I notice that Susan Konig had the same shindig going on at her place last night–a sleepover for Camp Rock, the new Disney flick featuring the Jonas Brothers. Brave Susan–she had eight girls over; we had only one.
Konig noted that her squeaky clean Camp Rock evening stood in stark contrast to “The Pregnancy Club.” At Gloucester High in Gloucester, MA, a group of girls aged 16 and under have agreed to get pregnant and raise their children together. Seventeen girls, most of them sophomores, are already pregnant. Time Magazine was the first to break the story which has the nation talking. (The CBC link is here.)
Konig also observed that pop culture is probably not the culprit. Agreed. The celebrity baby bump, Jamie Lynn Spears, and Juno cannot undo the more prevalent TV and film story line for girls today: get good marks; get a career plan; don’t put boys ahead of your friends; dare to dream big–not baby. In fact, Spears has been part of that very narrative on Zoey 101, about an achieving girl at a formerly all-male academy. Which has had more influence? Zoey 101 or Spears’ pregnancy? I’ll bet on Zoey.
So what’s the reason for the club with “bad idea” written all over it? Could it be economic? Sure. Gloucester’s an old ship-building and fishing community, and lots of the old jobs have disappeared. That can make for economically besieged parents unable to make good choices for kids, and teens who feel rudderless and disconnected. As someone said to the CBC (above), making a baby might just be a shortcut to “being someone.”
Could it be lack of thinking skills? Sure. These girls need some bad.
Could it be lack of sex ed? Well, if great sex ed includes teaching people how to predict the consequences of their behaviour, yes.
Could it be the fact that the school helps pregnant teens stay in school? Don’t know but it don’t matter. Better to have the diploma if you’re going to have the baby.
Could it be all those things? Yes.
But it’s much less likely to be culture, which has been rooting for the non-baby-bump career-minded, single-minded, fashion-minded teen and 20-something for decades. The fact that the Gloucester teens didn’t internalize that message means there’s a whole lotta other stuff going on.
Filed under: kids , Camp Rock, Pregnancy Club, pop culture, Jamie Lynn Spears, Zoey 101, Gloucester, economic, thinking skills
Jess, I remember a self-righteous columnist in a Toronto paper years ago who told her readers that many girls in her local high schools intentionally got pregnant.
Her answer was more! more! more! sex education. (No, honestly, that was how she herself put it.)
If I had had the time, inclination, and courage to write to her, I would have asked, Do you honestly believe that these girls do not know how to prevent a pregnancy? How can that be?
I didn’t identify her approach as wrong, but merely useless – as events have shown.
I am sure you are on to something when you identify the Preggers! community as post-industrial. That’s a key factor.
If a lower-income girl has little to look forward to except pouring coffee at the Dunkin’ Donut with measly tips, she may be better off to have several children as a solo parent.
She will probably make as much money from social programmes, plus she will have key benefits and entitlements. It is the surest way she can afford to have a family.
Most of the young men such girls know will barely be able to support themselves consistently, so the tax-supported solo mom route is actually economically wiser for the girls. The government’s cheques always cash. His cheques … sometimes.
Also, women who have children early in life can spend their forties and fifties working, without family responsibilities (unless they must raise their grandchildren, which will happen if their children get involved with drugs or go to prison, as sadly happens often in such communities).
I try to avoid moralizing about these things, because most people work out a lifestyle that enables them to survive within a system, and their attitudes only change when the system does.
Here is one change I would like to make – it wouldn’t help everyone but would certainly help some: I would like economics to be a compulsory subject in high school, tilted toward understanding the economic significance of one’s own life choices.
For example, the Preggers! lifestyle depends on the longterm availability of public assistance. That depends on the continued willingness of taxpayers to fund other people’s families. Having employment skills that are in high demand may be wiser in the long run.
My sister Judith and I wrote three sections of a high school business book on person finance for an Ontario course – and it was one of the most satisfying projects we have ever worked on.
For once wwe felt we were saying something to kids that they should listen to regardless of where they are coming from. You may remember the project.
These 17 pregnant whores from Gloucester are just sluts…what’s the big deal? Didn’t your high school have sluts who’d screw anybody? That’s what abortion is for, to prevent these kids from having the burden of babies…the public better grow up and realize that kids control their own lives now. Kids can get pregnant and get an abortion (or have a baby) without parental consent. That’s just the way it is now, so , “tough it!” Kids today know their rights, and no adult is going to get in their way!!! It’s the law, jerkoff.
Of course, Sharia Law in Iran (favorite country of Whoopi Goldberg and Rosi O’Donnell) would handle the highschool pregnant slut in Gloucester differently. They’d be stoned to death. Amina Lawal Kurami (born 1973) is a Nigerian woman. In March 2002, an Islamic Sharia court (in Funtua, Nigeria in the northern state of Katsina) sentenced her to death by stoning for adultery for conceiving a child out of wedlock. The father of the child was not prosecuted for lack of evidence.
Rosy, I don’t think this was about sex. It was about wanting a baby.
D, I do remember. I can’t think of an incident in which “having sex” and “having access to contraception” seemed less relevant to the conversation.
Having kids very early does leave you time to develop a career in your thirties. It’s not too late then, and lots of kids flounder around until their thirties anyway. However, you still have to get “knocked up” with some smarts along the way! You mentioned money: it’s being taught but the course is optional.
These Gloucester girls are swigging whiskey, doing meth, smoking pot, and sucking God only knows what else…just give these little harlots some birth control pills so they will stop screwing up their family’s lives.
Mary, I am interested to know why you think that the Gloucester girls could not easily access contraceptives – if they wanted them?
They can find contraceptives as easily as whiskey, crystal meth, pot, cigs, hard core movies, and pirated/stolen goods.
Indeed, probably more easily.
They happen not to want contraceptives because a baby is a source of income and favourable attention. Everything else I listed is a source of expense and unfavourable attention.
The only strategy I can imagine working would be to pay such girls NOT to get pregnant.
Middle class families effectively do that already, by funding entry into an elite lifestyle for girls who achieve academically while (usually) remaining childless.
Working class families do it by funding a girl’s entry into a comfortable lifestyle (Dad and fiance build big house, for example, and everyone at their 300-guest wedding helps fill the top hat with cash).
And nobody minds if you beat the stork by only a few inches.
But the post-industrial community? Often, everything – including the girl’s family – is already broken down. Dad left long ago and the guy the girl might have married is in rehab somewhere, and does NOT have a plumbing or electrical licence, just a variety of therapists’ opinions about what is supposedly wrong with him.
I think creative strategies are necessary to help people find their way in life after their communities have collapsed.
Yup, I’m sure someone in this whole national discussion said something like the contraceptives coulda been sitting out there in a candy dish (heck, make it 10 candy dishes) with invitation to take one or a handful and these girls still would have gotten pregnant.