17. STOLEN CHILDHOOD: CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF “UNMARRIED” PREGNANCY IN BANGLADESH

The Centre for Training and Rehabilitation of Destitute Women (CTRDW, also the Centre throughout) is a euphemistic name for a shelter for abandoned pregnant women and their infants in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Seventeen percent of the women admitted to CTRDW over an eight year period (1981–1989) are very young teenagers (15 years of age and under) who have sustained unmarried, and therefore unwanted, pregnancies. It is with these young mothers that this paper is concerned. The circumstances under which these young women find themselves both pregnant and abandoned by their families are culturally constructed. The data presented here are taken from CTRDW admission records, life histories taken by the CTRDW Social Worker, interviews with the Director, Betty Steinkrauss Brown, and her extensive correspondence with her family in Canada.¹ Betty is a Canadian woman who originally went to Bangladesh is 1977 to administer the Families for Children (FFC) orphanage in Dhaka.