People seem shocked that several young girls decided to get pregnant in their teens without the presence even of a father, but you when you look at things from their perspective it might just be a logical decision.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/833043/gloucester_massachusetts_discovers.html
For one thing you get to move directly into adulthood. Do not pass Go. Collect $200 dollars. Schools are boring the life out of a lot of these kids. They come unprepared by their elementary schools, so they face failure every day. They also get yelled at, made fun of, and are too often shunned by their more successful more affluent peers. It isn't surprising to anyone who knows girls who come from small economically disadvantaged towns like this.
Chances are many of them see nothing wrong with doing something that will make it harder to go to college. College? Many of them don't know one single person who has been able to afford going to college. Even with scholarships and loans many kids have to go to work during and after high school to help their families survive. College would be nice, but many don't feel smart enough. They just hope they will be able to get any kind of job in this economy.
As for boys, as for fathers. These kids know the statistics and many come from families whose parents are not full of love and tenderness. So why plan on getting married if it will only end in an expensive divorce? Why hook some guy into being a parent reluctantly when you can have fun with your girlfriends and help each other raise your babies? Girls like babies. Some guy friends might help out too. As for being independent---that can come later. You can always go to college later.
You can also apply for food stamps and try to get on a Section 8 housing list. Maybe in four or five years you'll be able to be get an apartment you can actually afford. In the meantime being a parent is a full time job. So see you're already a working person, your raising a family. And you will have a little baby who will love you and who everyone will love...uh...well maybe not everyone...but most people like babies. Besides if parents and society really wanted girls NOT to get pregnant wouldn't they offer them birth control and sex education in school? Catholic parents aren't going to do that at home. Besides the Church says abortion is evil, so you wouldn't want girls to kill their babies would you? It's much better to be responsible and have it. Isn't it?
Responsibility is of course a big problem with some people. Welfare mothers aren't exactly held in high esteem and often lead pretty miserable lives. Pumping out babies you can't afford is not a logical thing to do if you want to be responsible adult, so what about that?
As if the girls cared. Society has obviously let them down. Many feel society doesn't give a damn about them. To them other people seem to be very busy playing with expensive toys, taking their families to Disney, etc. Surely they aren't hurting? And the government? Hey, these girls know our government is willingly spending billions of dollars going to war for no reason, so why feel ashamed of wanting to have a kid when someone else might have to support it for awhile?
For many girls the idea of having a baby at a tender age isn't crazy. Maybe they think the world is crazy. Maybe they think grown-ups rarely see that, let alone admit it, In any case a good argument, sad as it might be, might be made if you look at it from her perspective for the logic of a young single girl getting pregnant in high school.
Only how many of us will even try? Understanding how these girls think might actually spur people to make changes that would help problem teens. Usually it's easier to just condemn them.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Teen pregnancy? Sure why not?
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5 comments:
Sure why not? Dude, watch that show Baby Borrowers and you'll see its no laughing matter...those kids dont know what they are doing with those infants.
That was tongue in check Dave. I know it is not a laughing matter, but I don't think anyone will solve this problem without trying to figure out what might motivate girls to do this.
[Stumbled in here from KnoxViews, I posted this on another site some days ago, thought you might enjoy it: Cheers, VJ
[http://blogs.parentcenter.babycenter.com/momformation/2008/06/20/17-teens-made-a-pact-to-get-pregnant-we-can-continue-to-blame-them-and-judge-them-or-we-can-stop/]
# VJ Says:
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 am
"Interesting discussion here. This is not a new phenomenon of course, and any time you want to generate a little more outrage from the general public to boost your ratings on TV, just to a special on ‘teenage pregnancy’. Almost always focusing in on those ‘dreadful’ teen age moms. It’s really the prurient interest that we love & enjoy. But what are the facts here? And the Historical & larger contexts?
Rachel helpfully reminds us of the economic contexts here. This is not the plush neighborhoods that Chrissy over at Glamour’s ‘Storked’ grew up in. Still she does feel free to cluck cluck and offer her idea of therapy for the lot of them. Perhaps it would do them good. Still, our curses and vain attempts at ’shaming them’ surely won’t. Hester Prynne does not live their anymore.
So where was everyone Before they got pregnant? Nowhere. The social services were minimal, and what pregnancy prevention efforts they’re were in the HS were being actively stymied & thwarted by the local Catholic Church, and yes a bloc of vehemently active religious bigots who think that condoms are the devil’s own workshop tools! So these brave souls trying to actively Prevent this yes, somewhat tragic outcome had to Resign and leave town. That’s in the story too. So a clear Lack of Good information on Prevention and the Reasons why Postponing sexual involvement is a good thing were Not able to Reach the intended and most Needful audience. Again, a missed opportunity that’s rarely mentioned. Much Like a missing mine inspection before the fatal collapse.
So the girls were your typical downtrodden teens in under performing schools on their way to dull, desultory low wage jobs if they were fortunate, and/or short term partnerships with males who would likely never hold viable full time jobs if they were just HS grads. Making minimum wage jobs, just barely scraping by, unable to actually live in a real home, but in a nearby trailer park they’d call home for perhaps only the next 10 years if they’re lucky. They see this. They Know this. They also know that ONLY the ’smart’ ones have a chance to escape. Maybe. The rich and the middle class already have likely abandoned the vicinity. They looked around and saw no escape. They Saw & felt no love & little realistic & useful involvement from adults. Just teachers going through the motions perhaps. No one noticed. Those that did were admonished & fired for being ‘alarmist busybodies’. No condoms for you young ladies! It only encourages things!
So what did they do? Probably not knowing European Socialist history, or even the various (failed) 19th century Utopian experiments that littered the landscape of Mass & New England, they came up with a very collectivist answer to their problems. They’d raise their children together. Perhaps in Israel they might have started (another) kibbutz, but in America, where history is bunk and no one knows anything from or about Socialism, all we can focus on is ‘The Crazy’.
So what were they thinking? They were thinking about their babies. About how the only people they ever met who understood them and loved them were their friends, who like them, struggled daily with the same issues and hassles of everyday life in the here & now. Where they knew of no responsible adults. Certainly no responsible adult parental role models that they were close to perhaps. And they knew what they wanted. They wanted to be moms. That’s what was important to them, above all else. It was a role they thought they understood, and one that’s still universally respected, even today. They craved that respect, that recognition of adulthood status, and that level of mutual cultural responsibility. And yes, they craved love. It’s a universal need, and this would easily fill it. Now that’s certainly delusional on some level. They don’t ‘know enough’ to make such a decision. Certainly not with an adult male says the law.
Far from being ‘Crazy’ although it’s certainly a hazardous life changing decision, if their ’scheme’ had actually worked anywhere near as it was intended, it may have been one of the brighter ’solutions’ to grace their lives as parents. In Europe they can have ‘co-parenting’ co-ops. State supported child care is universal in all other Western Industrialized countries. For us? We can offer young parents only heartbreak & toil. Almost certainly they’ll not be able to afford health care if they’re just HS grads. (In Mass this may be different, due to the very recent changes in the law). They’d otherwise need to wait another decade of training & schooling to ‘work up’ to that vital yet vanishing middle class benefit.
Sure all the stats say that teen pregnancy is fraught with all manner of difficulties, health wise & economically and will probably impact the child in ways we’d rather not try and predict. Collectively they had a plan and they executed it. It needed slightly better logic and information, as do most teens, most of the time. Certainly Better parental control & supervision. By adult mentors & friends & teachers too. But that was not there or removed. So we’ve had the very predictable ‘accident’. Except this wasn’t an accident. It was a plan. A, yes, ‘cunning plan’ A deeply Collectivist cunning plan.
So at least give them credit for knowing what they wanted and working out a plan on how to adequately try & raise their babies. And no, I don’t think anyone of us can accurately predict the future any better than they can. That’s the thing. We have ideals. But no one ever said that a college degree was ever necessary or required to birth or raise a child. It helps, and so does an adequate income. But if we all waited for those things to appear, perhaps most of the babies in the US would not be born. And certainly retrospectively, we’d be missing millions of folks if this was applied to our parents or theirs too.
So after all the name calling, the prurient glances, the seedy thoughts planted by all and sundry media outlets, go over to Demos.org and read up on ‘The Economic state of Young America’. It’s sobering reading folks. Even the College educated are losing income, falling behind today. So it’s an deeply imbeded economic choice. Should we save our fertility for a time when we May theoretically be ‘better able’ to afford children (the preferable middle class plan), or simply have them as young and early as possible, (the actual biological plan known every other place in nature)? We imagine we know why we should prefer one plan over the other, but an ‘infertility crisis’ and a larger generation of older unmarried & never married cohorts may argue otherwise.
How much are your kids worth to you? What would you do to see them raised properly? How would you do that in an economically decimated landscape, or indeed a ‘war zone’? Then wonder again about the ‘teen pregnancy’ crisis in America. Then check the stats. We’ve Always had teen moms. They’re fewer of them today than in the 1950’s, but they’re not getting married at nearly the same rates. That’s the real difference here, and has been for over a generation by now. But that’s another story. Where’s that Scarlet Letter?
Just some thoughts here. Cheers, ‘VJ’"
That was exactly what I was trying to say, but you articulated it much better. In this era of everyone minding everyone else's business (but only when it comes to administering post-situation advice or doling out recriminations and blame)and mostly on account of money too, it's refreshing to see someone has a collective spirit.
People obviously worry that the girls will probably cost society money. A terrible thing too when our government is willing to spend gadzillion dollars blowing up babies and teens in other countries if they happen to be in what are sometimes loosely labeled "safe houses for terrorists". That is money well spent, while raisng one of our own (and they are all OUR own children) seems somehow revoltingly wrong to many people.
I see things from your perspective. It's good to know I'm not one lone voice whistling in the wind. Thanks for posting here and please come back. I'd like to think if we are indeed "crazy" it is the good kind. LOL.
Valuable resource of teen pregnancy news summaries: http://ng2000.com/ng2000bb/YaBB.pl?num=1221461301
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