Discourses and Teenage Pregnancy 1 Running head: DISCOURSES AND TEENAGE PREGNANCY Public Discourses about Teenage Pregnancy: Disruption, Restoration, and Ideology Jennifer J. Bute Department of Communication Studies Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Laura D. Russell Department of Communication Denison University [This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Health Communication on January 17, 2012, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2011.636479] Author note: Jennifer J. Bute (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is an assistant professor in Communication Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Laura D. Russell (Ph.D., Ohio University) is an assistant professor in Communication at Denison University. A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Central States Communication Association in April 2010. The authors would like to thank Laura Ellingson and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript. Address correspondence to Jennifer Bute at
[email protected]. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Health Communication on January 17, 2012, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2011.636479 Discourses and Teenage Pregnancy 2 Abstract Two recent incidents in the United States generated a wealth of public discourses about a particular reproductive health issue: adolescent childbearing. As the media, political pundits, and private citizens pondered the meaning of these events, they expressed viewpoints, explanations, and possible solutions in mass-mediated outlets. We examined the discourses communicated in such outlets to understand how public discussion of teenage pregnancy reveals ideological assumptions about reproductive health, ideal family forms, and the expected lifecourse.