ABSTRACT
Many people in America believe that a serious "problem of teenage pregnancy" exists. Policy-makers, educators, care-providers, and other gatekeepers have explanations for what they perceive as "the problem," "the cause," and "the cure." It is possible to group these cognitive or explanatory models into major categories. The underlying political assumptions are that any solutions will have to be found in some radical restructuring of the economic-work-reward system for American society. Genocide appears to be an important code word not for blacks' perceptions of a racial holocaust or concentration camps as a racist white policy, but for the lack of economic opportunities and institutionalized racism particularly for urban black males. The literature in social science on kin-centered domestic networks and female-headed households is particularly instructive for teenage pregnancy. Extensive interviewing and analysis, however, show another side of Catholic policy for those professionals directly involved in delivery of services and education.
