Prejudices about Young Mothers - Dissertation Example

That said, there is some indication that there is a difference between the stigmatization of women from different backgrounds – advantaged backgrounds versus disadvantaged backgrounds. Jewell et al. (1999, p. 523) found that the women from the advantaged backgrounds looked upon teenage pregnancy much different than then did the women from less advantaged backgrounds in that they were less likely to view teenage pregnancy as a good thing. The advantaged women felt that their career, university, money, and personal development were top priorities when they are young, while the disadvantaged women tended to think that starting a family between the ages of 17 and 25 would be optimal. The advantaged women feel that the families should be started later than this. Jewell et al. (1999) further found that the young mothers in the study tended to judge other young mothers, accusing the other young mothers of being selfish, becoming pregnant on purpose to get social welfare benefits, or judging them for putting themselves first, over their child (p. 524).

There has been a steady rise in the UK with regards to lone parenting, according to Gregg and Harkness (2007, p. 3). This reflects the rise in divorce and separation as well, and it also reflects the percentage of never-married females. There are also more women cohabiting today than there were 30 years ago, according to this study. Gregg and Harkness (2007) looked at the incidence of lone parents and how welfare reform has impacted them. This study noted that the UK Labour government 1997 initiated a series of government policy reforms that had the objective of reducing the incidence of child poverty. Among the elements that this policy had was that there should be an encouragement of employment among lone parents, inspired by a series of welfare-to-work programs that were instituted in the United States. The UK government then adopted the Working Families Tax Credit, which provides improved financial incentives to work, and the New Deal for Lone Parents and other welfare-to-work schemes, in which active case management was introduced into the welfare system. The two ambitions of these proposals were to increase the employment of lone parents to 70 percent and reduce child poverty (Gregg et al., 2007, p. 2). The element of compulsion for this program was that the lone parents were required to attend interviews at the Job Centre to discuss work options, and the programs in Britain had as its focus raising incomes for lone parents who are working and not working, and there was an increased earnings contribution that was an important component of the intended income gains (p. 3).

One of the trends that seem to have changed over time is the degree of acceptance and support that young mothers have received from their families. Arai (2009) reports that her study participants did not experience rejection from their families, in contrast to many of the young mothers who experienced rejection from their parents in previous generations. The women in this study reported that they were offered a great deal of support from their parents, as their parents offered to babysit while the girls finished school or worked part-time (p. 176). These reactions that Arai (2009) reports are in contrast to an earlier study conducted in 1999, in which the teenage parents by and large reported that their parents were hostile. These earlier teenagers in the earlier study reported everything from their mother forcing them to have an abortion to fathers throwing out their daughters. These earlier teenagers even reported doctors who recommended abortions and mothers who threw them out and suggested that social services take care of them (p. 177).

As far as the number of teenagers who have gotten pregnant, this has also changed over time, and it has become lessened over time, according to Johns et al. (2011, p. 4), who note that when the Labour government came into power in the UK in 1997, it had the stated goal of reducing teenage pregnancy by the year 2010 by one half. Recent data shows that, since 1998, there has been a general decline in teenager pregnancy, which is classified by the UK government as pregnancy under the age of 18.