Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Anthropology

Major Professor

Heide Castañeda, Ph.D., MPH

Committee Member

Nancy Romero-Daza, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Cheryl Vamos, Ph.D., MPH

Keywords

Adolescence, Community Perception, Otherhood, Perú, Pregnancy

Abstract

“It’s a vicious circle”, the obstetricians of Huanchaco repeated time and time again after discussing a recently pregnant 13-year-old girl who had just moved to the North Coast of Perú. Adolescent pregnancy is an extremely stigmatized topic in global maternal and child health discourse. Pregnant adolescents are subject to educational policy, clinical protocol, and community practice. While global scholarship emphasizes adolescent pregnancy prevention, limited scholarship focuses on the conditions in which adolescent pregnancy is perceived, discussed, and managed. More importantly, these perspectives are even less documented amongst the North Coast of Perú.

This thesis serves as an ethnographic exploration of community perceptions of adolescentpregnancy in Huanchaco, Perú. A total of 45 semi-structured interviews with obstetricians (n =10), adolescents (n = 30), and teachers (n = 5) at a local school and health center, in addition to participant observation in classrooms and clinical interactions assist in examining the realities in which sexually active, pregnant, and parenting adolescents are perceived. Guiding theoretical frameworks of biopolitics and governmentality frame the following research questions: (1) What community perceptions exist regarding teen pregnancies and sexual lives amongst Huanchaqueros? (2) How do lived experiences reveal the underlying structures in accessing pregnancy-related care and education? (3) How do perceptions of adolescent pregnancy influence management and practice in educational and clinical settings?

Conversations with Huanchaqueros reveal that adolescent pregnancy discourse is extremely problematized, while burdens suffered post-conception have become normalized. In the post-colonial, Catholic, and coastal city of Huanchaco, adolescents exist in a layered contextin which their sexual and reproductive health is negotiated, often beyond their means. Operationalizing adolescence in clinical and educational settings varies globally, contributing to increased social stigma and boundless legal contexts. Medicalization of adolescent pregnancy and increased national pressures to decrease rates of adolescent pregnancy exacerbate a biosocial “othering” among sexually active, pregnant, and parenting adolescents that can prevent access to care and continued education. This thesis contributes to theoretical and praxis scholarship by reaffirming the need to shift priorities from adolescent pregnancy prevention to adolescent pregnancy support.

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