This thesis presents a cultural analysis of teenage pregnancy in a Cree community. In the last fifty years, social and material change, prompted by residential schooling and the growth of settlement life, have catalyzed a shift in teenage perceptions of parental authority and norms of social relations. Today the peer group is a pre-eminent agent of socialization, generating pressure to drink and be sexually active. The peer group also, in part, sustains the valuation of motherhood, and some indigenous norms of interpersonal communication and socially appropriate behaviour. In this contemporary context, the meanings of teenage childbearing are multiple, and different for each individual. / Although a biological fact, teenage pregnancy may also be seen as a product of how differentials in power between teenagers, their peers and people of different age and social groupings are played out. The construction of a category of adolescence and the centrality of fertility and reproduction are keys to understanding the social and symbolic significance of teenage pregnancy. This analysis emphasizes the interactive relationship between historical change, ideological beliefs and individual perceptions in shaping the meaning of teenage pregnancy in a Cree community.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.56942 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | James, Catherine A. |
| Contributors | Lock, Margaret (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Anthropology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001325629, proquestno: AAIMM87669, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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