Teenage pregnancy

Early research on teenage pregnancy sought to highlight the negative consequences of early reproduction, both for the infant and for the mother, and, as a result, to tease out the causes of, or factors leading to, such pregnancies. Research on interventions that reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy, and that improve the health, education, and social functioning of those teenagers who do become pregnant followed. Revisionist authors started to express concern, however, about the straightforward association of early reproduction with negative outcomes. They argued that the research showing such negative outcomes was methodologically flawed. Still later, authors taking a constructionist approach began to unravel the gender, race, class, and colonialist underpinnings of the standard approach to teenage pregnancy, and to highlight the power relations interwoven in public responses to, and interventions with, young pregnant women.