Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager ― Narratives from the Fields

In 2003, Wendy Luttrell posed an important question: what might result if we were able to turn questions of judgement about pregnant and parenting teenagers into questions of interest about their sense of self and identity-making? This book takes up the challenge, offering a re/assemblage of what is, can be and perhaps should be known about teenage pregnancy and parenting in the context of the twenty-first century. The collection presents original contributions from leading commentators in four key contexts: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Aotearoa New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, all sites of elevated incidence of and/or concern around what is commonly articulated as the «problem» of teenage pregnancy and parenting. In offering a multi-disciplinary reading of the narratives of young men and women, this volume engages with the ambiguity shared by all of us in confronting the life transition that is pregnancy and parenting.

Annelies Kamp is Associate Professor in Leadership in the College of Education, Health and Human Development at the University of Canterbury in Aotearoa New Zealand. She was also a teenage parent. In the years since her daughter was born Annelies has completed her education and held senior leadership roles in the public service, industry training and the non-government sector. Her most recent book, A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century, was published in 2014. Majella McSharry is a lecturer at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University in Ireland. She has worked as a secondary school teacher and is currently director of the Professional Master of Education at DCU. Her research has focused predominantly on the embodied experiences of teenagers and particularly the construction and articulation of gender through embodied praxis.