Stigma stories: four discourses about teen mothers, welfare and poverty

Teen mothers are often depicted as the cause and consequence of poverty and welfare dependency. The author analyzes recent media accounts of teen mothers, identifying four interpretive frames associated with the discourses of bureaucratic experts (the wrong girl), conservatives (the wrong family), oppositional movements (the wrong society), and teen mothers themselves (the stigma is wrong). The dominant discourse is that of the bureaucratic experts, who are most often portrayed by the media as advocates of teen mothers. Yet in reinterpreting the meaning of teen motherhood, these advocates have incentives to tell their own stigma stories about teen mothers.