Teen Pregnancy and Intimate Citizenship in the Post-Welfare Era Clare Daniel
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository American Studies ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 7-12-2014 Reproducing Prevention: Teen Pregnancy and Intimate Citizenship in the Post-Welfare Era Clare Daniel Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds Recommended Citation Daniel, Clare. "Reproducing Prevention: Teen Pregnancy and Intimate Citizenship in the Post-Welfare Era." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/amst_etds/9 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in American Studies ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Clare M. Daniel Candidate American Studies Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Alyosha Goldstein, Chairperson Alex Lubin Amy Brandzel Claudia Isaac REPRODUCING PREVENTION: TEEN PREGNANCY AND INTIMATE CITIZENSHIP IN THE POST-WELFARE ERA by CLARE DANIEL B.A. GERMAN STUDIES AND ENGLISH, MACALESTER COLLEGE, 2004 M.A., AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, 2008 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM May 2014 ii DEDICATION To the memory of my mother, Therese Aileene Daniel (December 21, 1945 - October 11, 2013). iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was made possible through the generous support of many. I want to thank my adviser, Alyosha Goldstein, for his mentorship over my eight years in the Department of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Thank you also to my dissertation committee members, Alex Lubin, Amy Brandzel, and Claudia Isaac for their thoughtful feedback on multiple drafts of this work. I also received valuable comments from Letizia Guglielmo on a portion of chapter 2, and Mary Hawkesworth and anonymous reviewers at Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society on a section of chapter 3. The Office of Graduate Studies at the University of New Mexico funded the completion of this dissertation. I received funding for multiple conference presentations of this work from the Department of American Studies, the American Studies Graduate Student Association, and the Graduate and Professional Student Association at UNM, as well as the American Studies Association and the National Women’s Studies Association. Thank you to Sandy Rodrigue for her tireless administrative support throughout the years. The Department of American Studies, the New Mexico Office of the State Historian, the Center for Academic Program Support, the Lobo Center for Student- Athlete Success, and the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections all provided me with crucial support in the form of assistantships, internships, fellowships, and student employment over the course of my graduate education at the University of New Mexico. iv I would like to thank Micaela Cadena from Young Women United, and Jinx Baskerville and Toni Berg from New Futures High School for meeting with me to discuss their important work with and on behalf of pregnant and parenting teens. I am grateful to my fellow graduate students at the University of New Mexico and beyond for their friendship, feedback, and support. In particular, I would like to thank Bill Dewan, Gina Díaz, Jessica A. F. Harkins, Christina Juhasz-Wood, Kara McCormack, Carolyn McSherry, Marisa Potter, Annette Rodríguez, Emily Skidmore, and Sarah Wentzel- Fisher. I am especially grateful to Jessica, Kara, and Emily for their countless hours spent reading and commenting on my work, as well as for providing endless good times and unfailing companionship. Finally, thank you to my parents, Jim and Therese Daniel, who enabled my graduate education through multiple forms of emotional and material support. I am also grateful to my sisters, Martine and Andrea, for being such excellent role models, and to their families for their love and delightful company. Thank you also to Katherine Minkin, Emily Villela, Lou Serna, Lucia Villela Minnerly Kracke, and the late Waud Kracke for their support. My deepest gratitude to Blake and Milo, who have made my life rich and bright in ways I never expected. v REPRODUCING PREVENTION: TEEN PREGNANCY AND INTIMATE CITIZENSHIP IN THE POST-WELFARE ERA By Clare Daniel B.A. German Studies and English, Macalester College, 2004 M.A., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2008 Ph.D., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2014 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the politics of teen pregnancy prevention in the 1990s and early 2000s within public policy, popular culture, and local and national nonprofit advocacy. Widely viewed as a distressing social problem, teenage reproduction has provoked decades of prevention and regulation that pervade across public and private sectors. Teen pregnancy has been associated with, if not fully blamed for, a host of other so-called social problems throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and the beginning of the twenty- first century. As scholars such as Kristen Luker and Lisa Arai have labored to illustrate, causal connections between adolescent reproduction and the social ills it is said to precipitate and exacerbate are tentative at best. As such, the ubiquity of demonizing portrayals of teen pregnancy and parenthood as dangerous and irresponsible demands evaluation for what it can reveal about the values that govern mainstream society. Heavily racialized imagery of teen pregnancy was crucial to the passage of neoliberal welfare reform in 1996. Using historical, visual, and discursive analysis, I argue that contemporary privatized teen pregnancy prevention forms a key counterpart to neoliberal welfare retrenchment. I show that representations of and approaches to teen vi pregnancy as a social problem have shifted starkly in the post-welfare era toward a newly multicultural framework. Pioneered by some of the foremost architects of 1990s welfare reform legislation, this new discourse is purveyed through a privatized regime of coordinated social media and television that presents the management of teen sexuality as central to social wellbeing. As such, the post-welfare teen pregnancy prevention regime undergirds and extends the political and economic project of neoliberalism in three important and interrelated ways: (1) by promoting the intertwining neoliberal cultural logics of intimate citizenship, multiculturalism, and market rationality, (2) by obscuring the continued existence and lack of efficacy of punitive welfare reform policy, and (3) by helping to instantiate a paradigm of public wellbeing that sidesteps state-arbitrated wealth redistribution altogether. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... X INTRODUCTION: REPRODUCING PREVENTION .................................................1 “Teen Pregnancy:” A Neoliberal Social Problem .................................................3 Pregnancy Prevention in the Public Private Realm and the Privatized Public ...16 Methods and Chapter Outline .............................................................................19 CHAPTER 1: MAKING THE POLITICAL PERSONAL: TEENAGE PREGNANCY AND POLICY DISCOURSE ...................................................26 Introduction .........................................................................................................26 1990s: A Cycle of Babies having Babies ............................................................29 Changing Terms: The Perils of Teenage Sexuality ............................................38 2001-2010: Pre-Mothers and Reproductive Politics ...........................................61 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................70 CHAPTER 2: SEX EDUTAINMENT: TELEVISED TEEN PREGNANCY PREVENTION .....................................................................................................75 Introduction .........................................................................................................75 Teenage Frivolity Sacrificed: A Multicultural Politics .......................................79 “Good Girls” Gone Bad: Whiteness in Distress ...............................................100 Conclusion ........................................................................................................122 CHAPTER 3: ‘TAMING THE MEDIA MONSTER:’ TEEN PREGNANCY AND THE NEOLIBERAL SAFETY (INTER)NET ................................................127 Introduction .......................................................................................................127 Privatizing the Safety Net .................................................................................130 viii Harnessing the “Cool Factor” ...........................................................................149 The Biopolitical Media Monster .......................................................................159 Adolescence versus the “Odyssey Years” ........................................................173 Conclusion ........................................................................................................178 CHAPTER 4: PATHOLOGY AND PATH-BREAKING: “TEEN PREGNANCY” AND “YOUNG PARENTS” IN NEW MEXICO ...........................................180