New Labour's Teenage Pregnancy Policy

This chapter explores the changing governmental approach to the problem of teenage pregnancy in the UK. It argues that there has been a shift from moral traditionalism towards individualized approaches based on promoting responsibility, agency and prudent choice-making. New Labour's approach to teenage pregnancy marks a decisive turning point in governmental regulation, documenting the failure of previous approaches and establishing three distinctive discursive strategies: risk management through knowledge acquisition; constituting active knowing welfare citizens; reconstituting blame. The paper ends by examining how this approach forms part of New Labour's combined and contradictory project of ‘modernizing the social’ and ‘remoralizing welfare’. Keywords: riskresponsibilityself-regulating subjectsteenage pregnancy Notes 1. Various and numerous actors and organizations (such as Conservative and Liberal Democratic MPs, practitioners, youth and community groups and agencies, health professionals and agencies, religious organizations and so on) were also involved, albeit to varying degrees and in alternative arenas (lobbying, or in the media etc.), in this process. Over 700 written responses were received and 70 projects visited as part of the report consultation process (see SEU 1999 Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) ( 1999 ) Teenage Pregnancy , London , Stationary Office . [Google Scholar], Annex 8).