the "motherhood mystique" has become a huge phenomenon of late among the privileged class. Women with great educations and careers are giving it all up to raise their children. Celebrities wear their children like designer handbags. The Yummy Mummy market is huge. And the message gets sent: The Most Important Thing You Can Do Is Be A Great Mommy.

(Not that I don't think being a mother isn't important or worthwhile: I am one myself. But it's *one* aspect of my life, not *the* defining feature of my identity).

What's getting lost in translation is that - for most celebrities and designer moms - motherhood was a choice made *after* these women achieved financial/career/marital success (or at least stability). Motherhood was one choice from a buffet of options. Getting knocked up at 16 takes a lot of options off the table - or at least makes them harder to reach.

one of the girls had to pay a homeless man to impregnate her. That is sad on so many levels. How ugly must she have been? Also, what's your take on this vis a vis sex and female empowerment?

They obviously don't want it. Might as well try to feed pureed spinach to a 14-month-old who is screaming for a cupcake.

As teen pregnancies go, I suppose there is some merit in 1) admitting you're doing it on purpose and 2) intentionally doing it in a way that will provide a support network.

But it still makes me sad. I narrowly missed a similar fate myself, but my sister (three years older than I) now has a granddaughter a year younger than my daughter. I wished we lived in a country where having your physical and emotional needs met were the standard, but it's just not the case.

Yes, we're all wistful about what could have been for these girls, but it appears they made a rational choice, at least in their eyes.

And is it such a bad choice? Admittedly, there is much to criticize here (poor father selection, youth, unrealistic expectations for starters). But these girls peered into their future and saw what? The likelihood that they would become mothers someday soon, very possibly with men who would leave them or make them miserable. At least by joining together for support, they would avoid some of the problems of young women having babies alone.

Having a baby does not bar one from a full life and having children at a young age leaves one with a considerable amount of free time by the late thirties, an age when many women begin to come into their own.

While not to be encouraged or glamorized, these girls are smarter about this than those I went to high school with who became pregnant while stoned or under the bleachers, taken by surprise with no plan in place.

And why, pray tell, should the school, the mayor, the town, the government provide birth control to anyone? It is readily available with only limited initiative for less than their monthly cell phone bills. If these girls can take on the responsibility of children, they can certainly take on the responsibility of birth control should they desire it.

That's the question asked by MarieA. Here's the answer:

Because the school is paying for these stupid girls to raise their children. And the government (you) will be paying for food stamps and god knows what for the bastards they're pumping out. Do you think that homeless guy's going to be paying child support?

Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. "We're proud to help the mothers stay in school," says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.

I have to take issue with what MarcieA said. There's nothing rational about deciding to have a baby to fulfill a need for love in your life.

The fact that one or several girls paid a homeless man to be the father just further speaks to how unloved they felt and what affect it had on their self-image.

The truth is, this is the result of two things. First of all poverty (and it need not even be abject) creates a situation in which people find themselves with a lack of choices and directions and often fill that gap with drugs or crime (and in this case the girls filled it with children).

Secondly the non-recognition and dismissal of teenage troubles as "par for the course" continues to be downright neglectful. We don't need to overmedicate our kids but these girls obviously needed councilling of some sort. The fact that no one noticed or encouraged this before the pregnancies was a failing of all who knew them.

Really? I would. That's what being a teenager is all about. Anyway, 'nearly half' of 17 is 8. This is about 8 girls. Out of......? My graduating class was 999. If there weren't 50 girls in that class who either were pregnant or had been, I'd be shocked.

It is a very sad state of affairs, when the only thing teenage girls have to look forward to is child-rearing.

Whatever happened to the American Dream? The place where a kid from a dead-end town can grow up and make something for himself/herself if they worked hard at it, what happened?

Did it get outsourced to China? India? South America?

That humans get the ability to procreate before they get the maturity to procreate responsibly. That is the basic problem here and there is no way to fix it.

Just askin'. :-)

I saw this on the Today show this morning. The reporter covering the story did mention in passing the economic problems of the community, but the focus was all on Hollywood. It's that Spear's girl fault and the movie Juno. Twice they showed pictures of pregnant actresses as if that's why these girls made the pact. It kinda pissed me off.

They're old enough to know better, and should know better. What they did was a selfish grab for attention, which makes it sad, but it was worse than most attention-seeking behaviors because they recklessly created new life in the process. Is any thought being given to their children-to-be and the lives they'll be living after born?

These weren't just accidental pregnancies due to being drunk and stupid or due to contraceptive failure or misuse. They were deliberately sought, and although I sympathize with these girls for feeling so unloved that they thought that having a kid would solve their emotional and psychological problems, I think we need to be a bit more critical of their choices.

Besides, the news has reported that one of the girls paid a 24 year-old homeless man to impregnate her. First of all, gross. Second, how utterly sad and pathetic. Third, has she now opened this man up to having his life ruined further by being prosecuted for sexual assault of a minor? What's the age of consent in MA? Was she under it? If so, was she honest with the guy about her age or did she pass herself off as older? Yeah, yeah, if he was in doubt he was obliged to ask and check her ID and blah blah blah, but c'mon, the guy was homeless and she was waving money in his face asking for sex. If she was 16 or 17 she could have easily passed for a young woman of legal age. How much you want to bet they try to go after this guy as a "sexual predator"? Being homeless at age 24 is sad enough, but now he's facing the prospect of having his life totally destroyed.

This girl's child will be born into a situation where its mother deliberately sought to get pregnant in high school for selfish and unjustifiable reasons, and in doing so set up the father to be convicted of rape, sent to prison, and forced to register as a sex offender for life.

WONDERFUL.