ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the ‘meaningful’ contexts within which teenage parents operate, and the power of social discourse in defining them as problematic. The following chapters take a more specific focus upon the varied and complex issues emanating from the issue of teenage pregnancy and motherhood. Initially, however, we need to note that teen pregnancy, and subsequently teenage motherhood, is often placed in the public consciousness alongside other facets of adolescent life experience such as drug and alcohol abuse, gang violence and delinquency. These are all aspects of deviant behaviour within the confusion of adolescent development that are best prevented, since they constitute a threat to the very fabric of society if allowed to flourish unchecked, as well as to the health and well-being of the young people themselves. They represent a cost to society-an actual financial cost through restitution and rehabilitation, an opportunity cost through the loss to society of economic activity and a moral cost. Our young people appear to have rejected many of the moral precepts that shaped destinies and formed the principled basis of interpersonal relationships in past generations.
