Letters to the Editor
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Big Belly Boast
Don't bother asking why there's a rise in teen pregnancy. The question implies that these pregnancies are somehow mistakes, accidents, unwanted. WRONG. The correct question is: Why do teenage girls WANT to get pregnant?
I have a friend who taught an urban rainbow coalition of Catholic high school girls. The ones who got pregnant (and there were lots of them) were happy as clams about it.
I can only assume there's some kind of twisted teenage status seeking going on here. Good luck sex-eding that.
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Keep in mind...
That the abstinence programs are pretty much a phenomenon of this decade. Teenage pregnancies were down during most of the nineties, before they were brought in. Now they're up. Nuff said.
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No one talks about it anymore
Outside of coming here or being on Planned Parenthood's email list, I never hear about birth control. There's the occasional TV ad for Yaz, or an ad in Self for the patch, but really, where is the discussion? Where is the information? When did condoms become the virtual black plague of the media?
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Just Throw Out the Promise Ring Already
Ray Sharp (see letters above) already provided some excellant professional insight, so I'm just going to give you a bit of evidence from my experience. I've known quite a few girls who received Abstinence-Only Sex [Mis]Education and the ones that managed to make it through their early teems without getting pregnant either:
(A) Got married very young just so they could have the sex they'd been craving so badly but didn't want to feel guilty about
(B) Had an unplanned pregnancy eventually. Ask them why? "It just happened." Yup, a moment of impulsive passion they didn't prepare for.
I don't think kids should be out having rampant sex, but anyone who says complete and total abstienence is possible doesn't remember those incredible hormone surges they felt as teenagers.
And to "Anonymous" who brought up the "success" of Anti-Smoking and Anti-Global Warming campaigns, smoking and recycling are not inherent biological urges akin to breathing and eating. I'm not even sure it was the "campaigns" that made people conscious of those risks anyway.
I dread the day a president coins the term "War on Teen Pregnancy." Brace yourselves for a Baby Boom!
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Ray Sharp Has it Right
Most all teenagers are going to have sex some time before they are married. With most people waiting later to get married (later '20's if not longer instead of early '20's or right out of high school), complete abstinence before marriage is just extremely unlikely.
So those kids who have been preached at by their parents to remain abstinent - and who have been discouraged from learning the facts about safe sex - are only prolonging when they begin to have sex, which is when they stop living under their parent's roof. Hence more 18-19 year-olds are getting pregnant (and I would bet 20-21 year-olds too, if that data set was recorded) because they were never given the full and much-needed tools to make good, reality-based decisions.
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It was a joke
you bunch of self-righteous asses. OK, OK, kids really listen to "pet your dog, not your date!" Whatever happened to parents telling their kids the facts of life, anyway?
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It isn't that kids don't know how to use condoms.
It's that the abstinence-only crowd has repeatedly told them that condoms are hopelessly ineffective. The people pushing this message think it will scare kids out of having sex. What it accomplishes instead is to convince them that they might as well not bother with condoms.
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Abstinence-only programs
OK, fine, I won't be flippant. Abstinence-only programs are stupid. There IS evidence that not planning to have sex doesn't prevent kids from having sex, but from using birth control and so forth (i.e., the promise ring kids). That much is true. However, I do wonder (as I said) how much effect these programs really have, and how many of these pregnancies are attributable to other cultural factors--the fact that a gigantic number of women now have kids without being married, for example. There's no longer the sense that having a kid without marriage will ruin your life. I'm not making the argument that we should go back to those days, either, but we do have to realize that perhaps this attitude among slightly older women is trending down to the teen set. I expect that the kids having babies may not be of the socioeconomic class that's college-bound, who still may have the attitude that having a child before certain milestones are passed is a bad idea. I mean, if you're not going to get married and set up a nuclear family anyway, you can't afford/don't qualify academically for college and there aren't really any great jobs out there for people without a college degree, why shouldn't you have a kid?
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In addition,
to complicate the notion that the rise is due to abstinence-only programs, the news article I read on this subject suggests that teen condom use is actually up. While I do support the repeal of abstinence-only programs, I do think there are other factors which perhaps should be considered when it comes to the design of future sex-education programs. That's it, I'm off to have unprotected sex. All this talk has put me in the mood.
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Response
Me: " I saw a pregnant black teenager leading a segment of our local Christmas parade Saturday. She looked proud and happy and probably has the baby's name picked out already."
You: "Oh my God no! Certainly pregnant teenagers should frown at all times, and never enjoy themselves. Better yet, hide them in their rooms where society can't see. The link between your observations and your conclusions ("probably has the baby's name picked out already" - yes, you can tell that from the smile on her face) is a bizarre one."
No, it is YOUR response that is bizarre.
Our newspaper ran a multi-part feature on local teenage mothers. Most were black. None was unhappy with her decisions (to have her baby and to keep her baby), although the girls' moms were concerned. At least three mentioned the fun and significance of choosing the baby's name.
No one seemed like a victim. Yes, they were FEMALE and mostly BLACK, but they weren't victims. Amazing.