Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds: Gender, Race, and the Schooling of Pregnant Teens

They must make mature decisions before they are out of school, take on adult responsibilities before they have left home, and care for their children before they have completed their own childhood. One of today's greatest social issues, pregnant teens walk the boundary between childhood and adulthood, no longer able to reside in one world, and unprepared for the next. While society traditionally is quick to condemn, Wendy Luttrell counters the stigmatizing ways in which such girls have been traditionally held with this moving ethnography of their lives. Focusing on fifty girls enrolled in a model public school program for pregnant teens, Luttrell explores how pregnant girls experience society's view of them and also considers how these girls view themselves and the choices they've made. She pays particular attention to how schools react to pregnant teens and what they are doing to help these vulnerable young women to achieve their education. Readers learn the real problems that pregnant teens aredealing with, and how society's racial and class stereotypes continue to stigmatize and scapegoat them. These individual stories are accompanied by personal self-portraits that present a carefully detailed and powerfully moving picture of the issues these girls face everyday. Also includes an 8-page color insert.

Wendy Luttrell is Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education