This short Will Okun piece in the New York Times on teen pregnancy has gotten some strong reactions, here and here and here for starters. Okun teaches English in inner-city Chicago:
It happens too often. A female student approaches my desk, says “Mr. Okun?”, and and whispers the two words no adult wants to hear from a teenager: “I’m pregnant.” I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to shake her with anger. What have you done? Life is not hard enough already? Is it over, have you given up? What about finishing high school? What about college? What about your own dreams? What about enjoying the last of your own childhood? How can you parent a child when you are just a child yourself? How will you support your baby, how will you support yourself? Where is the man, will he be here next year? Will I see you and your baby coldly waiting alone for a city bus that will not come? Please look me in the eye and tell me you know what you have done.
Although her news disappoints me, I try to react without emotion or judgment. “What are you going to do?” I ask. But if she has already told me she is pregnant, we both already know. “I am going to have it,” she replies. I used to argue for abortion, which only enraged us both. At this point, what is done is done. All I can do now is offer her my unconditional support. I will give her a referral to counseling and pre-natal care and keep my personal frustrations and opinions to myself.
Inevitably, a few months later I will be invited to take photographs at the baby shower. I go because I like the student and I want to show that I support her and her family on this joyous occasion. But, in some cases, are we celebrating tragedy?
Well, Will, you get points for no longer “arguing for abortion.” (Just FYI, bud, there’s a rather nasty history of well-meaning whites encouraging poor women of color to have abortions. Glad you’re no longer one of them. Eugenicists are often well-meaning do-gooders.) But man, Will, you really don’t get it.
Let me be clear I don’t think teen pregnancy is a “good idea”. That said, I’ve spent more time than you might imagine with teenage mothers and their extended family. My wife and I have two nieces, both of whom became moms before they were eighteen years old. My wife and I will meet our newest great-nephew this coming weekend. Neither of our nieces are married to the fathers of their children. Both young moms are now living with relatives, both are working. And when it comes to parenting, my nieces are pretty damn good mothers. They are surrounded by a multi-generational community of experienced care-givers. Their children are not being raised in isolation, but with a surprising amount of community support.
I’ve been to baby showers for many a teenage mom in my day. I’ve also quietly helped pay for an abortion for a teenage girl who wanted one and who confided in me. Though I do everything I can as a mentor and a youth leader and a teacher to encourage a culture of informed decision-making (especially around sex), I understand that a very large number of teenagers are going to have unprotected intercourse for a very wide variety of reasons. And when some of them get pregnant, as they invariably will, there are no perfect options. Abortion is one choice (it was the one my girlfriend and I chose when we were teens with college plans). Adoption is another. And having the baby and keeping it is the third.
What Will Okun — and a lot of other well-meaning folks — see as “tragic” and “irresponsible” is often perceived by working-class teenage mothers as a considerable accomplishment. Yes, conceiving a child is easy. Keeping a baby is hard work. One false assumption Okun makes is a typical one: that most teenage girls who get pregnant and keep the baby have no idea what they’re getting into. In reality, as Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas point out in their brilliant Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (which I reviewed here) most teenage moms have a pretty good idea of just how tough it’s going to be. Of course, no one who isn’t a parent can ever really know what it’s going to be like, but for girls from poorer families who have often been care-givers for much of their young lives, the chances are good that they have a better idea of how tough it’s going to be than do a lot of older, middle-class women (who may come from very small families where childcare was outsourced). Most girls who do have children as unmarried teens had older friends and relatives who made similar decisions — the idea that these young mothers-to-be are deluded, ignorant of how much work lies ahead, is an elitist fiction.
As a community college professor, I have a great many single mothers in my classes. Some are still in their teens, going to school part-time while another relative watches the baby. (Sometimes, babies come to my class. More than one sleeping infant has heard me lecture on the French Revolution.) Some single moms come to college in their twenties or thirties, after their own children have started school. In one women’s history class a few years ago, I had by my count eleven women who had children; only one was married to the father of her child. These women were black, white, Asian, and Hispanic. They had all had tough times, endured deprivation, been forced to grow up very fast. They had also persevered, and not infrequently, their study habits were better than those of their classmates. Single mothers know how precious each free second is. They tend to use their time very, very well.
I’ve been to a lot of community college graduations where mothers in caps and gowns (ranging from age 18 on up) are greeted by screaming and excited children after receiving their associate’s degrees. On my bulletin board in my office right now is a picture from last June’s graduation; a woman of 30 beaming beneath her mortarboard, her three children (aged 14, 12, and 7) all around her, their faces lit up with pride. This is not an image of tragedy.
Do we need more and better sex education? Yes. Do we need bold spiritual, economic and political solutions to the problem of poverty? You bet. Would a lot of young women be better off if they delayed having children until they were older and more stable? Probably. But is young unwed motherhood a guarantor of sustained misery and dependence? No. Does it mean the end of dreams? No. Having a child when you’re young and poor and single does change everything. Having a child when you’re young and poor means you’re going to have to work very, very hard. But rather than shaming or bemoaning the choices these young women make, we can rejoice in their courage — and we can partner with them to raise their babies.
The young women (from youth group or my classes) who come to me to tell me that they’re pregnant do so for many reasons, but mostly — I think — because they want to know that they will have my strong support as they go through whatever it is that they are choosing to do. I’ve noticed a common thread in how these conversations go: at the moment she tells me she’s pregnant, the young woman will rarely meet my gaze, as it’s too difficult to face me and risk seeing what she fears will be my ire or my disappointment. But once she’s gotten out the words, she’ll usually glance up and study my expression, looking for signs of my true feelings. If my words don’t match my expression, she’ll see it — just as I expect Will Okun’s students see his true feelings on his face.
I have dreams for my students. But my dreams for their lives are not always their dreams. My plans are not God’s plans. And though I can exhort and encourage until the cows come home, when all is said and done all I can do as a teacher, a mentor, and an uncle is love exuberantly and unconditionally. And I am quick, always quick, to remind the mother-to-be that she has not closed the door forever on possibilities for her own autonomy and her own success. I worry that when Will Okun’s students read his words, they will wonder if in their teacher’s mind, that door is closed forever.
It’s real easy for relatively well off white people like us to talk about all our support systems.
Get a poorer family already stretched to it’s limit, and have a daughter come home and announce her pregnancy, and it will be heard as “I’m bringing home another mouth to feed when we already walk away from the table with our bellies less than full, and another head to lay where we are already doubled up. And I am still too young to work.”
One more set of tasks to do by people who may already not have enough hours to do what they have to. Not to mention all the pre-natal and post natal expenses when bills are being juggled as it is, and alternated between being paid on time and late.
Blood pressure medicine this month? Or food for this baby this week?
Imagine an older brother or sister who has worked hard enough to be able to go to college - but hasn’t managed a scholarship. Well, there is always the junior college. Or trade school. Maybe. Or maybe next year - or maybe a couple years.
Take off the rose colored glasses, Hugo. Support systems, and resources - these are luxuries born of privilege. Not something that can be counted on by poorer folks.
Are you kidding? Support systems are only “luxuries”? Family kinship networks are found in the poorest communities. I don’t have rose-colored glasses; as my post made clear, I know being a single-mom is ass-breakin’ hard. But there’s a difference between “hard” and “tragic”.
(My own family lives it out. I have family in the Social Register, and family on AFDC/WIC/etc., Gonz.)
The timing on this post worked out very nicely. I was starting to get very uncomfortable arguing with Married Tom on the other thread about poverty and single parenthood precisely because this aspect wasn’t being discussed, and I didn’t see any way to bring it up without seeming to lurch way off-topic.
Gonz, the scenario you describe seems to assume that the young woman deciding whether or not to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term isn’t think about things like how much harder it will be to put enough food on the table. She’s not carefully considering all the various courses of action with her friends and family — she’s `com[ing] home [ie, from elsewhere] and announc[ing] [ie, not discussing] her pregnancy’. You thereby portray her as — to not mince words — either not smart enough to make good long-term decisions, or as incredibly selfish. This sort of generalisation has troubling sexist overtones. Can we not trust young women, generally speaking, to carefully think through such obviously important decisions as whether or not have a child?
I’ve met, talked to, been friends with many, many young women who had gotten pregnant before their 18th birthday- including my own self. for me, abortion was the only choice I wanted for myself, and there was no other alternatives in my mind. To this day, I don’t regret it, nor am I sorry in any way for it.
Do I *personally* feel that a lot of people would be best served by not having a baby before they’re ready? Sure- but my own opinions mean jack shit and I need to keep them to myself when dealing with people that have come to me for support. I can express them abstractly as a generalization at best when talking among friends as a very general topic- but when talking to another person in that situation, the important thing is NOT for me to express my opinions, but rather, listen to them and help them work out what’s best based on their values and WHAT IS IMPORTANT for them. Caring about someone means helping them make choices that works for them, not based on your own opinions. Some of the girls I talked to aborted, some became mothers, some chose adoption. Thankfully, nobody has regretted the choices they made, and more than anything, I’m happy that I was able to provide support regardless of whether I personally would have taken the course of action that they did.
When people make a decision, the position of a caring person is not to cause doom and gloom and shame them or condemn them or make them feel like a failure for doing what they feel is best after considerable thought. The best thing to do is to provide them tools so that they can progress in a positive direction, working with the decision they’ve made. Whether that’s driving them to the clinic, loaning money/helping pay for their abortion, driving them to pre-natal care, helping them find affordable health care during their pregnancy, getting them in touch with successful teen moms, seeking out programs that may benefit the mom and kids, or whatever you can do- the point is, you have to work WITH people and help them take responsibility in the most positive and constructive way.
I DO believe that being pro-choice means supporting single parents through accessible health care for themselves and their kids, providing affordable child care, for more flexible educational/vocational programs. It’s important to give people tools that areaccessible so that their choices can be based on what the feel is the best course of action, rather than feel like they have no other choice.
The author said in some cases it is tragic. Some. And he offers unconditional support.
Sweating Through Fog, I don’t think reacting “without emotion” is really unconditional support. Unconditional support is “whatever you choose, I’m 100% behind you.” Conditional support is “Gosh, I wish you’d made a different choice, but now that you’ve made it, I’ll bite my tongue and force a smile.” Okun sounds more like the latter.
Catty, I agree — being authentically pro-choice means creating options so that those who do want to keep their children can, and keep them with dignity and a certain level of security.
Are you kidding? Support systems are only “luxuries”?
No, I am not kidding.
Support systems involve largely the donation of time. Time, for the working poor, is often harder to come by than money.
Far flung families. One car to the household. Grandma - with her needs - living in the family. One or more children special needs. One parent working two jobs to make ends meet. Another working one job. The household chores needing to be done. Children toted back and forth to school. After school activities. Your own medication. The list goes on.
Now here comes your fourteen year old with another mouth to feed.
What do you cut? Resources are finite. Something has to give.
And we wonder why the cycle of poverty continues.
This sort of generalisation has troubling sexist overtones. Can we not trust young women, generally speaking, to carefully think through such obviously important decisions as whether or not have a child?
Actually, it has ageist overtones.
I don’t trust children - whether boys or girls - to think through the long term implications, no.
It’s very interesting you say all this, because my experience has been the opposite. I moved back home to get help from my family in raising my son while I finished college. My good friend has gotten and still gets help raising her kids from her family. Neither one of us came from rich families. My parents were on welfare until my youngest sister moved out, but they didn’t tell me that I wasn’t welcome to come back home because they didn’t have the money. My mom worked two jobs and helped me with my son while I was working two jobs and going to school.
It was the “well off white folks” who told me I’d made a mistake, not the “poor white folks”, like my family.
Hugo, I think you are unfairly characterizing the Okun’s perspective as some sort of foil. After all why even hint his attitude springs from eugenics and bigotry - does he have some history of that?
Apparently he still struggles with it a bit more than you do. He’s moved, but not to your standard of enthusiastic support. He has concerns, yet he seems to hide them enough that his students who go through this still think highly of him. I’m guessing your final point means that he should purge this sort of thinking entirely, and never express it.
STF, I think encouraging abortion in the face of resistance is indefensible — as is the opposite. I think he’s come a long way, and as the critics at the other sites have said, I think he’s well-meaning. But I’ve seen a lot of teens become moms, and I’ve yet to see one of those instances as genuinely tragic. Honestly, if Okun hadn’t finished that way, I’d be easier on him. (And I’m easier on him than Cara is:
But you know what, white dude? You don’t get to judge black teenagers for getting pregnant and having babies. And neither do I. Neither do any of us. Trying to talk someone into an abortion is just as horrid as trying to talk someone into carrying to term. And talking about your students behind their back on a national platform isn’t right, either. I think that I speak for most people when I say: Don’t go to the baby shower to show your sad, judgmental “support.” Keep your fucking ass at home.)
Hugo, don’t put words in my mouth, and assume you know what I think on issues. I judge people all the time, and will continue doing so.
Sorry, what words did I put in your mouth? Are you confusing Cara’s words to Okun with mine to you???
My bad - yes, I was confused!
Yes, there are single teenage mothers who do well in life. There are people who survive being struck by lightning as well. I still don’t recommend it.
Hugo, your attitude is a clear product of our Feel Good Times. Every decision anybody makes (with the possible decision of any hetero white male) has to be supported as “empowering.” It doesn’t matter if the overwhelming sociogical data indicates that a person is doing the equivalent of doing the tango blindfolded while headed towards a cliff, it’s still impolitic to do anything other than applaud over how well he or she is dancing.
Chief, what sociological data do you have in mind? If you’re trying to not-exactly-claim a causal connection between poverty and `single parent homes’, you should read the statistics I posted in the last post on the topic. As Hugo’s little anecdote of the 30 year old graduate being greeted by her children aged 14, 12, and 7, makes clear, having children while a teenager isn’t the same thing as throwing yourself off a cliff.
Hugo,
I think that our society should provide better support systems and economic assistance to pregnant mothers, especially to poor ones. That means jobs, education, financial support, nutritional assistance, assurance that she won’t get fired from her job, prenatal and postnatal medical care, child care counseling and training, and most importantly of all moral support and assurance that we as a society value her and her child. I think that a social democratic welfare state is only the first step, and nowhere near enough.
But I can’t agree with you that abortion is just ‘another choice’. It’s always, except when necessary for the mother’s health, the wrong choice. And to cooperate with the desire of an impoverished, despairing, frightened and vulnerable young woman to destroy the life within her, is ultimately to do her a disservice.
In some ways it’s healthier to have a baby when you’re young than when you’re older. In some societies, like several Latin American ones, early childbearing is combined with fairly decent educational/work opportunities for women. Those societies are set up to deal with early pregnancies in a way that ours is not. The thing to do is to change our society so that it serves the interests of young mothers, not to degrade them by treating their babies as disposable.
To care for young mothers, and for the weakest of our brethren in general, we should start by caring for their unborn children. If I was in Mr. Okun’s position, or yours, I would start with pleading with every young mother I met not to have an abortion, and telling her how wonderful it was that she was bringing a new and beautiful child into the world.
I asked my partner, who’s work relates to early childhood development and the bonding between young children and parents, to read your posting and she helped me with a different perspective on some of the issues you raised. She indicated that a large percentage of young Poor teen mothers particularly do not have any idea of the emotional needs of their children.
There is a huge difference between teen mothers who birth close to age 18 and those who are 12-14 or 15. In your work you probably see more of the success stories such as young women who make it to college despite the obstacles, than those who don’t do well.
I would also recall Claude Brown’s Manchild in a Promised Land where the junkies try to tell the poor Ghetto youth to not do what they do, and the young kids see the glamor and repeat the pattern.
Obviously some teen mothers are excellent with their children. Many, particularly younger, teen mothers, need a chance to still be teenagers and can’t emotionally give up their childhood for motherhood. The bonding of the young children with their parents (or grandparents) is very important in the emotional growth of these very young children.
Support the young mothers - of course! Also, recognize how hard it is to be a good parent. Thanks!
Noumena,
First out of the batting cage on Google…
http://www.teenshelter.org/data.htm
Congrats to Hugo’s graduate friend, but the plural of anecdote is not data.
Chief, what are you pointing to at that link? There are a bunch of statistical correlations to `bad things’ identified in the bottom third or so, but no causal connections explicitly asserted, much less argued for, much less given good arguments for.
Gonz, sorry I missed your earlier response. In my experience (I have three younger (step-)siblings, two of whom are still teenagers now), while there are differences between a 15 year old and an 18 year old, there aren’t really significant differences when it comes to the ability to make long-term decisions. And yet we trust 18 year olds with decisions about whether or not to go to college (and what to major in when they get there), whether or not to go into debt with a car loan or credit cards, and whether or not to join the military. These are all decisions with the potential to alter one’s life as seriously as the choice to carry a pregnancy to term.
Though perhaps my siblings are unusual in this respect.
Some relevant statistics from the Guttmacher Institute (PDF):
In 2002, women aged 15-19 had about 425,000 births. That’s about 4.3% of all women in that age group — so we’re talking about a relatively small group, though of course that doesn’t mean the problem is trivial.
Of these 425,000, about 139,000 had mothers aged 15-17. That’s a little less than a third of total births, I think. Women aged 18-19 account for the other two-thirds, of course.
So, in the particular context of my exchange with Gonz: for the most part, we’re talking about women who are legal adults, legally recognised as generally being capable of living on their own and making such other important and life-changing decisions as those I mentioned in my last comment. If you can concede that point, Gonz, could we focus our attention on the 2.3% of women aged 15-17 who are becoming mothers and yet are not, at least legally, considered entirely responsible for their actions?
Hector, have you ever been pregnant? Ever thought you were pregnant? No?
Then where do you get off making the assumption that (aside from health issues) abortion is always the wrong answer? You don’t have ANY IDEA what it’s like to look at your future that suddenly includes pregnancy and birth. You have never had to contemplate giving birth to a child and then giving it away, or losing your job, or having to drop out of school because you’re pregnant and don’t want to be. You don’t have a partner who will beat you up and accuse you of trying to trap him if you tell him you’re pregnant. The ENTIRE point of Hugo’s post is that you don’t get to make decisions for other people based on YOUR perception of what is best for them.
Not buying the line that abortion “degrades them (women) by making their babies disposable.” Does this mean that you think if babies are disposable, women are disposable? Is baby-making essential to a woman’s humanity? Then why would allowing a woman to make her own medical choices be degrading? There is nothing degrading about autonomy. No court in the country would force you (presumably a man) to donate a kidney to your child, so why is it considered OK to force a woman to carry a fetus for nine months, during which the possibility of injury and death are much higher than for a non-pregnant woman?
No, abortion is not always the wrong choice. Maybe on your nice little privileged planet, there is no such thing as poverty or lack of prenatal care or women who would like to stay on good terms with their families or partners, but here in the real world, that’s not the case.
(Hugo, feel free to delete this if you think it’s too much thread drift, and in that case, I do apologize. The rampant privilege made me do it.)
Noumena you can dodge all you want and stick your fingers in your ears and chant “no causal effect, no causal effect” until the cows come home, but when a rock hits the ground every time you drop it pretty soon you have to assume it’s from the effects of gravity. How many teenagers do you know who have a job really capable of supporting an infant? Or the education and training necessary to get such a job? How many already have a partner committed to helping them raise an infant? How many do you know of who have any assets in life, at all, even a savings account? How many do you know of who have the judgment to really know what the hell they’re getting in to (and yes, we trust kids to decide where to go to college, what major to study, what car to buy, etc, etc…but colleges can be changed, careers can be switched, cars can be sold. A baby, once born, is at least an 18 year obligation with enormous financial, emotional and opportunity cost expenses)?
Back to Okun’s article…just what do those of you who criticize it want from him? He’s already said he won’t push a pregnant teenager towards abortion (and, I think we can infer, won’t push her away from it either). He says he tries not to be judgmental or influence her decisions (Perhaps his mistake was in using the word “try,” unlike everybody who writes from a comfortable seat in front of an internet-capable computer and will tell you they handle such situations perfectly, every time). He says he’ll refer her to people who might be able to help her with prenatal care, he’ll take pictures of the baby when asked and he’ll hope for the best. What else can he reasonably be expected to do? Do you want him to lie and do backflips of joy whenever a student he’s fond of presents him with such devastating news?
Chief, I was involved for a year and half with a woman who, at the time I met her, was a single mother of a four-year-old and Dean’s List college student. She had been raped her first semester of high school and chose to keep the baby that resulted. She was so successful in college mostly because her parents were such devoted grandparents, and were willing to support their granddaughter financially while their daughter was in school.
She was also the first woman I was seriously in love with. So you’ll have to excuse me if I take some of the things you and others have said in this thread personally.
And, for the third time, can you state plainly just what causal connection you think exists? If you believe there’s a causal connection between A and B, stop dancing around the issue and just state what A and B are already. It’s completely impossible to try to engage you in debate and discussion as long as you never actually claim anything. Is your argument that raising a child takes a lot of time and money? I don’t see anyone denying that. Is your argument that there’s a causal connection between `single parent homes’ and poverty? If you had bothered, as I suggested earlier, to read the thread where Married Tom and I were debating precisely this point this weekend, you would have seen the statistics I found that at least strongly suggest that no such causal connection exists. You also would have seen my criticism of statistics from Married Tom that do pretty much what the link you cited did.
To answer the questions of your second paragraph: What I want Okun to do is to trust women. Trust that they’ve thought through their values and interests and considered every available option, and consequently offer them the appropriate sympathy, support, and aid in pursuing the course of action that is rationally the best for them. As Hugo put it in the original post — in bold font, even — `But rather than [publicly] shaming or [privately, or semi-privately] bemoaning the choices these young women make, we can rejoice in their courage — and we can partner with them to raise their babies.’
Two observations:
1) It doesn’t do to predict success based on a population selected by success.
To put it another way, the teenage mothers who do not have a supportive extended family, do not have access to the necessary resources, do not have the talent for time management, do not turn up in your classes. Your statement does make the point that some people can succeed at teenage motherhood, but it does not say that every, or even many, teenage parents will have the support they need.
2) Support means more than feelings.
One of the greatest risks for poor teenage parents comes from the prospect their children may need health care they cannot pay for. Most countries provide such health care. Most progressive states in your country do also, as I understand. When the question of providing or extending the S-CHIP program arose in congress, many conservatives responded with violent personal attacks on a twelve year old child who went on the radio to speak about the way the program had benefited him. If you claim to support young parents, they have a right to ask, when the important issue of children’s health care came up, did you:
1) Go to a demonstration?
2) Write an op-ed?
3) Post on your blog?
Noumena, I’m saying that raising a child takes lots of time and money and is an undertaking best considered by adult judgement. Teenagers rarely have the first two and never the third and yes, I’m saying the both parent and child usually suffer for it. My link show some disturbing examples of how. You’ve shown your statistics, I’ve shown mine. Trusting women is fine, trusting children (and a high school girl is still a child) is almost invariably a recipe for disaster, your old girlfriend being one of the rare exceptions.
While I give your friend nothing but respect considering the especially difficult situation she was in, I’m always amused by people who casually say “the teenage mother can raise the kids with the help of her family,” usually meaning the teenage mother’s parents. I wonder how many parents of teenage mothers had plans for the latter halves of their lives that involved something other than raising yet another generation, plans that they had to put on hold or abandon entirely.
Chief, speaking of those statistics, did you actually take a look at the citations? Out of 23 distinct citations (one entry shows up twice), I can confirm the existence of only 5 at the moment, do not have the page citations necessary to verify the statistics given for these, and many are other citations are completely unidentifiable. None of these 5 appear to be cited to support any claims relating to the question of whether or not teenage parents and their children generally suffer as a result of the mother becoming a parent as a teenager.
In at least one case, the citations are misleading. For example, the link says `Although it is not inevitable, the daughters of teen mothers are likely to become pregnant as teens.’, and then provides a citation to paper whose abstract states: `Twenty years after a mostly black group of Baltimore women became adolescent mothers, the majority of their first-born children had not become adolescent parents, a finding that challenges the popular belief that the offspring of teenage mothers are themselves destined to become adolescent parents.’
This link does not appear to be a reliable source for information supporting your claim that teenage parents and their children generally suffer as a result of the mother becoming a parent as a teenager.
Also, don’t neglect the point I made to Gonz earlier: in 2/3 of teenage pregnancies, we’re talking about young women who are legally adults. The law assumes that roughly 1/3 of teenagers do have adult judgement. If you think that these women lack the judgement to decide whether or not to become mothers, you should also think that teenagers of the same age lack the judgement to decide whether or not to go to college or join the military or get a credit card or vote. Is this the case?
My experience on the ambulance was far different. When I think of unwed teen mothers, I think of women who dump their babies on their mothers, don’t care properly for the children and have them taken away, or have their children wind up the center of attention of a pediatric trauma team. (And yeah, I’m thinking of two recent pediatric deaths here in Pittsburgh that have been all over the news.)
Both of us are probably seeing selected populations. I wonder what the real picture is.
While I agree the teen mothers might know what they’re in for, do they know what they’re losing in the process? They model what they see, not what they could be. That sounds like a trap to me.
Rhyming not intentional.
you know, BLAMING teen moms do not help the situation any.
These young mothers and fathers needed role models, mentors, tutors. Needed options, needed encouragement from a very young age. Some of the battle’s been lost for a lot of these kids before they even became sexually active with the terrible school conditions, etc etc.
Teen pregnancy isn’t something you address once a young girl starts menstruating and you’re worried now that she can get pregnant. You address it a kindergarten, when kids has dreams, imagination, creativity, interest, and curiosity. You tell kids those are important, those are worth pursuing, those are worth focusing on, that life isn’t just dealing with what happens to you, but making things happen for yourself. You have to do that, not with just words, but also with action. Support the arts for both genders, sports for both genders equally, afternoon programs where kids can play, study, get tutored and pursue their goals. The way to prevent teen pregnancy isn’t about sex- it’s about letting kids know that they can dream big, and to go after that big dream.
Preventing teen mothers isn’t just about giving sex ed- it starts way, way before that- with both little boys and girls.
Even if teens become pregnant, those that are motivated and determined still succeed, maybe in a different timescale, if given the proper support.
An interesting aspect that seems left entirely out of this discussion is, what about the father? Is the decision being made alone by the pregnant girl, or does the father have some influence in the decision?
Several instances come to mind on separate ends of the spectrum. One is the deadbeat father scenario–not my fault, I want nothing to do with the child, I am outta here. One is the couple who this is “not supposed to happen to”–honor students, varsity football, etc. who were careful but not careful enough. A third may be the honorable type of male who is willing to get married and participate in the child’s life regardless of either the strength of the relationship, readiness for marriage, etc. Some teens in this situation actually make a marriage work–I know one exceptional couple with three children now who now face their “golden years” together in their late 40s with a surplus of energy.
I recall a two-week period of time in which I was one-half of the “not supposed to happen to” type (fortunately, high school gf was simply late). It was an exceptionally emotionally distressing period. We had discussions, painful ones, and my irrational, selfish male perspective on the matter was to push my girlfriend to get an abortion. Ostensibly for both of our sakes but, in retrospect, mostly for my own sake. I had plans, dreams, accomplishments ahead. In this case, my gf played organ at her church (provided as a proxy for her character and home values) and was caught in a situation that she should not have been in. Had she been pregnant and taken my advice, I suspect we would have both regretted it for the rest of our lives. Particularly in light of how our beliefs and lives have progressed. Forgiven, but remorseful.
I think in all cases, the prospective father plays a distinct role by leaving, freaking out, berating the girl, ignoring responsibility, influencing the girl’s decision (almost always in favor of an abortion, I assume), being supportive, or offering to take responsibility in whatever capacity necessary respectively. The discussion hits all aspects of the support for the single parent–professors, parents, grandparents, friends, etc. Father is not mentioned once.
The one for eleven statistic cited by Hugo seems pretty appalling to me. Yet nobody seems to talk about the implicit lack of character revealed by this statistic on the male side.
Before you go off, Nuomena, I made no attempt to imply “causality” between the 1 for 11 sampling referred and the relationship between single parent households and a lack of character in the father. And Hugo’s anecdotal observation was used for this example, in case you want to try to discredit the source.
I just wonder what impact the father has in this discussion overall, since there was none in this discussion thread.
Hugo, I hope that the sleeping babies attending your classes were brought out of necessity rather than as a result of the soporific nature of these lectures.
Just as a note–I also wonder how having a teen mother affects the child. I don’t want to presume that the lives of such children are worse (or better), but it seems as though this is a rather odd perspective to have been so completely left out of the conversation. If we’re going to talk about whether teen pregnancy is a “tragedy”, surely we can hardly limit our analysis to the experience of the mother?
Sorry if this is getting off-topic.
Uggg its so gross that people would think it was tragic. There are a zillion ways these situations can go. Your students are clearly proof of that.
One of my main role models is my aunt- who has is amazing artist with multiple degrees and a great teaching job. She got pregnant when she was 18 and her boyfriend was 17. Their parents begged them to get an abortion, didn’t go to the wedding, and had nothing to offer for college money. However the two of them waited tables, worked construction, and managed to raise the baby while going to college. And it sounds crazily hard from everything I’ve heard. But today I still catch them making out while they make breakfast. And my cousin is incredibly brilliant and puts it to good use with all sorts of amazing food and book outreach programs in his neighborhood.
I’ve had a lot of other women in my life make the decision to keep a baby. Many aren’t as charmed a story as this, but none of them would regret the decision. I don’t think having a baby now would be the choice if I had to make it. But to call the situation tragic is to call the girl already defeated.
What floors me is that Okun (and a great number of the posters here) think that what the girl has “done” is to deliberately get pregnant. What she really did was to have sex.
I wonder if Okun feels the urge to shake his male students who are sleeping with their girlfriends, or “the man” (in his words) who was half responsible for the pregnancy? Does he want to shake people who are diligently working to teach girls like his students that contraception is immoral and abortion is evil? Does he want to scream at the pervasive teaching that a woman’s highest calling is to birth and raise babies, with a “career” being such a distasteful second option that it is always put in quotes?
Because if not, it’s just more of the usual slut-shaming. I doubt Okun or any of the NYT readers applauding him kept it in their pants until marriage.
Mythago, for some reason your use of the vulgarism “kept it in their pants” just rubbed me the wrong way here. It seemed to me to sum up a couple of the assumptions that have guided this discussion, assumptions I strongly disagree with.
1) The young women have no agency in this.
As one of Hugo’s own references suggests, it doesn’t do to deny these women credit for their own agency. It appears that some of them do want to have children young; they didn’t get caught up by sexual predators (though some may have) or adult blue-noses. They made a choice which they consider appropriate, but which some adults, with the advantage of experience, see as closing off a great many other choices.
2) This all has to do with sex.
No, this has to do with the supports available (or not) for raising a child by racialized women in an impoverished community in the United States today. A poor young woman can (Hugo has that right) raise a child if she has the needed support. Does she have access to affordable daycare? If not, what have you done about it today? Does she have access to health care for herself and her child? If not, what have you done about that, today.
John, the problem in Okun’s discussion is exactly the opposite of what you suggest: he assumes that the girls have all the agency in this, and it has nothing to do with sex, only with their future economic and social success. (And they’re not “young women”; Okun is talking about teenagers who have not yet finished high school.)
I don’t understand your or Okun’s need to take sex out of the discussion. Limiting the discussion to “what do we do after they’re pregnant?” ignores the agency of the other party responsible for the pregnancy, and it conveniently removes any uncomfortable discussions about how these girls are ending up pregnant in the first place. Offering childcare is important, but it says nothing about the issue of how a fourteen-year-old girl ends up as a single mother.
Mythago:
1) Agency (a problematic term)
Where the agency rests depends on the desire at issue. If the young women (see below) choose or have men manipulate or coerce them into sex, that makes sex the issue. If they actively want to have children, to become (for whatever reason) mothers, then however much or little sex they have had only provides one of the available means to that end. And then on top of that issue lies the question of whether or not their choices, whether involving sex or motherhood, really make sense for them.
2) Young women
I don’t know the ages of the people Okun teaches, but our society keeps people too young for too long (and don’t get me started on the special indignities heaped on People of Colour in this connection). At the age of 16, I conned a crippled windjammer up one of the busiest waterways in North America. A fourteen year old can legally take to the sky, in a sailplane, alone. If Okun speaks of 14-16 year olds, I refuse to apologise for referring to these people as young women and men.
3) On motherhood
Let’s acknowledge that Okun’s students live in a world where a conservative writer can produce jeremiads about the People of Colour people out-breeding “us” without getting read out of the mainstream. Our culture, as Cara pointed out, does not value Black motherhood.
4) Discomfort with sex
I don’t know about you, but I find I have to work to avoid our culture’s comfort level with questions of the sexuality and reproduction of People of Colour. I could post reams of data; go to the Atlantic Magazine (subscription) and search Hmong for an article that captures one of the truly egregious and relatively recent examples. A little more discomfort about our ordinary way of addressing this topic would do “White” folks a world of good.
Your words are inspirational, painting a picture that denies a pretty miserable reality. Sure there are teen moms (and dads) that rise to the occasion. But the cycle of poverty and neglect is strangling many communities, and a culture of resentment and disengagement is swallowing many children, teens on down. For every inspirational teen parent story I’ll bet there are two that can be labeled “tragic,” and the tragedy plays out, generation after generation. If we are unwilling to place a judgement on conditions that lead to human misery we are cowards. I find much of what you have written to be nonsensical. You write “Single mothers know how precious each free second is. They tend to use their time very, very well.” Do you have any idea how much television very young children who are living in impoverished single parent households watch? And the content of what they watch? Can you imagine the impact on a developing brain? I guarantee you that the learning potential of such a child is greatly diminished, contributing to attention and behavior problems that the very best teachers struggle with every day, often with minimal success. You suggest we “rejoice in their courage.” Having a baby is a biological function. Raising a child is one of life’s great challenges, but it is also a very ordinary endeavor, taken on with great care but not much consideration of “courage” by women and men all over the world under a variety of circumstances. I doubt if there is much “partnering” offered or wanted, but I can see the results of bitterness and neglect. Will Okun has the guts to face the truth and report honestly. I’ll bet his words and his “judgement” do have meaning that some teens take to heart. And I’ll bet those young people take an extra meassure of care not to rush or fall into something that they are not prepared for. Will is a hero of mine.