Neither Accidental Nor Intended: Pregnancy as an Adolescent Identity Project Among Hispanic Teenage Mothers in Doña Ana County, New Mexico

Abstract

Social scientists have dispelled teen pregnancy’s public characterization as inherently pathological and instead frequently study teen reproductive practices as the result of either socioeconomic and cultural constraints or individual processes of identity construction. Through semistructured interviews with 15 young Hispanic mothers in southern New Mexico, I consider both macro-level contexts and individual-level identification processes in understanding teens’ reproductive decision making. Highlighting narratives of sexual and reproductive passivity in the region’s impoverished colonias, I describe how young women in these communities explained their pregnancies as the result of what I have termed sterility cuentos, their boyfriends’ false stories of sterility. I go on to tease apart the contradictory narratives of girls in metropolitan Las Cruces who called their pregnancies accidents despite wanting and planning to become pregnant. Through thematic narrative analysis, I argue that teen pregnancy can be thought of as part of a larger adolescent identity project in which teens in particular social locations reproduce, negotiate, and/or reconstruct various axes of their identities through their reproductive decisions within the context of significant constraints. I conclude by considering implications for teen pregnancy prevention efforts in light of this vast diversity in how Hispanic teens become pregnant and experience motherhood.