Naturalized Realities of Deficit Discourses: Black Teenage Mothers' Voices, Hypervisibility, and Schooling

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Constructions of Motherhood

Abstract

This paper explores the ways a group of teenage mothers in the southern U.S. navigate the discourses of teenage motherhood, how they reproduce or challenge these discourses, and how they resist the negative stereotyping and stigma they experience. This paper also seeks to challenge the societal perceptions of Black teenage mothers through engaging with participants’ over their ideas of who they are and how they experience motherhood and their educational experiences. Access to a group’s wisdom is gained only after its members’ lived experiences have been validated on their own terms (Collins, 2000); the findings of this study are presented in a format that allows each mother to stand alone in narration of her own counter-story of teenage motherhood.

Author

• Taryrn T.C. Brown, University of Florida