Just Telling It Like It Is? Representations of Teenage Fatherhood in Contemporary Western Young Adult Fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2006vol16no1art1244Keywords:
teenage fatherhood, contemporary young adult fiction, Western young adult fiction, caregiving, masculinityAbstract
In lieu of abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article:
The word “father” scares the life out of me. How can I be a father at sixteen, seventy miles away from a girl I hardly know and a baby I’ve never seen?
(Reckless 2002, p.160)
Baby hands. Warm, sweet-smelling baby hands. And all I can do is kiss them and pull her closer so she won’t see my face and how scared I am.
When there’s nothing you can do, do nothing.
But then I realize. I’ve done it. I know something. I know something about this little thing that is my baby. I know that she needs me. I know what she does when she just needs me.
(The First Part Last 2003, p.15)
The above quotations offer two fictional representations of teenage boys, both boys are afraid of ‘fatherhood’, worried about whether they can, or actually want to, take on the role. However, their fears are subtly different. In Reckless (Mayfield, 2002), Josh has yet to meet his new born son, Sam, and so his concerns centre around his perception of a cultural understanding of what it means to be a father. He perceives his youth, non-resident status and consequently, lack of ability to provide, as absolute barriers to his role as a ‘good’ father. Bobby in The First Part Last (Johnson, 2003) is sole carer to his daughter, ‘Feather’, after complications during the birth leave his girlfriend Nia in an irreversible coma. Billy is fearful of his inadequacy in meeting the daily needs of his daughter in terms of the emotional strength which this demands from him. However, he comes to realize that the deep bonds which exist between them make him a parent in ways which cannot be articulated through language and are beyond social discourses regulating ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ways of being a father.
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