I see it a lot at the mall where I now work at Rosetta Stone part time (ever since we moved to Sarasota County, it’s no different from Tucson, with the exception of the humidity levels in the air. But teens are still having sex, right in the middle of the Bible Belt, while at the same time talking about holding off on sex until marriage. Right.)
http://www.thespec.com/article/389073
Kids With Kids
Is teen pregnancy — more visible in society and pop culture — becoming more acceptable?
June 19, 2008
Carmelina Prete
The Hamilton Spectator
Leanne Cahill is pregnant and proud. Is there any reason she shouldn’t be? She’s fit and healthy and has had a model pregnancy. She is in love with the father of her unborn child, has been with him for three years. She has a strong network of family and friends. It’s all good.
“I’m proud that I’m having a baby and that I get to be a mom,” she says.
Cahill is also a teenager. She’s just 18, a recent graduate of Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School in Hamilton. At an age when most students are looking ahead to a summer of work, play and travel, she is preparing for diaper changes and breastfeeding. She had to cram to finish classes a month early to prepare for her baby’s arrival.
Cahill’s age is all some people need to know about the prospects for her and her baby’s life. For them, the current thinking is that teen pregnancy must be avoided because it restricts the potential of the teen and her baby.
But not everyone believes that — least of all Cahill, who, at nine months pregnant, believes the experience has been life-defining and positive.
Teen pregnancy may be becoming more socially acceptable — which is a throwback to several generations ago — suggests Andrea O’Reilly, a women’s studies professor at York University and director of the Association for Research on Mothering.
That’s partly because the concept of motherhood is being redefined and “loosened,” O’Reilly says. The notion of who can mother, when and under what circumstances have all changed.
“We now know children don’t have to be raised by a 30-year-old in a two-parent family making this amount of money. We know that children survive and thrive in all kinds of situations.”
She points out women have babies into their late 40s, which would have seemed odd 30 years ago. Yet there have always been teen moms. What’s different is our expectations for middle-class girls, O’Reilly says.
She also doesn’t buy the argument that people disapprove of teen moms simply because they are too young. Perhaps the disapproval speaks to a larger cultural uneasiness with women’s sexuality and women’s autonomy.
Several generations ago, “moms were pregnant at 18 … and nobody freaked out,” says O’Reilly. “What makes a difference today? I think it’s because she’s on her own and she’s breaking rules. She’s choosing to have a child in a way that society has told her she can’t. People get really uncomfortable with that.”
The conventional view is that modern middle-class girls follow a clear path: finish high school, then university, get a career, meet a guy and have a baby. Maybe do Europe in between. Having a baby as a teen messes with that order of things.
Teen pregnancy has carried a stigma — the very event terminated with abortion or shrouded in secrecy if the baby was carried to term. Up until the 1970s, teens were often sent away to homes for unwed moms before they started to show, then gave birth, put the baby up for adoption and reappeared several months later.
But today, teen pregnancy is more visible in society and reflected in popular culture. Jamie Lynn Spears, better known as Britney Spears’s younger sister, made headlines when she announced she was pregnant at 16 and plans to raise the baby. Celebrity blogs, websites and tabloids regularly update photos of her growing belly.
Not surprisingly, reality television is in on the act with NBC’s The Baby Borrowers premiering next week and featuring five teen couples — some wanting to be parents — as they fast-track through parenthood. During the course of three weeks, they attend prenatal class, care for a baby, then toddler, then sassy tween.
Add to that the success of last year’s hit movie Juno, which chronicles the life of a smart middle-class 16-year-old as she confronts an unplanned pregnancy and looks for the perfect adoptive parents.
Still, others point to several economic and social hardships linked to teen pregnancy. Teenage mothers are less likely to complete high school or post-secondary education. Less education means a job earning less money. Teen moms are also at greater risks for health problems, including anemia, hypertension and depression. Children of teens are also more likely to have lower birth weights and suffer health problems.
That’s why governments spend millions of dollars annually in public education campaigns to prevent it. Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, Hamilton’s medical officer of health, said teen moms are a key target group for the city’s public health programs.
“The important thing to remember with a teen mom is that they are just at the beginning of their early adult years,” says Richardson.
“They’re still looking at developing the skills, the knowledge, the attitudes that are going to define their career and define who they are. So throwing them into parenthood at that stage of their development is going to create a lot more challenges.”
In 1995, the number of pregnancies in women aged 15 to 19 in Canada was 47.6 per 1,000 women. By 2004, the rate had fallen to 30.5. The provincial rate was even lower, at 24.6. The 2000 to 2004 Hamilton average is 33.7.
More recent statistics in the United States show the national teen pregnancy rate in 2006 rose 3 per cent from the year before — the first increase in 15 years.
Richardson doesn’t expect Canadian teen pregnancy rates to mirror the U.S. rise. She believes education programs about safe sex and teen pregnancy have contributed to the overall decline.
Being a teenage mom is not what Leanne Cahill planned for her life, but “things happen, right?”
She had just moved in with her 20-year-old boyfriend last fall and was on the birth control pill when she got pregnant.
Although more than 50 per cent of teenage pregnancies in Canada today end in abortion, Cahill never considered that an option. Her views on this are conflicted. She always considered herself to be pro-choice in theory but could not bear the thought of aborting her fetus. Better, she said, to have her child and “make the best of it.”
In fact, she feels she never really felt comfortable in her own skin until she became pregnant.
“I always would wear big clothes and hide myself under them. (Now) I’ve been proud to show my big belly. I really like the tighter clothes so I can show off,” she says with a giggle.
“I found I’ve made more friends,” says the normally shy teen who is also more open with people since many have been curious about what it’s like being a pregnant teenager.
For now, she’s biding time in her central Hamilton apartment, waiting for her baby girl to come. She’s already past her due date.
The laid-back teen plans to take every day as it comes. Although the pregnancy has put university plans on hold, Cahill aspires to become a music teacher.
“I’ll just be happy to finally hold her in my arms, look at her and wonder how her life is going to end up and how I’m going to help her grow and develop and make her life the best it can be.”
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Children having children. Teens and pre-teens who are sexually active, even when their parents tell them “No!” Defiant teens who think they know better. Teens who do not need access to the knowledge of making babies. Are children more corrupt than ever before? It certainly seems like they are. Not many parents monitor their child’s pop culture intake anymore, and let their little girls and boys worship figures like Britney Spears, Lourdes Leon, and company. Children are more sexualized than ever before. Do children and teens need to know how to make babies? Of course they do not. I got through high school without knowing how babies are made and it sure as hell did not scar me. In fact, unlike mots of the kids in school who are sexually active, I excelled academically and had real interests outside of class (I can assure you that one of the interests was not cootie-ridden boys). We have arrived at a time when pregnant teens should never brag about getting pregnant, since pregnancy is never an achievement; rather, it is a state of unhappiness, suffering, bloating, and a body that is far from attractive. Not to mention bizarre diets. Then the teen girl usually winds up on welfare while the guy skips town so that he can avoid child support. Since teen pregnancy destroys the social fabric and is anti-social in practice, perhaps we are better off discouraging teens from getting pregnant, keeping them from “forbidden fruit”, and instead nurturing their minds and talents which will actually contribute to society.
Pendragon's Princess 