| Abstract: | 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’. |
