Overview of Māori teen pregnancy
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This review is a part of a broader research project being undertaken by the Families Commission in relation to teenage pregnancy and ‘repeat’ teenage pregnancy. The project seeks to answer a number of key questions that have been shaped by the Minister of Social Development in response to what is considered an issue of increasing Teen pregnancies in Aotearoa.
This literature review provides an overview of views related to Māori teen pregnancy. A search on Māori views related to the topic has highlighted that there is a dearth of literature in the area that is grounded within Māori views or approaches and as such a wider search has been undertaken in regards to literature or research that relate to the broader topic of teen pregnancy and Māori.
Commissioning agencies
Date of last publication
7 Dec 2011
Purpose
In order to understand the context of Māori teen pregnancy it is necessary to begin with a general overview of Māori cultural views of whakapapa, whānau and tamariki as practiced within tikanga Māori. This provides an understanding of how wider Māori cultural concepts frame how pregnancy is positioned within te ao Māori, and therefore contextualises an approach by which Māori teen pregnancy may be viewed. It is also important to provide a social and political context of the construction of teen pregnancy more generally and how that context determines the types of responses that we see within Aotearoa presently. As such, the second section of this review explores western historical constructs of teenage pregnancy and the influence of those historical discourses upon current explanations and responses to teen pregnancy.
Once having established the historical constructions of teenage pregnancy, section three moves to contemporary research within Aotearoa that includes some discussion about Māori teenage pregnancy. This section has a particular focus on exploring the dominance of Western research as the basis for understanding teenage pregnancy, and the limitations of such research. Where there is little research directly related to Māori and teenage pregnancy, we found this also appears to be the case in regards to other Indigenous Peoples. Section four provides an overview of a limited amount of literature that relates to the views of Indigenous Peoples about teenage pregnancy within their communities in North America. Finally, section five gives an overview of literature by Māori about Māori and teenage pregnancy. Although the literature or research that has been undertaken by Māori in this area is sparse, what does exist provides a clear understanding that teenage pregnancy must be viewed within a wider political, economic, social, and cultural context, and that in doing so, exposes that the dominant deficit approach used by many researchers does not in fact provide an accurate picture of the current position of Māori teenage parents.
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