June 19, 2008
Breakfast Club Replaced by Pregnancy Club in Gloucester
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| Photo tagged Bostonist by Flickr user hmmlargeart |
Seventeen students (out of 1200) at Gloucester High are pregnant; that's more than four times the number of pregnancies reported last year. The health center administered a staggering 150 pregnancy tests over the past school year. Assuming half the students in the school are girls, that figure represents a quarter of the school's female population.
While access to birth control should be available for students who want it, pills won't solve the bigger problem. Time quotes Gloucester school superintendent Christopher Farmer as saying, "Many of our young people are growing up directionless." That's the real source of these pregnancy pacts. Young women without any other way to feel good about themselves are counting on babies for the love and attention they need. A Gloucester graduate who became pregnant her freshman year says, of her peers who have babies, "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally."
Perhaps if these girls had a more supportive community, they wouldn't seek solace in infants. Gloucester High School should step up the availability not only of birth control and sexual education, but also of after-school programs, counseling services, mentoring opportunities, and other resources for teens who feel lost.
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You know, I try not to be That Internet Fuckwad, but these girls and the Gloucester school's complete lack of proper response/support have really pushed lil' Nora over the edge.
Best of luck with your burdens, girls; and best of luck getting into the workforce later; and good luck fostering hope in your own child when the baby you made faces the same shitty cycle you did! And when the child hits the teen years--when the mothers' ages are, oh, just a little over twice the kids' ages!--all that unconditional love that we all know teens feel for their parents will certainly pay off.
I wish they all had better support and did not turn to such a shortsighted solution that is most likely to only make things worse. The school should look farther ahead than that as well.
So best of luck to Gloucester, which will reap later what it's sown now.
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Sadly, Nora, you are right on. This is like being in the right front seat of a car about to crash. You warn the driver in increasingly louder tones, only to be ignored. What no one talks about is that these babies present the family with an unpleasant choice:
1. throw the kid out of the house, as might have been done in earlier generations, with predictable results of poverty and misery or
2. bring the baby home and change the template of a household that wasn't planning on a new infant, with all the complications and distractions that it brings to aging members.
The fact that girls feel so entitled that this somehow strikes them as a good idea is chilling.
At the end of the day, this is about someone who is trying to make their problem my problem. If my own family is any indication, these girls trying to create new families will not only fail in most cases, they will destroy the cohesion of EXISTING families in their self-centered quest. How stupid does one have to be to put a positive spin on all this?