I continue to describe the ten dynamics behind the TBR (Teen Birth Rate).

4. Violence- It’s no secret that it’s a violent country we live in. But most people don’t seem to realize just how violence, poverty, and the TBR are all interconnected.

In 1996, Bill Clinton, immature, ignorant piece of slime that he was, drafted a plan to have teen pregnancy as the bedrock front and center plan to get re-elected. Absurdly calling teen pregnancy an “issue of character and personal responsibility”,  they blamed teen pregnancy for the nations’s crime rate, poverty, and the failing war on drugs.

Further, they said that aid be prohibited from  ” any teen that qualifies receiving it unless they lived with a parent or other responsible adult”.

This cruel, illogical, and ignorant policy was oblivious to the fact the most teen pregnancy is borne out of the very households they grew up with, and are now  being forced to live with. We know most sex abuse happens within the family unit, or someone the family knows. We know that sexualization is a long term process that happens within a young, trusting adolescent and an older predator, usually a male, again, within the family circle, be it immediate family, friends of the family, or relatives of the family

Apparently,  no one in Clinton’s administration thought of the violence of the household. A 1992 study that Mike Males points out in Scapegoat Generation looked at 535 teen mothers. Here’s the figures.

1. 66% sexually abused
2. 44% raped
3. 59% hit with belt or strap
4. 31% hit with sticks or other objects
5. 26% thrown against walls
6. 18% hit with closed fist
7. 5% burned with cigarette or hot water

Overall, two thirds had been sexually abused, 70% physically abused. Most of the abusers had been family members. The report concluded ” sexual victimization may account for …consistently high teenage pregnancy rates”. Wow. Really? What gave you the first clue? And you’re forcing these teens back home? Why?  ( Males, The Scapegoat Generation, p.90 )

Violence and the TBR has been linked in several studies. The best I could find was where Kate Pickett,  Jessica Mookherjee, and Richard Wilkinson did a study about the link between Adolescent Birth Rates, Total Homicides, and Income Inequality in 2005. The report starts off-

“Income inequality has been associated with both homicides and birth to adolescents in the United States…These results…suggest that violence and births to adolescents may reflect gender differentiated responses to low social status and could be reduced by reducing income inequality”.

The conclusion of the report again states what I have saying throughout this article-

“Our findings suggested that the links between deprivation and both violence and adolescent births reflect the destructive psychosocial and behavioral effects of inequality. ….Interestingly, the decline in US homicide and adolescent birth rates since the 1990’s was accompanied by declining unemployment and improved relative income amongst the poorest individuals”.

Teens that live around violence want it to end, or they want to leave. A young girl, who has no way to leave, may opt to “leave” by getting pregnant. It is leaving, you know. She simply uses her body, as women have been doing since the dawn of time, to change their circumstances for what they see as benefical for them.

If you want to know why Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant, ask the drug addicted, alcoholic, often unemployed father who kept the family in poverty for much of her young life. Or ask Sarah and Todd Palin why their kids want to leave so quickly. Or the Gloucester Girls. The answer is in the family dynamics, not in the “personal character” of the teen.

Grade- Adult

 

5. Economic Attraction to Older Males- Let’s lay it out for everyone who thinks the majority of these pregnancies are from teen-teen sex. 80% of teen mothers under 18 have partners over 18. And if you are under 17, your male partner is most likely to be over 22 than under 18 (Males, Framing Youth 1999, p.189 ).The average we talk about is this- the younger the mother, the older the father. Orange County California, that bastion of conservative Republicans, had 2/3 of junior high schools girls impregnanted by men too old to be in high school in the early 1990’s.(Males, P.190 )

The resoning behind this is simple, despite Bristol Palin and her same age partner, Levi. An older partner can take a poor, abused, girl, living in violent and chaotic households, out of her present circumstances, and socially and economically improve her lot. He is an immature, exploitive man, under educated, problems with addiction, and has no interest in staying for the long run. He may be 21 or 22 chronologically, but realistically he’s more like 18. And she may be 15 or 16, but circumstances have made her grow up faster, and she’s closer to 18. So they can connect.

The problems  with this are many. Attraction of young girls to older men  who want out of a bad situation is so acute, she’ll give up anything to have him, including school. In California, approximately 50% of all girls drop out of school before they get pregnant. When Mr. Older Man comes along, school becomes irrelevant. Besides, schools don’t talk about this type thing. They are too busy trying to get girls to abstain or sign chastity pledges, or virginity pledges, none of which do anything to address the reality behind the problem. It’s not about sex. It never was about sex. It’s about the social corners teens are forced into.

There is also the problem of a 22 year old man with a 15 year old girl. We call that either Statutory Rape, or Sex Abuse, so why are all these adults wagging their finger at the girl, for shame, for shame, for shame? And are our public policies helping lift young girls out of poverty, so that the lure of an older man matters less than school? Or are we so frightened that they may actually have sex, that all reason flies out the window?

Oh, and if you want a prototype for the immature, exploitive, emotionally vacuous, addictive personality-type male, look no further than the afore mentioned slimeball Bill Clinton. Regarding women, he sets the standard for lies, falsehoods, and shameless pandering to anyone stupid enough to believe him on anything.

Grade - Adult

6. School and Educational Failure- As I pointed out earlier, 50% of all girls drop out of school before they become pregnant. Thus, academic failure is seen as the first sign of an impending pregnancy for a young girl.

Following this logic, it is in everybodies interest to keep young girls in school as long as possible. The longer they stay, the less likely it is they will succumb to the advances of an older man. When someone asks’” What is the role of schools in this teen problem? “, the answer is simple.

Focus on educating women first.

Nick Kristof, OP-Ed columnist for the New York Times says it quite clearly- when schools in poorer areas concentrate on educating girls first, the girls are less likely to drop out, less likely to be trafficked, less likely to get pregnant, more likely to restrain their sons. Education makes them less dependent on men for money, makes them more productive with their own endeavors, and less susceptible to men and men’s whim’s.

They have fewer children. They have healthier children. They are more likely to go on to college. They wait to have their first sexual experience. They have fewer STD’s. They have fewer abortions. Mr. Kristof’s statement (paraphrased) says that” the most bang for your educational buck in poor countries comes in educating girls first”. A poor country is no different than a poor city, or poor town. Educating women first pays off richly for society.

Countries who have the highest number of women in power have the highest literacy rates, least amount of war, the highest GDP’s per capita. They tend to have free schooling, free health care, with basic rights guaranteed.

On the other hand, countries where women have only poverty and no power (think Africa ) are the poorest, most repressive countries in the world. They war more, have no basic right to education, no basic right to clean water, food, shelter. They have the highest illiteracy rates, have crumbling economies, have high rates of AIDS and other STD’s, poor health, no future, and all power is abused and in the hands of men.

When a young girl in the USA gets pregnant, she is silenced. She is voiceless. When a young girl gets an education in the USA, she is recognized. She is able to speak up. She can make a difference.

When schools take the cheap, lazy way out of sex ed by regurgitating up the old, tired, failed policies of abstinence, character assasinations, lectures on responsibility, they fail in every way possible. Teens don’t need lectures on right and wrong- they need a future. They need adults to protect them, and they need adults to educate them on the realities of sex abuse, poverty, rape, violence, on men. They need society’s help, and they need more effort by school districts to keep them in school.

Grade- Adult

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 3:19 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.