Teen mom on pregnancy pact. : ‘You lose everything’

[bliss_eternal]

Teen mom on pregnancy pact: ‘You lose everything’

But she says her warnings to girls at Gloucester High School went unheeded

Pregnancy pact raises issues
June 20: On TODAY, teen mom Christen Callahan says that her warnings about the pressures of motherhood went unheeded by Gloucester

High School girls who made a pact to get pregnant.

By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 7:03 a.m. PT, Fri., June. 20, 2008
Christen Callahan is 18 and wouldn’t give up her 3-year-old daughter for anything. But, warned the teen mom from Gloucester, Mass. — where a virtual epidemic of high school pregnancies has been tied to a pact reported in TIME magazine — having a baby at such a young age comes at an enormous price.

“You lose everything,” Callahan told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Friday in New York. “You lose your friends. You lose being able to go out. I know a lot of people that like to go out every night. You can’t really do it. You lose — you lose everything.”

Callahan was on TODAY to talk about the epidemic of teen pregnancy at Gloucester High School in her hometown. As TIME reported this week, 17 girls at the high school have become pregnant this year, with half of them sophomores who had entered into a pregnancy pact. All but one of the seven or eight girls who set out to become pregnant are 15 years old; the other is 16. Most got pregnant by their boyfriends, but one father is reportedly a 24-year-old homeless man.

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The ‘Juno’ effect
And Callahan said that when a celebrity gets pregnant, or a movie like “Juno” portrays teen pregnancy, it has an influence on teens.

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Demonstrating her point, TIME reported that instead of being dismayed, the girls in the pregnancy pact were delighted to find out they were with child.

“They were thrilled when they got pregnant, and they were very, very proud,” Kathleen Kingsbury, the TIME reporter who wrote the story, told Vieira. Girls would come out of the school’s clinic beaming after taking a pregnancy test and learning the result was positive. One girl yelled, “Sweet!” when she got the news.

“There was a lot of baby-shower planning,” Kingsbury said. “It had a lot of people at the school scratching their heads and wondering what was going on.”

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excerpted from:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/25279403/?GT1=43001

[ismnotwasm]

1. One of the girls is denying there was a pact

Good was a point made in a thread, I think it was by TheCatBurgler, to the effect of why can't we have a reasonable discussion of a young woman's sexuality and choices without sensationalism. (I'm paraphrasing here, but it hit the nail on the head) The tone of the original story was a condemning one, kind of a "Why didn't they keep their legs closed" undertone, as well as salacious, ie. The "homeless" father. I read a comment in another thread where the poster said the girls "Should be charged with a type of rape, how do we know he wasn't disabled or mentally ill?" That comment alone was why I stayed out it mostly. (Which is most likely why I'm so wordy now) Didn't trust myself to be civil.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1103051

"The Gloucester teen baby mama drama took two hits yesterday, as a pregnant teen told “Good Morning America” there was no pact at the North Shore school where 17 girls are expecting and the head of the school’s day-care center denied telling a Time magazine reporter that one of her employees had heard of the pact.

Five days after the magazine’s sensational pregnancy pact expose hit the Web, Time reporter Kathleen Kingsbury followed up with a second story on Monday after the Gloucester mayor said there was no evidence of a pact."



Having been a teen mother (An extremely unprepared one, as I've posted before)I agree with this young woman in your post. Not only do you lose everything, you're choices are chokingly limited. We aren't always supportive of parents period-- for example, I think day care should be subsidized though one's employer, or creative ideas like co-ops etc. There should be benefits covering work loss for illnesses. Throw a young, single mother into what is essentially a hostile work environment and you have the potential for a myriad of preventable problems.

The bigger picture, which to me is making good information available with all of the choices on the table. Strong support in the form of sex education, birth control, frank discussions of sexual activity (also a choice)In a open non-condemning manner is essential.

[bliss_eternal]

2. It's an excellent point and question.

I wasn't aware that this issue is (or was) up for discussion in other areas of the board. Glad I missed it (easy to do since I primarily visit certain areas exclusively).

One of the reasons I was angry about the "juno film" was the feeling I got that it glamourized teen pregnancy and the adoption choice. From showing a teen pregnancy as fun, hip, cool and easy (with few challenges imposed on the teens life). Most teens don't have "supportive parents" like the one's presented in Juno. The choice of adoption is frequently glossed over as an admirable one for a pregnant woman to make, without acknowledging the unique emotional challenges many women experience in the process.

One voice telling the teen pact participants, "this will ruin your life" is easy to ignore and dismiss. They probably thought,"...that won't be me, I'll be different."

Why isn't anyone discussing the fact that society incessantly beats women over the head with the message that "motherhood completes a woman"?

[ismnotwasm]

3. That's an excellent question

I can only speculate, but it ties right in to choice. Since women are to only ones able to "have" babies, and historically that was about the only thing we were considered good for, (being flawed vessels as well as "defective males according to much lauded philosophical and religious minds, such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas) maybe the whole concept of the honorable, very valid choice to NOT embrace motherhood choice scares the crap out of some. So there's this panicky, bullshit push for women to "feel complete" Ugh.

Leads right in to this vicious need to control women's bodies.

[jmm]

4. The coverage of this has been bothering me.

I'm not for trying to hide situations like this but why did the principal feels the need to go public with the unproven details of this pact? The reaction of some at this school strikes me as their attempt at washing their hands of any blame in this situation. Obviously this had to be an ongoing problem since school has a day care yet they won't give out birth control without a parent's permission or condoms under any circumstances. Instead of addressing their ongoing problems some can point to this trumped up pact and pretend like it they did everything they could to address them.

[Ilsa]

5. There is a tv show in one night a week where teens get to

take care of babies. The show is described as nonprescription birth control. I've never seen it. I have no desire to watch teens fumbling over child care. But it looks like it could affect the teens experiencing it.