Gang-Affiliated Latina Teen Mothers Overcoming Marginalizations through Resilience and Educational Aspirations

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

Latinas have the highest rate of teen pregnancy and are less likely to enroll and earn a college education. Current research suggests that the negotiation of identities is crucial to these women because they have to contend with poverty, racial and gendered stigma, and multiple layers of marginalization (Hunt et al., 2012, Barcelos & Gubrium, 2014, MALDEF & NWLC, 2009, Shanok & Miller, 2007, Edin & Kefalas, 2005, Vigil, 2008). Through a critical race analysis, the study examines how the negotiation of their identities as young mothers and gang-affiliated members, shapes their educational aspirations and in particular how their children become their primary motivators for their aspirations. To acknowledge and validate these mothers’ narratives, five in-depth interviews with gang-affiliated teen mothers from South Central, Los Angeles were conducted. This study is analyzed through a Chicana Feminist Epistemological framework using, Testimonios, a methodological approach that allows participants to voice their experiential knowledge; in combination with Portraiture (Chapman, 2005) to have participants be active agents in the study. This study provides recommendations and insights on how to better support young mothers and gang members and contributes to the literature on these women’s experiences that have been invisible and under-looked in research.

Author

• Katherine Maldonado, University of California, Los Angeles