Here I stop for a quick summary before we go on to Part 5.

1. What we call the Teen Pregnancy Problem is NOT a teen problem, it is an adult problem.  Teens as a group are not responsible for this problem, only adults, mostly males.

2. Teen responsibility, morals, values, ethics, play no part of this problem.

3. The media reflects society, it doesn’t create it. So don’t blame movies, books, the Internet, Playboy, Larry Flint, Juno, the Spears sisters, the Gloucester Girls, or anything else like this.

4. Blame Bill Clinton, ignorant, immature, emotionally lazy piece of crap human being for allowing his administration to create the myth. But look in your mirror for the perpetuation of the myth.

5. The TBR is a function of competing choices. That means the economy. That’s why the TBR is going up again, after dropping for years. Not because teens”got the message”. Not because of the religious right. Not because of better parenting, not hardly at all. But because when times are good, there’s money and jobs. There’s a reason to stay in school. There’s a better future in sight. And up until George Bush, times were better.

6. Pregnancy allows a young girl to “stop her world”. She can remake herself. Living in poor conditions, either physically or mentally, or both, pregnancy makes her an adult woman. Regardless of her chronological age, she is now a woman. The sex abuse stops. The sexualization stops. The poverty becomes less severe, because she now has social services denied her as a non-pregnant teen. She gets health care. She gets “fussed over”. She gets attention. She gets treated in the way she wanted before she got pregnant. She now has a clearer, more easily identifiable future. It’s called parent, mother, and adult.

Jesse Jackson was once on television during the LA riots, explaining why young black don’t fear going to prison.

He went on to say (paraphrasing now) that when a young black man goes to jail, they are safer than on the streets of their hometown. They get three meals a day. Supervised recreation. Exercise. School classes with low student/teacher ratios. Fighting is strictly prohibited. No drugs, at least they are not allowed, nor is alcohol. Counseling. Help with addictions. A chance to learn the law. Libraries. A chance to see they might actually have a better future. They are remade, if they let themselves be. They can be something different. They balance the competing choices. Life on a dead end street, vs life inside a penal institution, trading freedom for safety and an uncertain future. On the surface it seems crazy. What? But in reality, it may be the ONLY choice some have.

Teen pregnancy is no different. On the surface it seems crazy, who would a young girl do this? Why trade away your future, you might say to the Gloucester Girls, you might say to Bristol, you might say to Jamie, you might say to thousands of teen girls?

In the groundbreaking book, Dubious Conceptions, by Kristen Luker, she points out that it’s the “discouraged amongst the disadvantaged” that get pregnant. There’s plenty of disadvantaged teens in this country. But when the disadvantagement turns into discouragement, they see themselves forced into a social corner. They sense they have to act, to “leave” their current situation.

Luker goes on to criticize policies that stigmatize young women that have children outside of marraige, especially since they haven’t found to be effective. She rightly points out that teen sex and childbearing are logical results of the crumbling economic and social policies for the young, especially the decline in government funding and support for health and reproductive care, as well as comprehensive sex education. And, she lastly says, instead of preaching abstinence and trying to get them to lead chaste lives, they should spend that time and money on improving social policies that force disadvantaged teens into discouraged teens.

Another study by Bickel and McDonough, 1997, was recently reviewed, and the reviewer flatly states that “….the rates of teen pregnancy amongst girls aged 15-19 varied inversely with levels of economic opportunity, and with levels of-school and out-of-school community. As levels of economic opportunity increased, levels of teen pregnancy decreased. As levels of in-school and out-of-school comminity increased, teen pregnancy again declined.”

The reviewer finishes up with  “… it makes clear that absence of opportunities occasions behavior that seems reckless and self defeating. …In the absence of opportunities, seemingly reckless and self defeating behavior may, in fact, be interpretably rational. Why persist in school, for example, if future prospects are poor, with or without a diploma? Why be abstemious, determinedly law-abiding, and otherwise conventional, in …social circumstances where opportunity structures have been decimated?”

Look at Bristol Palin, and read up on the person Sarah Palin and her husband are. They would sell their entire family for a chance for power. Pimping her daughter’s pregnancy as something good, something outside of her and Todd Palin, as though Bristol made the decision without any influence whatsoever from her mom and dad. Her brother left at 17 to join the service, and now Bristol Palin “leaves” the family at 17. Someone needs to ask that family why the kids are so eager to leave. Something is dreadfully wrong here, just as it is in the Spears family. The questions go to the parents, not the kids. It’s an adult problem- remember?

The time and money need to be spent on improving her future, not convincing her to abstain. A good future is the best contraception ever made.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 4:29 pm and is filed under The Teen Pregnancy Fallacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.