Teenage Pregnancy - A Disaster? - 09/22/07 11:29 AM
There has recently been one story posted on the boards, Family Hour, and another uploaded to the Archive, Coming of Age, where Clark and Lois meet as teenagers and Lois becomes pregnant with Clark's child. Which leads me to consider the following question: How bad is it really if a teenaged girl becomes pregnant and has a child?
The simple fact that most girls start menstruating in their early teens (and maybe even earlier) means that they are physically ready to become mothers at that age. It is certainly very likely that they are not mentally or socially ready for motherhood, but they are physically ready, all right. And because they are physically ready, it is not very strange that their bodies respond by becoming interested in the kind of activities that can lead to pregnancy.
In many cultures all over the world, it has been normal to marry girls off when they are in their early teens. In Shakespeare's immortal tragedy Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's parents decide to marry their daughter off at about the same time that Juliet is celebrating her fourteenth birthday. And Juliet's mother tells her daughter that when she herself was fourteen years old, she was not only married but she had also given birth to Juliet.
The Bible tells us nothing about the age of Virgin Mary. Nevertheless it has often been assumed that she was just a young girl, perhaps around fifteen, because, so the reasoning goes, otherwise she would already have been married. And Islam's Prophet Muhammed, who had ten wives, married a girl, Aisha, who was just ten years old when he married her.
Right now in the United States a "renegade Mormon" pastor, Warren Jeffs, is on trial for allegedly pressuring a fourteen-year-old American girl into marrying her cousin. It should perhaps be noted that the age of consent in Utah is fourteen, so unless the girl was subjected to undue pressure to marry her cousin, her marriage at age fourteen was legally all right.
To summarize, the custom of marrying off thirteen- to fourteen-year-old girls has been commonplace all over the world. Clearly the fact that girls of that age are physically ready to become mothers has led many societies to conclude that girls therefore ought to be married off at that age. And rarely has there been a public outcry at such practices at home or abroad. In short, the idea of girls becoming pregnant at the age of thirteen or fourteen is not in and of itself catastrophic. So where, then, lies the problem?
Some years ago, I saw a documentary about something that had happened at a strict Catholic school for girls in Ireland. One of the girls at this school, undoubtedly a somewhat rebellious girl - you know, the kind of girl who starts smoking before anyone else does and who breaks various rules - became pregnant. I got the impression that she was about fifteen or sixteen.
For all her rebelliousness, pregnancy was more than this girl had bargained for. She didn't know how to deal with her situation. She started wearing big and bulky clothes that hid her figure, and apparently the nuns, who were the teacers at this school, didn't notice anything suspicious. (A few of the nuns were interviewed in the documentary; they came off as frighteningly rigid and stiff.)
In December the girl realized that it would soon be time for her to give birth. She became increasingly desperate. Apparently she didn't feel that she could go to her parents for help. For all her rebelliousness she was still a Catholic, and she clung to the hope that the Virgin Mary could somehow help her. She started sneaking out to a nearby churchyard where there was a statue of the Virgin, where the girl would come to pray.
Shortly before Christmas, the girl went to the churchyard again. When she was there her waters broke and she was suddenly in labour.
The girl was found the next day, which may or may not have been Christmas Day. She was lying in the blood-stained snow on the ground in front of the Virgin Mary statue. Her little boy lay in the snow beside her, the umbilical cord uncut. Both the young mother and her newborn son were dead. In their own way, this young girl and her little son were a modern version of Mary and her Child. But there was no place for them in the inn, and neither, so the girl must have felt, in her school nor in her parents' home, not even in a manger in a stable. So the girl gave birth in the snow in the churchyard, and she and her son died.
We can say that it was the girl's own fault that she and her son died. And of course it was, to a certain extent. It was her own fault that she became pregnant, and it was her own choice not to tell an adult about her situation. If she had told her parents, or if she had told the nuns at school, they would have helped her. They would have been required to help her, and they would have done it, too. But when I saw the harshness and the lack of generosity and tolerance in the faces of the nuns, at least as they were portrayed in the documentary, I don't blame the girl for not daring to confess her pregnancy to the nuns.
When I was a young teacher in the early eighties, I had a colleague who was born around 1940. Around 1955, when she was fifteen, she became pregnant. When this was discovered, she was immediately forced to leave school. Not only that, but she was forced to leave her own home, her family and her friends and her own hometown, and she was placed in an institution for misbehaving girls. Here she had to stay until she gave birth. Immediately afterwards the baby was taken away from her. She was not allowed to see her child, and she wasn't even told if it was a boy or a girl. The baby was given away for adoption, and it didn't matter whether she, its sixteen-year-old mother, wanted this to happen or not.
When this girl came home again she was confused and lost. She could not go back to school, because she had lost a year of schooling and her parents no longer wanted to pay for her education, since they didn't feel she deserved it any more. Her "nice" friends didn't want to see her. She had to take a string of unqualified jobs, and she became friends with a rougher crowd, so that she started drinking too much. After more than ten years she managed to get back to school and finish her education, and finally she became a teacher. But when I met her, she was bitter. She felt that her youth had been taken away from her. But wasn't that her own fault? Yes, it was her own fault that she became pregnant, of course. But was it her own fault that she was sent away from home? That her former friends didn't want to see her anymore? That her parents didn't want to pay for her education? That she met so much condemnation from society?
That is what things were like in Sweden in the mid-fifties. Today things are very different. One of my own students is an eighteen-year-old girl with a two-year-old son. Unlike my colleague, this girl has met support and understanding from the surrounding society. She most certainly wasn't sent away from home. She was allowed to stay in school for as long as she had the energy for her classes during her pregnancy. After she had given birth, she stayed at home for a year, nursing and taking care of her son. After that, she returned to school. Her little son was placed in daycare. The social services helped her to get an apartment where she could move in with her son and her boyfriend, the father of her son. She was not able to get married, because Swedish law forbids marriage for anyone who is not yet eighteen years old.
Folks, you should see this girl! She is so conscientious, and she is a model student, even though she isn't gifted or bright. She is so mature and responsible. She dresses simply and unassumingly, but not ugly. When she is with her little boy, she is positively glowing. I kid you not if I tell you that there is something about this girl which reminds me, at least, of a young, innocent, mature, brave, loving and lovely Virgin Mary. It's the girl's own good qualities that have made her such a good mother and such a good student, of course. But, darn it, it is the fact that the surrounding society has given her support and not condemnation that has made it possible for her to live a happy life with her little family.
So I think it is imperative that we, the rest of us, support the teenaged mothers instead of condemning them. If their lives go to heck after we have made them feel that they are no better than irresponsible sluts, then we shouldn't put the blame squarely on the girls if things go as badly for them as we had predicted.
Ann
P.S. When I say that "we" should support the teenaged mothers, I'm not implying that the members of these boards are an intolerant lot. When I say "we", I mean the surrounding society, or everyone who meets these girls.
The simple fact that most girls start menstruating in their early teens (and maybe even earlier) means that they are physically ready to become mothers at that age. It is certainly very likely that they are not mentally or socially ready for motherhood, but they are physically ready, all right. And because they are physically ready, it is not very strange that their bodies respond by becoming interested in the kind of activities that can lead to pregnancy.
In many cultures all over the world, it has been normal to marry girls off when they are in their early teens. In Shakespeare's immortal tragedy Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's parents decide to marry their daughter off at about the same time that Juliet is celebrating her fourteenth birthday. And Juliet's mother tells her daughter that when she herself was fourteen years old, she was not only married but she had also given birth to Juliet.
The Bible tells us nothing about the age of Virgin Mary. Nevertheless it has often been assumed that she was just a young girl, perhaps around fifteen, because, so the reasoning goes, otherwise she would already have been married. And Islam's Prophet Muhammed, who had ten wives, married a girl, Aisha, who was just ten years old when he married her.
Right now in the United States a "renegade Mormon" pastor, Warren Jeffs, is on trial for allegedly pressuring a fourteen-year-old American girl into marrying her cousin. It should perhaps be noted that the age of consent in Utah is fourteen, so unless the girl was subjected to undue pressure to marry her cousin, her marriage at age fourteen was legally all right.
To summarize, the custom of marrying off thirteen- to fourteen-year-old girls has been commonplace all over the world. Clearly the fact that girls of that age are physically ready to become mothers has led many societies to conclude that girls therefore ought to be married off at that age. And rarely has there been a public outcry at such practices at home or abroad. In short, the idea of girls becoming pregnant at the age of thirteen or fourteen is not in and of itself catastrophic. So where, then, lies the problem?
Some years ago, I saw a documentary about something that had happened at a strict Catholic school for girls in Ireland. One of the girls at this school, undoubtedly a somewhat rebellious girl - you know, the kind of girl who starts smoking before anyone else does and who breaks various rules - became pregnant. I got the impression that she was about fifteen or sixteen.
For all her rebelliousness, pregnancy was more than this girl had bargained for. She didn't know how to deal with her situation. She started wearing big and bulky clothes that hid her figure, and apparently the nuns, who were the teacers at this school, didn't notice anything suspicious. (A few of the nuns were interviewed in the documentary; they came off as frighteningly rigid and stiff.)
In December the girl realized that it would soon be time for her to give birth. She became increasingly desperate. Apparently she didn't feel that she could go to her parents for help. For all her rebelliousness she was still a Catholic, and she clung to the hope that the Virgin Mary could somehow help her. She started sneaking out to a nearby churchyard where there was a statue of the Virgin, where the girl would come to pray.
Shortly before Christmas, the girl went to the churchyard again. When she was there her waters broke and she was suddenly in labour.
The girl was found the next day, which may or may not have been Christmas Day. She was lying in the blood-stained snow on the ground in front of the Virgin Mary statue. Her little boy lay in the snow beside her, the umbilical cord uncut. Both the young mother and her newborn son were dead. In their own way, this young girl and her little son were a modern version of Mary and her Child. But there was no place for them in the inn, and neither, so the girl must have felt, in her school nor in her parents' home, not even in a manger in a stable. So the girl gave birth in the snow in the churchyard, and she and her son died.
We can say that it was the girl's own fault that she and her son died. And of course it was, to a certain extent. It was her own fault that she became pregnant, and it was her own choice not to tell an adult about her situation. If she had told her parents, or if she had told the nuns at school, they would have helped her. They would have been required to help her, and they would have done it, too. But when I saw the harshness and the lack of generosity and tolerance in the faces of the nuns, at least as they were portrayed in the documentary, I don't blame the girl for not daring to confess her pregnancy to the nuns.
When I was a young teacher in the early eighties, I had a colleague who was born around 1940. Around 1955, when she was fifteen, she became pregnant. When this was discovered, she was immediately forced to leave school. Not only that, but she was forced to leave her own home, her family and her friends and her own hometown, and she was placed in an institution for misbehaving girls. Here she had to stay until she gave birth. Immediately afterwards the baby was taken away from her. She was not allowed to see her child, and she wasn't even told if it was a boy or a girl. The baby was given away for adoption, and it didn't matter whether she, its sixteen-year-old mother, wanted this to happen or not.
When this girl came home again she was confused and lost. She could not go back to school, because she had lost a year of schooling and her parents no longer wanted to pay for her education, since they didn't feel she deserved it any more. Her "nice" friends didn't want to see her. She had to take a string of unqualified jobs, and she became friends with a rougher crowd, so that she started drinking too much. After more than ten years she managed to get back to school and finish her education, and finally she became a teacher. But when I met her, she was bitter. She felt that her youth had been taken away from her. But wasn't that her own fault? Yes, it was her own fault that she became pregnant, of course. But was it her own fault that she was sent away from home? That her former friends didn't want to see her anymore? That her parents didn't want to pay for her education? That she met so much condemnation from society?
That is what things were like in Sweden in the mid-fifties. Today things are very different. One of my own students is an eighteen-year-old girl with a two-year-old son. Unlike my colleague, this girl has met support and understanding from the surrounding society. She most certainly wasn't sent away from home. She was allowed to stay in school for as long as she had the energy for her classes during her pregnancy. After she had given birth, she stayed at home for a year, nursing and taking care of her son. After that, she returned to school. Her little son was placed in daycare. The social services helped her to get an apartment where she could move in with her son and her boyfriend, the father of her son. She was not able to get married, because Swedish law forbids marriage for anyone who is not yet eighteen years old.
Folks, you should see this girl! She is so conscientious, and she is a model student, even though she isn't gifted or bright. She is so mature and responsible. She dresses simply and unassumingly, but not ugly. When she is with her little boy, she is positively glowing. I kid you not if I tell you that there is something about this girl which reminds me, at least, of a young, innocent, mature, brave, loving and lovely Virgin Mary. It's the girl's own good qualities that have made her such a good mother and such a good student, of course. But, darn it, it is the fact that the surrounding society has given her support and not condemnation that has made it possible for her to live a happy life with her little family.
So I think it is imperative that we, the rest of us, support the teenaged mothers instead of condemning them. If their lives go to heck after we have made them feel that they are no better than irresponsible sluts, then we shouldn't put the blame squarely on the girls if things go as badly for them as we had predicted.
Ann
P.S. When I say that "we" should support the teenaged mothers, I'm not implying that the members of these boards are an intolerant lot. When I say "we", I mean the surrounding society, or everyone who meets these girls.