Marginal Deviants: Teenage Girls Experience Community Response to Premarital Sex and Pregnancy

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Abstract
Teenage premarital sexual activity, contraceptive use, abortion, and pregnancy are denned as marginal and unofficial deviance: they are subject to disapproval in certain segments of the community but are not legally proscribed. This study contrasts teenage girls' anticipation of community response to these behaviors with their actual experience of this response. Although they expect disapproval, and manage their lives so as to evade negative judgment, sanctions are rarely applied when conventional others are told about or discover their activities. The study contributes to the labeling perspective in two ways: first, as an illustration of the problematic nature of reaction; and second, as an illustration of the way community response to disapproved activity is transformed in the process of discovery.