96 Anthropology Southern Africa, 2006, 29(3&4) Partial truths: representations of teenage pregnancy in research 1 Nolwazi Mkhwanazi Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, Private bag, Rondebosch 7701 nolwazi@polka.co.za In this article the author identifies three schools of research on teenage pregnancy that were dominant from the 1980s to 2003 in South Africa. By providing a comparison with some of the research in the United States and in England, the author draws attention to the similarity in the representations of teenage pregnancy in South Africa and in the latter countries. The strengths and weaknesses of each research school are discussed. The author then provides an alternative representation of teenage pregnancy substantiated by reference to her own research in the township of Khwezi East, South Africa. Keywords: teenage pregnancy, representation, research schools, South Africa Introduction ‘Pregnant and homeless on the streets of South Africa’ is the title of an article featured in Marie Claire in July 2002. The article begins with the story of fourteen year old Sizile Khany- ile who arrives, accompanied by her father and a taxi-driver, ‘at the prefabricated asbestos grey hut in Diepsloot, flushed, gasping for air and crying out in pain’. She is told by the nurse that she is in labour. We learn that Sister Yedwa, the nurse and heroine of the story, has established a clinic in the poor and dangerous township of Diepsloot. This clinic is to help women give birth as ‘most of the pregnant women are igno- rant about childbirth and don’t even know the birth process has begun’. Sister Yedwa is quoted as saying that ‘teenage girls, some as young as fourteen, would give birth at the side of the road holding onto their stomachs and waiting for an ambulance to pick them up’. Those who made it to her clinic, the readers are told, had their babies ‘literally falling out of them’. Rape, ignorance, not wanting to use contraceptives, proving womanhood, desire to hold onto a boyfriend, pov- erty – sex in exchange for security/money/a roof over one’s head/transport to school – are causes cited in this article as contributing to the high prevalence of both teenage preg- nancy and HIV infections among youth. Received wisdom in the social sciences has it that repre- sentations of reproductive health and/or sexuality are far from neutral (cf Rich 1977; Foucault 1978; Fields 2005; Macleod and Durrheim 2002; Pigg and Adams 2005). Values pertaining to how the world should be, and how the world should be lived in, underlie representations of sexuality. In the above representation we are told that the teenage girls are ‘as young as’ fourteen years old. In other words, they are ‘children having children’. We are also told that they are igno- rant, poor, black, and live in a township. In other words, pov- erty and ignorance lead to teenage pregnancy. Lastly, teenage pregnancy is associated with HIV infections. In other words, teenage pregnancy like HIV can only result in deleterious consequences. While these statements may appear ‘true’, their validity lies in specific moral trajectories which ‘generate specific procedures for knowing, manipulating and managing bodies’ (Pigg and Adams 2005:1). The aim of this paper is to examine representations of teenage pregnancy generated by three schools of academic research that were dominant at the time that I conducted my research on teenage pregnancy research in 2001 to 2002. I draw attention to the values that underlie these schools and their subsequent representations of teenage pregnancy. This paper is not a review of the research on teenage pregnancy. I do however draw on some studies conducted on teenage pregnancy as examples of the kinds of research that fall under a particular school. A review of the research on teenage pregnancy in South Africa has been provided by Macleod (1999a, 1999b, 2002, 2003), and Macleod and Durrheim (2002). Let me add that the idea of ‘schools’ is my attempt at making sense of the trends that were evident in the scholar- ship on teenage pregnancy particularly – although not exclu- sively – in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America 2 . This is not to say that these were the only schools, nor is it to say that the boundaries between the schools were clear-cut. Indeed, it is often difficult to classify some research as belonging exclusively to a particular school 3 . I chose to compare South African research with that con- ducted in the United States and England for two reasons. 1. This essay draws on research conducted in 2001- 2002 sponsored by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust; the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge; the Cambridge Political Economy Society; Trinity Hall; the Smuts Memorial Fund and the Fortes Fund. I would like to thank Andrew Spiegel and Francoise Barbira-Freedman for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts. 2. The similarity between the kinds of research conducted and the underlying assumptions behind the research on teenage pregnancy in South Africa, on the one hand, and the United States and England, on the other, have also been noted by Macleod (1999a, 1999b, 2003). 3. The work of the anthropologist Preston-Whyte (1991), for example, evades such easy classifications, as does the work of Jewkes which at times, could be classified as belonging to the official school (cf Vundule et al. 1999) and at other times as belonging to the feminist school (cf Jewkes et al. 2001).