Jan Macvarish is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Kent. She is interested in the sociology of interpersonal relationships, parenting, family life, sex and intimacy. Her doctoral thesis (2007) explored contemporary meanings of love and family through a study of single women. She has since developed an interest in contemporary parenting culture, working with the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent. http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/about/who-we-are/

In particular, she has focused on the issue of teenage pregnancy, arguing that, ‘A decade-long policy obsession with the teen pregnancy ‘crisis’ has presented the teenager’s body as an inappropriate vessel for a baby.
But it has become the perfect vessel for the social pessimism and moral disorientation that underpins contemporary policy making.’ http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/10/22/why-is-policy-obsessed-with-teenage-pregnancy/