Economic Security and the Social Science Literature on Teenage Pregnancy in South Africa

Feminists have argued that the association made between teenage childbearing and long-term lower socioeconomic status hides a multitude of socially constructed inequalities. I extend this position by analyzing how the association is linked in the South African literature on teenage pregnancy to economic security. I utilize Foucault’s conceptualization of the method of security. Security refers to institutions and practices that defend and maintain a national population as well as secure the economic, demographic, and social processes of that population. I analyze how the traits of the method of security are deployed with regard to teenage pregnancy; how reproductive adolescents are viewed as disrupting the production of the economic self and fracturing population control, thereby threatening economic security; and how the invocation of economic security allows for the legitimation of various regulatory practices. Teenage pregnancy is predominantly portrayed as a social problem, both in countries like the United States (Geronimus 1991) and South Africa (Macleod 1999c). This is partially because of its association with long-term lower socioeconomic status. This association is mostly attributed to the disruption of schooling that potentially accompanies pregnancy an