Pact or No Pact, Teens Shouldn’t Have Babies
When we last visited Gloucester, Principal Joseph Sullivan of Gloucester High School was blaming the 17 simultaneous pregnancies of teens in his school on a weird pact made by the girls to become mommies together. In the ensuing days, after a media frenzy hit and the town formerly known for its “Perfect Storm” became the shame of America, the principal backed down from his story.
“Any planned, blood-oath bond to become pregnant, there is absolutely no evidence of,” said Mayor Carolyn Kirk. She said that school officials had pressed the principal, Joseph Sullivan, to explain his statement to Time magazine about a pact, but came away frustrated that he had no evidence.
Word spread that Joseph had all but made up the story in order to deflect criticism about his school being a breeding ground for teenage pregnancy. The pact was a hoax, a lie, a desperate effort made up by a man facing a PR nightmare. Relief for Mayor Kirk and the city of Gloucester. Or is it?
It’s a game of “pick the lesser of two evils” in Gloucester now. What’s worse; that many girls swearing an oath to each other to have sex until they get pregnant and then raise their children together like some group of children playing house, or that many girls in one school randomly having unprotected sex on purpose in order to have a baby and put a little love in their lives? It’s a sad story and a sad reflection on Gloucester and society in general, either way. But one would think the mayor and the school administrators wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss the pact. A pact like that is a disturbing, yet hopefully isolated, problem. A rash of that many wanted pregnancies in one school is an even more disturbing trend.
Said school Superintendent Christopher Farmer: “I believe the issue of a pact has been greatly overstated. And I’m not sure what conclusions we would make if we knew whether or not there was a pact.”
We could draw a lot of conclusions, Mr. Farmer. None of them very good. If there was a pact, you have 17 girls who were completely uneducated in the realities of life. If there was no pact, and the girls all went out and did this on their own, whether accidentally or on purpose, then your school and community have a much wider problem than just a handful of girls wanting to live out some mommy fantasy.
No matter what the reason, the blame game is still in progress. Blame the media, blame Jamie Lynn Spears, blame an increasingly liberal society, blame economics, blame sex education, blame the lack of sex education, blame the parents, blame a depressed atmosphere in Gloucester. Indeed, several Gloucester residents interviewed in the aftermath of this fiasco basically shrugged their shoulders and said this is a way of life in their town; it is not at all uncommon for people to become grandparents in their 30s. If all these things may come together to make a perfect storm of blame, then we need to decide what to do about each and every one of them.
And when I say we, I mean all of us. Because Gloucester’s problems become society’s problems. When teens unequipped to deal with the harsh realities of parenthood crack under the pressure, when they realize they can’t finish their education or make enough money to survive and pay for child care, when they go on welfare, when they neglect or abuse their children or turn to drugs or alcohol or end up on the streets, they become our problem. Their children become our problem. In fact, the pregnant, pact-less teens of Gloucester are just following an alarming trend. For the first time since 1991, teen pregnancies are on the rise in America.
“What’s happening in Gloucester is a microcosm in some ways for what we’re seeing at the national level,” says Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in Washington. “The good news is that we have made extraordinary progress as a nation [since the early 1990s] in convincing people to delay sexual activity and delay pregnancy and parenthood. The bad news is that progress seems to have come to a complete standstill and, in some ways, has reversed.”
So what are we doing wrong? Was I too harsh in dumping almost all the blame on the parents in my last article on this issue? Did I not place enough blame on the media or on our permissive society? It is true that the media glamorizes sex and that we sexualize our children at such a young age. While I am inclined to have the media shoulder some of the blame here, I still do blame the parents wholeheartedly, especially for their childrens’ ignorance. Case in point, the boyfriend of one of the pregnant girls:
“I would just guess to say that girls are just … getting unlucky, maybe,” he said. The couple said they were not planning to have a child. “Lindsey was on birth control. She was very careful with it, you know, because, obviously, we, at 17 and 20, we’re not ready for a kid.”
20, eh? I’d have to be dead before my 17 year old daughter was allowed to date a 20 year old. to Then again, this particular 20 year old seems to be on the maturity level of his equally stupid girlfriend. If you are not ready to have children, you are not ready to have sex. There is no 100% foolproof method of birth control, save for abstinence.
And what of teaching abstinence? That opens up the can of worms known as sex education. If your school has a sex education program and 17 girls still end up pregnant teens, well, you’re doing it wrong.
I know so many people gnash their teeth and get all worked up at the idea of schools teaching our kids about sex, but it has to be done simply because we cannot trust every parent to do it at home, or do it properly, and a sexually uneducated child — boy or girl — is a potential teen parent and a potential problem for all of us.
Too many people hear the words “sex education” and react viscerally with diatribes about teaching kids how to put on condoms properly or giving them tacit permission to go out and have sex, just take a rubber with you, ok? But that’s not what sex education should be. It should be a tandem undertaking between parents and qualified professionals to educate our children about their sexuality and how to handle the changes in their bodies and the desires that come with those changes responsibly. They need to be taught self-respect and the respect of those they date. They need to learn the dangers of sex, especially unprotected sex. There should be a year-long curriculum about the consequences of sex not just physically, but emotionally. They need to learn personal responsibility and how to develop a sense of self worth that lets one believe they are worth more than what they can provide to someone sexually. They need to know that giving up your body to someone does not mean they are going to love you. What they don’t need to be taught is that it is ok to have sex as long as you use a condom because it’s not ok. It’s not ok to tell a 16 year old that she can share that moment of intense intimacy with someone she will in all likelihood not be with in a month or two. It’s not ok to tell a 15 year old boy that his desires are natural and as long as he uses protection and his girlfriend is willing, he should go for it. It is ok, in my mind, to teach abstinence, to tell children — and yes, these are children despite the semantics of definitions — that they should wait until they are older to have sex, that they should wait until they are mature enough to handle the fallout that may come with it, the emotional baggage that comes with giving yourself up to someone.
Well what do you know, there is such a program, a federally funded one, available to Massachusetts schools. Unfortunately, this wasn’t offered in Gloucester.
(Governor Deval) Patrick refused to accept $700,000 in federal funds for abstinence-centered education, effectively killing the program that taught youngsters to respect themselves, have a vision for their future, and delay sex until they are older, preferably married.
Now that is what I mean by sex education. It looks like someone really dropped the ball here. The school offers pregnancy testing and a day care center, but doesn’t offer a program to teach kids about making good choices regarding sex. Sure, this kind of thing could be taught at home, but it should have been apparent to someone in charge that given the need for a high school day care center and the perpetuation of young motherhood in Gloucester, that it certainly was not being taught at home.
Sex education is not the monster some people make it out to be. It has, in a society where sexual imagery abounds and where so many parents leave it up to schools to teach their kids what should be taught at home, become a necessity. If done right, as described above, sex education would be lauded instead of demonized and perhaps those children who need the education most will be spared the results of being ignorant of the consequences of their actions.
It is now up to Gloucester to take action so this does not become a repeated pattern. The media might have done this town, and this country, a favor by exploiting the supposed pregnancy pact. By shedding light on the problem, the town will now be forced to do something about it. And perhaps the rest of us will take this as an opportunity to take stock of our own lives and our children and think about what we are teaching them and, more importantly, not teaching them.
Excellent article
I do think that the the lion’s portion of the blame lies with the parents.
In my day (and I’m only 35, hopefully not that old!) we didn’t dress like little hookers. Why? Because we didnt have the endless supplies of cash that children have these days, so we couldnt go out and shop unsupervised. My television and movie viewing was very strictly monitored (unlike the parents of today, judging by the numbers of toddlers in the cinema when we went to see Iron Man recently), and I had a reasonable – but strictly adhered to – curfew.
Though I dont really think that the 17-20 age gap is too extreme. At 17 I had my first boyfriend (Oh yeah – I wasn’t allowed to date before 17). He was 20. My father didn’t object. But, I do recall that the first time he was brought to the house, my father sent me out to the kitchen to make tea, and I was told to close the door behind me….I can only guess what was said in that room, but the poor fella had the fear of God in his face when I came back in. Needless to say there were no pregnancies nor pregnancy scares…
How bizarre, in this day and age, that when there is almost no way at all to prevent the very youngest members of society from knowing absolutely everything there possibly is to know about sex, to blame teen pregnancy on lack of sex education. Back in the mists of time when teenagers knew far less about sex than they do now and it was expected that parents would somehow muddle through and explain the Birds and Bees there were far fewer pregnancies. But I can promise you that when it did occur there was no doubt as to what caused it.
Shouldn’t we blame the village? Sorry, couldn’t resist. Of course it is a parenting problem. Society should only be raising children when parents fail and often happens when we relegate personal responsibility to society (read the government) it at best is a poor substitute and at worst a miserable failure. In the “mists of time” referred to by hardheadedwoman, public schools also took some responsibility for teaching moral and ethical behavior. In this age of relativism, that has been abandoned or snatched away by “watchdogs” such as the ACLU. Further the teachers unions are too busy co-sponsoring pro-abortion marches and supporting a liberal agenda to have any interest in helping the teachers regain control of their classrooms and the curriculum.
These girls are doing what it is in their nature to do. At 16 and 17 their bodies are ready for motherhood. It is modern society that has made 16 too young to be a mother. Teenagers can actually be good mothers. They have the energy to cope with the dynamos that the very young are. Those who observed the young mothers of the FLDS were impressed by their mothering skills.
Young women of 16 or 17 need some powerful reasons to overcome their desire for a baby. They need a set of values and a vision of life for themselves that makes the waiting worthwhile.
I’m all for sex education but in a diverse society one program will not suit all and those who fear having someone else’s curriculum imposed on their family obstruct to the point that nothing is done. There would be vastly more sex education if parents could pick the curriculum for their children. However those who want to use the schools for social engineering block choice to the detriment of all.
I think Alice is right. I’ve never understood the argument that we should delay maturity in children in order to allow them to “enjoy childhood.” The modern world is much more complicated than the one that existed back when it was common for women to be married mothers at 16-17. That most 16-17 year olds behave far more like children than grown women is an indictment of the “progress” of our culture, one which apparently cannot even raise children as efficiently as ancient civilizations did!
Anyone who doesn’t think that irresponsible parenting is the cause of these teen pregnancy problems is just ignoring the big fat elephant trumpeting away in the kitchen.
All the other “excuses” such as poor sex-education and media slapper worship only come into play when the parents have made such a mess of their basic responsibility to the child in the first place.
Start penalising the parents and the trend will be reversed.
Yes, there was definitely some very poor or neglectful parenting going on here, but I hate to let the media culture completely off the hook. It used to be that society in general supported families, but now it seems like the culture at large throws every negative influence they can at parents then says, “Here, deal with it! If your kid ends up messed up, its all your fault. Don’t blame us! Sure, we bombard your children with influences from every angle every day, but really, we have nothing to do with it!”
My son is only preschool age, but I already see many moms my age who are floundering. If you live in the mainstream culture it’s like swimming upstream all of the time. But if you try to isolate your children, you’re a bad parent because then you’re sheltering them and they have no idea how to cope. It’s a no win situation for many parents, especially young ones who may not have had the best examples themselves.
I would love to see a culture that supports and uplifts the kind of parenting that most people seem to agree is best for children instead of one that constantly tears at the foundations of the family and seeks to undermine parents. Unfortunately, I don’t see it happening.
Just because there is a “natural urge” to have babies, doesn’t mean one should go ahead and do it. While there are 17 year olds who may indeed make good mothers, would they make good providers as well? How can a 17 year old be expected to give a child all the things it needs? Most of these girls are going to be raising their kids without help of the fathers. So how do they make enough money to give the baby the necessities of life – food, clothing and shelter? What teenager without even a high school diploma can afford to rent an apartment, pay for child care, feed and clothe their child? Is the burden supposed to fall on their family?
Mike, I don’t think keeping a teenager from having a baby is delaying maturity.
Blaming the media is a tough one. Motherhood is hip these days. And I’m not talking about specifically teenage pregnancies – I actually think they’re pretty irrelevant, no matter how much the media reports on them. By the time girls become teenagers, they’re generally done with teenage stars (whom they admired when they were 10). Ask a random teenager about Jamie Lynn Spears, and she’s going to shrug.
But ask her about Gwen or Angelina, and she might care. All the big stars are knocked up or new moms lately. That gets attention in the press. That in and of itself is not a bad thing. A society should value motherhood. I think it’s better than pregnant stars hiding themselves for 10 months like they used to.
The problem is, our society doesn’t take it beyond the surface. Our idea of valuing motherhood is a photo spread in “People.” And of course that looks attractive to a 17 year old from a shitty town. During pregnancy you’re sexily novel, and then the baby becomes a darling little accessory. Of course it’s not like that in the real world. Celebs have all the money they need for a fleet of nannies and they all lose the baby weight in about an hour. So I think that is where the disconnect happens – most teenagers have NO IDEA what hard work parenting is.
I was having sex at 17, and going to a Catholic school so I got no sex ed at all. And my parents didn’t like to talk about any kind of specifics. But I was a nutcase about birth control when I started having sex with my boyfriend, because one thing my parents did do was to put a hell of a lot of FEAR into me. They told me in no uncertain terms that having a baby would fuck my life up, big time, and they told me exactly how. I’m not always a fan of parenting by fear – almost never, in fact – but in this case it served me well. And I think girls today need that more than ever, now that they see a newborn baby on the cover of every magazine in the world. Any talk of “respecting myself” would have gone over my 17 year old head (honestly, I’m 30 now and I don’t even really understand what that’s supposed to mean) but “you’ll never be able to go to out with your friends if you have a baby at home” really spoke to me.
Michele, stop with the strawmen. That’s not what I said, and you know it. What I said is the very fact that a 17 year old today, on average, doesn’t have the same maturity to act as a grown woman that one would have had in “ancient, primitive” times is an indictment of how we raise children. We live in more complicated times. It’s thus incumbent upon parents to make their children grow up faster and behave like adults by the time they hit their teenage years.
To a large extent, Sally is right. If society started demanding responsibility and accountability from teens in every respect, it might change their behavior. Put the fear of full legal responsibility on their heads along with the generic fear of having your life messed up. Punish both negligent teen fathers AND mothers. Take their children away, and put them up for adoption; we have so many people looking for young children, that they wouldn’t last in the adoption line more than a few months! Make it clear to them that they are expected to behave like adults, and that there will be consequences for choosing to eschew responsibility (none of which the teen will be prepared to pay, but which society will exact upon them anyway).
Mike, you had me until take the children away and put them up for adoption. While that might be in the best interest of the child, you know that will never fly in this country.
Maybe it’s just the people I know, but I’d say about 95% of my daughter’s friends (17 and 18 year olds) are very mature and do behave like adults in nearly every respect. It’s in the way they were raised. Unfortunately, we can’t force everyone to raise their children to become responsible young adults. As an example, there’s this situation I encountered two nights ago.
Point is, there are going to be lazy parents, bad parents and ignorant parents. There’s nothing wrong with having the school system overlap what a parent should be teaching their kids at home, insofar as sex, responsibility, consequences, etc. It’s all well and good to believe that our children should behave maturely at 17 but we know that there’s a good portion of teens out there who just aren’t raised that way.
As a last resort, obviously, in cases where the teenage parents abscond from normal parental obligations.
A very large number of them, for that matter. However, the legal system can be set up to hold them accountable anyway.
The problem is that teens, both boys and girls, have no sense of reality beyond their fantasy world. they are celebrity/sports figure/rap artist obsessed and followers of all with very little orgininality in their heads. Fed a steady diet of the irresponsibilty and unaccountability of these “stars” they see such as clutch lifestyles they can too posess. what never reaches the brains of teens is the disparity of their idol’s net worths and support systems being 100 times their own. they “want it.” Being physical capable of sex and parenthood has very little to do with being mentally capable to be independant or even think beyond ourselves about another human being. basically, during teens years, we are stupid, clueless, emotionally all over the place and selfish.
I remember a friend who’d gotten pregnant at 14 telling me that oh it’ll be easy. at 15 her parents consented to the father and her to get married. by the time she was 16, the father (at 18)took off in one direction, her parents adopted her son and she also took off in another with an another boyfriend.
THIS bit of reality should be all the sex education teens need at the jr high/high school level.
http://www.nbc.com/The_Baby_Borrowers/parents/bio_sean_kelsey.shtml
Mike,
there are some huge difference between “ancient” civilizations and today other than the “biological urge.” We live longer than 30 years of age therefore no rush to be parents at 12-12-14-15. We have a lot more in the way of opportunities than merely “having children” as a career choice and purpose to life. We no longer live in one “clan” or “commune” compounds.
We are mobile, yes, we HAVE progressed but have also regressed when teen boys and girls opt for the selfish physical urge to produce babies they can neither care for nor support putting a burden on family and society rather than actually doing something mentally constructive to actually enhance society.
America needs babies to grow up, work, and pay for your social security.
These girls in Gloucester decided to answer America’s call, and are having babies.
They are heroes, serving their country in the best way they know how. Celebrate them. Don’t hate them for being young and celebrating their own fertility.
Mookie,
With the gov’t support of their “fertility” by welfare, medicare, food stamps and probably housing for future fertility celebrations at your tax expense, looks like a wash. well, there’s always the slight possibility these teen mothers and fathers will give more back into the tax kitty than they take out. statistically, doesn’t look good.
There is also one other thing to consider: the impact of teens with children upon their non-parent peers.
Teens have very impressionable minds. Just being around other teens who have babies, and being aware of all that teen parenthood entails, is bound to color their own attitudes toward having children for a very long time, if not for life. This is good for teens, and for society, to the extent that it scares them away from having kids at that age. But it is also very bad to the extent that it scares them away permanently, from ever having kids at all.
“I remember a friend who’d gotten pregnant at 14 telling me that oh it’ll be easy. at 15 her parents consented to the father and her to get married. by the time she was 16, the father (at 18)took off in one direction, her parents adopted her son and she also took off in another with an another boyfriend.”
This is the key to the whole situation. I am going to bet that 5 years from now at least half of the children born to these girls will end up being cared for by these girls parents because their daughters “got bored” with their child and essentially ran away from it. And, unfortunately, I would not be surprised to find out that one of the babies born to these girls is dead at the hands of it’s parents.
“America needs babies to grow up, work, and pay for your social security.”
Pay for Social Security?!?!? They will probably end up collecting from the government than ever paying taxes to it, knowing their background!
Anyone who thinks Social Security will still be around by the time these kids grow up, is kidding themselves.
Ah, yes, the grandparents will pitch in, and raise these babies when their teenage mommies get tired of them, right? Unfortunately, grandparents are, by the very course of nature, older than their kids, and waaaay older than their grandkids. They might not be physically up to chasing toddlers around the house. They might not want to, preferring to have fun with their Social Security rather than go through parenthood again. They may die before the grandkids grow up. Who takes care of them then? Mommy’s boyfriend? Daddy’s new live-in girlfriend? The state?
I remember a little scenario, from some distant relatives of mine. One of the young women had a baby boy. Didn’t marry the father, though she said she was going to. A year later, she’s dating somebody else. “Oh, she got tired of the father because he liked rock ‘n roll too much”, said one of the relatives, airily, “She likes line-dancing now.” So her kid grows up without a father. A mature way to pick one’s mate, yes? He’s gotta like whatever trendy thing you’re into, at the moment. Nothing else matters.
Now, my niece, related to the same half of the family, has gotten pregnant.
Michele is wrong, and MikeT and Alice Roddy are right. This is something on which both the Right . . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-mathewes-green092002.asp
. . . and the Left
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0814-26.htm
agree.
The wife and I are 19 and 22, respectively. We married when she turned 18 and decided to have a baby, which we did 7 months ago. She’s a great mother and we both love our son.
I don’t see why we’re any less qualified to be parents than some irresponsible 35 year old whose career takes precedence over family.
That NRO article uses the subject of teen pregnancy to launch into a Pollyanna view of young marriage – a view in which she assumes that everyone has the love and support of a nearby family. She also seems to forget that long ago when women had babies and married young, there were very few other options for them. Women go to college now. Have careers. That an 18 year old is the perfect physical specimen for babymaking is no reason for a girl to put her life on hold and have one.
The Common Dreams article is a mish mash of sexism, perversity and some diatribe about an Australian child care law I don’t care to read about at the moment. I can’t quite decide if his praise of badly behaved, lewdly dressed girls is farce, or if he is just an idiot.
I find it odd that getting married and having a baby is viewed as “putting ones life on hold”, but only for the woman.
Having a family is a very fulfilling life. Not that silly-girl random teen pregnancy is the equivalent of an intact family nor do I argue that it is s good thing. But the equate having a family while young with putting your “life on hold” is ridiculous. Not everyone needs to go to college before they settle down with a family. If it’s about being a responsable parent, one might want to defer a career in order to raise ones children.
Do you think your parents put their life on hold by having and raising you?
Barring irresponsible behavior, isn’t the operative word and idea “choice”?
Do you think your parents put their life on hold by having and raising you?
No, but they didn’t have me at 16. And again, at that time, there weren’t many career options for women besides housewife/mother.
Why are we not giving our children information on BOTH sides of the equation…abstinence and birth control?
Both of my daughters supplemented the abstinence only sex education at school with a healthy dose of reality (see the comments by Sally)and serious birth control information when the children came home and asked WHY they should not have sex. Imagine a sex ed class that does not teach WHY abstaining is important as it relates to what the life of a teenage parent is.
Their answers included disease, teen pregnancy, no college, no dates, friends, football games, no new clothes, welfare, food stamps and all of the other drawbacks of being an unwed parent.
As a result the children have decided to remain celibate until marriage. Time will tell.
There is something about this that I don’t understand. Why are thirteen year old children allowed to make vital life decisions for another child? All the important decesions about abortion, prenatal care, infant care and onward are being decided not by an adult, but by a child. It’s true that the government attempts to undertake a massive role as surragate father, but where is suragate dad at 3 a.m. when the 3 week old baby is a screaming, vomiting pain in the neck. It seems like common sense that adults should be raising children, not children.
How would the teen pregancy situation be affected if pregnant girls below a certain age, say 16, did not make these vital decesions for themselves, but a parent/guardian had that power?
A young married woman who wants to start a family isn’t putting her life on hold if she has a baby. The key here being “married”. A teenager who has a kid by a 20-something father, who dumps her for somebody else, isn’t just putting her life on hold, she’s mortgaging her entire future, and that of her kid.
For one thing, as Richard of Oregon points out, these teen mommies are usually too young and inexperienced to raise a kid by themselves. Let’s face it; a lot of them aren’t going to finish school or train for a career. Too many of them just wait around for the next “boyfriend” to come along, meanwhile dumping their kid on their grandparents, while they go party. Even by their mid-twenties, they won’t have had the experience of supporting themselves, or possess any really useful skills.
WE do have the worst of both worlds. Women, educated and professional, delaying pregnancy until the perfect husband and the perfect time, which either comes in the early forties or not at all.
Meanwhile as noted, teen mothers with no husband and no responsibility or skills have kids that will end up fatherless and/or on welfare. Motherhood is too important a job to be left to the unskilled or immature. It is the most important job there is. I would not trust a 16 year old with it.
I would trust a responsible 26 year old with it, however. We need to change our culture and society, to encourage marriage and children in the twenties, with women choosing carefully responsible men, and being able to re-enter the workforce with no penalty after three-five years. With men expected to fully share in all household and child care chores.
That same 16 year old, if she does not get pregnant, continues her education, becomes skilled, and marries a responsible and mature young man, can be a fine mother at 26.
Let me add, can someone comment on the assertion in the Common Dreams link in the post by Sestambi?
Is the peak years of fertility for women between 17-23? If this is true, it has profound implications for the West and it’s society. If it’s not true, there is less profound implications.
Can anyone cite credible scientific research to either back up or disprove the claim?
Thanks.
As a young mother, I do not think that all teenage parents are neglectful or not worthy of having their children. I became pregnant at 17 and was a mother a week after my 18th birthday. When I was 17 I dressed conservitavely and was with my boyfriend ever since I was 14 and he was 16. We used condoms since I did not have access to pills and only had sex after I turned 17. I became pregnant and chose not to have an abortion because I too felt the urge to become a mother. I continued to make an A-B average throughout my pregnancy and graduated high school on time with my freshman year of college already under my belt. Now at 19, I have an associates of art and I am still with the father of my child. Right now he is the breadwinner while I finish college. We are not married yet because of my scholarships. We are not on welfare, nor are we using food stamps. Our child doesn’t go to daycare because we plan classes and shifts in tandem. At any age, parenting is hard work, but the teenage mom can do it. There are people who adopt children who do not deserve to be parents, but slip through because they have the money.