The ideology of teen pregnancy

By Christopher Caldwell

Published: June 28 2008 03:00 | Last updated: June 28 2008 03:00

Every year at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts, three or four girls get pregnant. But not this year. This year 17 did. When Time magazine alleged that some of the girls had a "pregnancy pact", reporters and cameramen from around the world descended on the fishing port. Whether the pact was a teenage dare or a practical arrangement by the girls to give each other moral support has been hotly debated. No one disputes, though, that many were delighted to discover they were pregnant. "Sweet!" one of them shouted in the school nurse's office. The school superintendent admitted: "They were not trying very hard not to get pregnant."

"Every child a wanted child" was the old slogan of the movement for birth control. But it is part of the folklore of feminism that no teenager ever wants a child. "Profoundly shocking," wrote the Gloucester Daily Times. "The idea of 15- and 16-year-old girls wanting to become pregnant, wanting to make such a life-altering choice so early in their lives - and others being 'disappointed', not relieved, when learning their pregnancy tests proved negative - is a notion that seems absolutely contrary to most of our psyches." This is untrue. Having babies at 16 is perfectly in line with our psyches, as a look at other cultures and our own history shows. What it is contrary to is our ideology. Pact or no, the Gloucester pregnancies are some kind of a rebellion.

Any talk-radio blowhard can find evidence that Gloucester High was either too lax or too stern. Massachusetts is the most sexually libertarian of the 50 United States - it was the first to allow gay marriage and gives wide latitude to cities and towns in the sex-counselling services they provide students. Yet Gloucester is a church-dominated Portuguese-, Italian- and Irish-American city. So its sex education is a mix of traditional and non-judgmental programmes. The school does not hand out condoms but has a crèche for teen mothers. Since Gloucester is a largely white city, commentators can give vent to all sorts of snorting stereotypes about pregnant teenagers, their parents and their culture, without fear of being called racist.

Like every debate over teen pregnancy, this one is a duel of dogmas. On one side is the view that chastity is a moral absolute. The chairman of the school board has suggested prosecuting the girls' boyfriends for statutory rape. On the other side is the view that, where birth control is available, girls forgo it only out of either ignorance or shame. This is the view of most news media and of Gloucester's mayor, who blamed her town's pregnancies on George W. Bush. His No Child Left Behind programme diverted to academics money that should have been spent on sex education, which is now taught only until age 15.

At the risk of sounding crude, though, the parts of sex education relevant to preventing teen pregnancy can be taught in five minutes. It may flatter our self-regard to believe that the modern, western pattern of child-bearing arises from superior knowledge and sophistication, but it does not. It arises from our priorities. The Gloucester pregnancies are not about information the girls don't have. They are about an argument the girls don't buy. It is a fool's errand to try to convince a girl that bearing a child is "sad" (a word used with appalling frequency in press accounts) or to argue that last year's hit movie Juno leads girls astray by glamorising pregnancy. (Apparently glamorising sex is all right, especially if it serves some transcendent purpose such as selling shampoo, but glamorising motherhood crosses the line.)

Having a baby is not sad. The reason not to have a baby in your teens is the risk that it will spoil something in your future - maybe your family life, your career or your economic prospects. In their landmark study of unmarried mothers, Promises I Can Keep , the US sociologists, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, noted that poor women need a "reason to wait" if they are to delay having children. It had better be a good reason. Time flies, after all. Whether or not a teenager's having a child is a misfortune, teenagers themselves may see it as a lesser misfortune than a 40-year-old's wishing for a child she cannot have.

The present ideology of family planning arose in a more fluid society than our own. It was constructed by college-educated baby-boom elites who, as they climbed from the middle into the upper-middle class, came to find pitiful the lives their mothers led as housewives. They chose careers over - or on top of - child-rearing and reaped substantial rewards. Whether those rewards are worth the risks of never having a child might be judged differently by the next generation.

As it gets harder to climb out of the class one was born in, the opportunity cost of being a young mother falls. Outside of the well-off, Ms Edin and Ms Kefalas note, the opportunity cost is already lower than it looks. Poor teen mothers "have about the same long-term earnings trajectories as similarly disadvantaged youth who wait until their mid or late twenties to have a child". Given the increasing likelihood that a woman will raise her children alone, might not the teen years be a prudent time to become a single mother, while the financial and day-care resources of one's own parents are still available?

Baby-boom feminists did not replace a superstitious attitude towards teen sexuality with a rational one. They replaced one set of priorities with another. Their careerism prevented teen motherhood as reliably as did their mothers' moralism. The Gloucester girls appear equally unimpressed with both logics. If the old "pregnancy pact" that went by the name of marriage is no longer so readily available, they are not fools to look for a substitute.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/449aaa0c-4...0779fd2ac.html

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Wow, so the "blame" for this is baby-boom feminists? What exactly does that mean? Also the concept that it is "getting harder to climb out of the class"? Most studies do not show anything different for anybody. We're making a bunch of generalities based upon what?

What feminism has done is generally give women choice. Not all want to be mothers, they want careers and some want to be stay at home moms and some want to do both. Its all about choice being valued in either direction based upon the individual women. What I doubt is that these teenagers were following any kind of "rebellion" about feminist ideals. Nor is it based upon George W. Bush (unless he is the father of any of these soon to be born babies). And frankly I don't know whether it is good or bad for the students involved. I tempted to say where are the parents, but that's too easy. What I do know is raising children is a lot of work. I would not want to be raising a baby when I was in my teens and still doing much of my own emotional and development growth.

Sounds like Caldwell had to write about something this week. Since it is an opinion piece, he is free to deal in as many generalities as he wishes and blame feminists or whatever his kind like to scapegoat.

Just shows the decadence and decay of American society and culture.

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What a load of BS.

Neither early pregnancy nor putting it off for career is natural.
The drive for sex is natural, sure. That's how babies tend to be made.

But if these girls really felt some strong desire to have kids early (which is still unproven), it was the product of either pure rebellion or some other form of socialization.

The question is ver what behavior is responsible and helpful in the context of modern society... That is the only way we can determine "rational".

I'd have to say in an age of longer life expectation, an post-industrialized economy, and individualism... it makes more sense for girls to forgo giving birth until they at least have formed the OPTION of being independent.

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I'm usually suspicious of anything that blames the mistakes or idiosyncrasies of a small group of people in a single place (especially if they are hormonal teenagers) on a specific movement.

I would contend that localized trouble has a lot more to do with localized problems. A journalist who is looking for the problem effecting a specific community in, say, the feminist movement, the Catholic church or modern psychology is almost always missing the obvious right in front of their nose.

Were we talking about pervasive problems across the nation, I would see more value in looking for causes in national politics or movements.

This is all just my opinion, although I think it to be a rather measured and thoughtful one.

It's certain that teen pregnancy is a problem with more obvious socio-economic and cultural roots all over the country (but obviously in areas of low socio-economic class more common).

But there is at least some good reason to suspect a movement in this case... or something out of the ordinary. In this particular area, teen pregnancy was going down... then it suddenly exploded amongst girls who were all in the same school.
With the bizarre jump of MySpace movements, one can't rule out some organized "movement" (one can't assume it either). Probably not a pact, but maybe an echo chamber where girls talk each other more and more into the idea of pregnancy.

Obviously a bigger underlying reason is the socio-economic and general cultural issues... but there is something in the effects the explosion of networking sites and other 24/7 access media on typical phenomena.
It needs more study, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was in some way organized.

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I feel like I'm being misunderstood. I'm not saying that there was no organized movement among this group of people. It's entirely possible. I'm saying that I doubt any claim that it is in some deep way a semi-direct result of the feminist movement as some seem to claim.

Oh. I agree with you there.
This is actually an anti-feminist movement if a movement is involved.

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