The Identity Construction of Teenage Mothers in the Hong Kong Chinese Context: Individual as a Site for Competing Forms of Subjectivity

Abstract

In light of social constructionist perspectives, the identity of teenage mothers is neither pre-existed nor only a personal intra-psyche construct. Instead, it is a product of social interactions that involve subjective processes of self-conception and discursive practices in society. This research project aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the lived experience of teenage mothers in real life and the processes of how their identity is constructed within their sociocultural context. 20 research participants were recruited and each participant attended two in-depth interview sessions. In total, 40 in-depth interview sessions were conducted using an interpretative phenomenological research approach. The three main themes of the findings, including social processes contributing to the identity construction of teenage mothers, teenage mothers’ self-perception of their own identity and teenage mothers’ strategies for resisting and/or negotiating their stigmatized identity, had been derived from the data. The findings clearly demonstrated that the identity construction of teenage mothers was not unilateral. Individuals also contributed to the construction process and served as a site for competing forms of subjectivity in which the teenage mothers have been exposed to alternative ways of constituting the meaning of their lived experiences. Meanwhile, their subjectivity was not only constituted by dominant discourses that were underpinned by various social forces, but also subject to change by their negotiating with and resisting the dominant discourses, which helped to reconstitute the meaning of teenage mother and then (re)construct their identity. Thus, identity construction was a bilateral process in which the teenage mothers performed as an active agency to counteract the stigmatization of their identity manipulated by the dominant discourses, while social forces still have great influence on their identity construction.

Date of Award	30 Dec 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Oi Wah Esther CHOW (Supervisor)