Psychological and socio-economic challenges faced by teen fathers: A narrative review

Purpose of the study: The purpose of the study was to explore the psychological and socio-economic challenges faced by teen fathers. Methodology: This was a narrative literature review study, wherein researchers relied on secondary data from peer-reviewed published articles. Published articles were purposively sampled from different search engines such as Google scholar, South African National ETD portal, Jstor, Sabinet and EBSCOhost. The selection criteria were also determined by restricted data from the year 2003 to 2020 with a 17 years’ projection. The collected data was analysed thematically. Main Findings: The study found that teenage boys are not immune to the challenges of parenthood. More like their counterparts, teen fathers experience psychological and socio-economic challenges as far as parenthood is concerned. Application of the study: The lack of research on teen fathers creates an imbalance and leads people into believing that only teen mothers experience parenthood challenges. However, this study underpins that due to the lack of research on teen fathers, teen fathers experience various social ills such as stealing and dropping out of school due to the challenge of parenthood. Novelty/Originality of the study: This study contributes positively to the arena of social service and assists social workers with guidelines to address teen fatherhood. By the virtue of their educational background, social workers can advocate for voiceless teen fathers and challenge the imbalances that invade their dignity and manhood.

The Stigmas Associated With Teen Parenting: How Gender-Stereotypical Expectations Contribute

One hundred three students from a small liberal arts college rated statements about potential stigma associated with unmarried teen parents. After reading a scenario describing an unmarried teen couple’s pregnancy and early parenting experiences, participants indicated their level of agreement with 11 statements for either the mother or the father. Multivariate analysis of variance comparisons of the items indicated that the focus of attention was on the mother, in both positive and negative ways. Compared to unmarried teen fathers, unmarried teen mothers were seen as more sexually promiscuous, and too young to be a parent. On the other hand, mothers were also rated significantly as spending more time with their child, and assumed as more responsible. Unmarried teen fathers were seen as significantly more ambitious, whereas respondents thought it was more important for mothers to continue their education. Results reinforce the idea that unmarried teen mothers are expected to bear a disproportionate amount of the burden of care for their child. Knowledge of these results could lead to greater sensitivity toward unmarried teen parents and lend to more helpful support, which could assist them, and their children, to succeed despite their circumstances.

Being There (Or Not): Teen Dads, Gendered Age, and Negotiating the Absent-father Discourse

Using in-depth interviews with twenty-six teen fathers, I explore how these young men negotiate the absent-father discourse in making sense of their identities as young dads. I find that teen fathers draw on culturally available notions of gender and age in their attempts to construct and maintain good-dad identities. Teen fathers deploy the expectation that “most dad’s aren’t around” to “lower the bar” and elevate their own performance by comparison. Teen fathers also feel the need to defend themselves from the discourse’s assumptions by invoking tropes of adult masculinity—insisting that “fatherhood means stepping up” and “being a man.” Because the fathers are unable to meet all the expectations of adult manhood, they create an escape hatch for themselves by citing their own adolescence and claiming a need for youthful freedom. Ironically, by invoking gendered and aged norms of adulthood, the fathers reify those norms into something harder to escape.

California Islanders

From “Fa'afafines,” (the third gender of Samoa) living in housing projects to teen fathers raising their children, Jean Melesaine’s photographs tells the stories of Pacific Islanders in urban California diasporas. For many of the younger generation in the United States, the complexity of multiple identities is etched in to their skin. For instance, on a drunken night in a garage, a young Samoan man gets the traditional “tatau” (tattoo) symbols of “ancestors” without knowing the symbol’s meaning, his “Blood Killer” tattoo for the Crip gang he belongs to, and the words “Sa'moa,” meaning sacred center, share the same map on his body.