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06/19/2008: "Teach Your Children Well"
Some will call it the "Juno" effect, while others will blame it on the ill-advised pregnancies of teen stars like Jamie Lynn Spears. I'm going to put the blame wher it belongs - squarely in the laps of the parents.
Like most high schools, Gloucester High in Massassachusetts had to deal with a certain amount of underage pregnancy - teenagers are curious, accidents happen and consequences occur. But what they're facing now is unprecidented.
At Gloucester, 17 girls are pregnant as they leave for summer - far beyond what would be statistically normal. But more frightening than the numbers is the reason for the pregnancies.
School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.
Society tends to assume that problems like this are unique to the inner city, where poverty and boredom lead to bad decisions. But these are middle-class white girls getting pregnant by choice.
The girls who made the pregnancy pact - some of whom, according to Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers - declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."
I understand the desire of parents to give their kids room to grow, and to let them learn from their mistakes, but there's just no excuse for something like this. Are you really going to tell me that there are 17 girls out there who made this pact and none of their parents knew enough about their children's lives to know about it? Totally unacceptable.
Parents, remember - you're their mother and father, not their friend. You took on a responsibility the moment you created that life to guide it to maturity, and there's no dodging that obligation. Step up and do your job!
