A healthier and more hopeful person: illegitimacy, mental disorder and the improved prognosis of the adolescent mother

This paper aims to contribute to the exploration of the shift from a problematisation of ‘unwed motherhood’ to ‘teenage motherhood’ in late twentieth century Britain. It does so by exploring the dominant social scientific understanding of ‘unwed mothers’ during the 1950s and 1960s which suggested that these women suffered from a psychological disorder. I then analyse the conceptualisation of ‘adolescent unwed mothers’ exploring why professionals deemed them to be less disturbed than older women in their predicament. This finding is discussed in light of contemporary social scientific concern with adolescent motherhood.