{"id":55822,"date":"2013-06-13T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T17:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=55822"},"modified":"2013-06-11T19:06:02","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T00:06:02","slug":"teenage-pregnancy-as-moral-panic-the-real-cost-of-nycs-new-teen-pregnancy-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/06\/13\/teenage-pregnancy-as-moral-panic-the-real-cost-of-nycs-new-teen-pregnancy-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenage Pregnancy as Moral Panic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teen pregnancy, like obesity, is often framed as an “epidemic.” \u00a0As such, both the “epidemic” of teen pregnancy and the “epidemic” of obesity can be understood through the lens of what sociologist Stanley Cohen popularized<\/a> as a \u201cmoral panic.\u201d In Cohen\u2019s words, moral panics are \u201ccondensed political struggles to control the means of cultural reproduction\u201d; additionally \u201csuccessful moral panics owe their appeal to their ability to find points of resonance with wider anxieties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Real Cost of Teen Pregnancy\u201d — a public health information campaign<\/a> launched by the Mayor and Human Resources Administration of New York City\u00a0in March 2013 — features babies and toddlers, primarily children of color, chastising their teenage mothers. Launched at a time when teen pregnancies have actually declined, primarily due to the availability of safe and affordable reproductive health care, the accusatory “shame and blame” narrative of these images is not only out of proportion to the “problem” it seeks to address, but is weighed down by its obvious cultural narratives about teens of color, poverty, gender and sexuality.<\/p>\n

\"teen4n-web\"<\/a>
\nHaving a pensive toddler of color next to the slogan \u201cHonestly Mom\u2026 chances are he won\u2019t stay with you. What happens to me?\u201d and a weeping boy of color next to the words \u201cI\u2019m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen,\u201d serves to re-stigmatize single teen mothers, encouraging wider social senses of moral outrage, hostility and volatility toward young, predominantly impoverished girls of color. Not unlike cultural narratives about “welfare queens,” the campaign plays into racist and classist fears about sexually active girls of color and teenage mothers who use social services. The message just under the surface here is about the need for social control of “unruly bodies.”<\/p>\n

These 4,000 posters, put up in buses and subways, cost a reported $10,000 per year for the city, and have already drawn harsh critique from many. Haydee Morales<\/a>, vice president for education and training at Planned Parenthood of New York City, for instance, has reportedly suggested\u00a0the campaign has got it backward. In her words, \u201cIt\u2019s not teen pregnancies that cause poverty, but poverty that causes teen pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Samantha Levine<\/a>, a spokesperson for New York\u2019s Mayor Bloomberg, \u201cit’s well past the time when anyone can afford to be value neutral when it comes to teen pregnancy.\u201d Public health campaigns are never value neutral. They communicate social beliefs about normalcy, productivity, desirability, and cultural worth.<\/p>\n

An additional cost of the unexamined acceptance of this new teen pregnancy campaign is accepting yet another narrative about individual choice over systemic change. Placing responsibility on the shoulders of the individual, such campaigns silence more complex conversations about accessible and affordable reproductive health care, anti-poverty campaigns, and gender and social justice work. Instead of buying into the “moral panic” of teen pregnancy, perhaps the mayor\u2019s office might look into more long lasting and less stigmatizing possibilities of structural change to improve the lives of young women in New York City.<\/p>\n

“Shame and blame” has rarely gotten public health anywhere. In the words of researcher and speaker Bren\u00e9 Brown<\/a>, \u201cShame diminishes our capacity for empathy. Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sayantani DasGupta is a\u00a0faculty member in Narrative Medicine<\/a> at Columbia University. She is the editor of <\/em>Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies<\/a>, \u00a0co-authored\u00a0<\/em>The Demon Slayers and Other Stories: Bengali Folktales<\/a>, and authored\u00a0<\/em>Her Own Medicine: A Woman’s Journey from Student to Doctor<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teen pregnancy, like obesity, is often framed as an “epidemic.” \u00a0As such, both the “epidemic” of teen pregnancy and the “epidemic” of obesity can be understood through the lens of what sociologist Stanley Cohen popularized as a \u201cmoral panic.\u201d In Cohen\u2019s words, moral panics are \u201ccondensed political struggles to control the means of cultural reproduction\u201d; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,403,55,2099,2091,2088,252,588,272,8118,23704,120],"class_list":["post-55822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-deviance","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-healthmedicine","tag-individualism","tag-marriagefamily","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-public-service-announcements","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55822"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55828,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55822\/revisions\/55828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}