Pregnancy 2 Essay Research Paper Pregnancy

Teen Pregnancy 2 Essay, Research Paper

Pregnancy Among Teens All societies possess social standards that control the sequence and the tempo of important life occurrences. Frank Furstenberg in, Unplanned Parenthood introduces this notion of social standards through what he terms the normative schedule. According to Furstenberg normative schedules are, “prescribed life courses, it is the timing of life events”(Furstenberg pg.2). Normative schedules vary from society to society. They are precise structures imposed by cultural rules and by social constraints. Through normative schedules public as well as private experiences are ’scheduled’ or structured to occur at a specific time and in specific circumstances. The scheduling of parenthood, a private behavior, is subject to a society’s normative schedule. When and under what circumstances vary from one culture to another, but no society leaves it purely to biological chance. Furstenberg’s normative schedules are direct results of the cultural restrictions on life that Herbert Blumer explores in his book, Society as Symbolic Interaction. According to Blumer, “social theorists have long recognized the universal existence of cultural restrictions on reproduction” (Blumer pg.50). A culture’s restrictions on reproduction allow for the creation of parental normative schedules. In most societies where the normative schedule is followed, individuals are allowed to experience certain behaviors, such as parenting, through the private realm as long as the ‘norm’ of the system is not disrupted. According to Furstenberg, “schedule disruptions are usually disadvantageous”(Furstenberg pg4). This is because cultural standards are arranged in such a fixed position that any disturbance such as teen pregnancy creates an imbalance in the ‘natural’ benefits of operating within the system. Teen mothers operate outside of their allowable, private, discourse in the normative schedule, thus creating an imbalance in the culture. Normative schedules dictate individuals’ proper places and status in a culture. Disturbances in cultural life, such as premature motherhood, sometimes result in premature status transitions, placing people into positions for which they are unprepared or unable to assume because society is constructed to support those who follow the normative schedule of life. Arthur Campbell in, “The Role of Family Planning in the Reduction of Poverty” expresses this idea in the following way: The girl who has an illegitimate child at the age of 16 suddenly has 90 percent of her life’s script written for her. Her life choices are few, and most of them are bad. Had she been able to delay the first child, her prospects might have been quite different (Campbell pg30). Barrie Thorne in her essay, “Feminism and the Family: Two Decades of Thought” explores the idea of normative scheduling, the concept of motherhood, and the consequences of entering this status through what she terms ideological constructs. Through this system one is introduced to fixed characteristics that he/she must prescribe to in order to be accepted into any given institution or community. Thorne would say teen motherhood does not support society’s ideology of the family; rather it challenges it. Although early motherhood does not support the system, teen mothers are still mothers and therefore subject to suffer the ramifications of being a mother in our society. According to Thorne, “the ideology of the family, more specifically motherhood, has reinforced the economic exploitation of all women”(Thorne pg6). Thus teen mothers are thrust, early, into an institution of oppression built on a concept of exploitation and degradation, motherhood. As a result, motherhood is no longer looked upon as a private experience but rather as a public deviance to cultural law and takes on the persona of a public problem with negative results for the new mother. Research suggests that early childbearing has negative consequences for the mother as well as the child. However, the effects are not always direct, instead it seems to trigger a chain of events that undermine later social and economic development. An essentially private behavior, childbearing, has been transformed into a symbol of social disorder and the cause of other social ills. There are many direct effects on education, family size, and marital status, and the indirect effects on economic status and welfare dependency of teens who prematurely enter the status of motherhood. The “National Longitudinal Study of the Labor Market Experiences of Young Women” is a study of 502 young mothers compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The purpose of this study was to test previous research that associated early motherhood with many social and economic problems. Unlike previous studies the NLS and PSID studies attempted to determine whether the achievements of young women were inhibited by having a first birth at a young age or whether early childbearers were limited by personal and social characteristics other than their age at first birth (NLS pg20). This was done by controlling the social, economic, and motivational factors of the young mothers. The women being studied were between the ages of 14 and 24. These women were interviewed over the course of 5 years. Over this time period extensive information was obtained on the education and work experiences of the respondents, as well as on their social and economic