Yesterday was the joyous day that the world welcomed the birth of the newest member of the Spears family (born to 17-year old Jamie Lynn Spears) but just one day earlier, Time magazine published a news report on a shocking discovery at a Massachusetts high school in Glouchester. According to the Time report, a group of girls at Gloucester High School entered into a “pregnancy pact” in order to try and become more popular … that is, the girls did everything they could to get pregs in order to be “cool” and “loved”. Some are blaming this mad notion on the popularity of movies like Juno and on the attention that JL Spears has enjoyed since revealing that she got pregnant late last year, but it seems to me more a matter of lax sex education:
As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there’s been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. 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 … “Families are broken,” says school superintendent Christopher Farmer. “Many of our young people are growing up directionless.” 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.” The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. “We’re proud to help the mothers stay in school,” says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center.
I have to say, I am totally shocked by this. It’s one thing to see this sort of thing in movies or to see it happen among wealthy celebrities but to consider that there are girls out there … groups of girls … who have been inspired by these sorts of things to get pregnant by any means necessary (a homeless man?!) just so that they can fit in … it is so sad. I mean, who or what is to blame? Can this sort of behavior really be blamed on extraneous influences or is it more a matter of class society? I cannot say that having babies is wrong but for children at such a young age to make this sort of decision on their own with only the support of their like-minded friends to encourage and support them seems entirely wrong … and extremely sad. Who knows if this sort of thing is happening in other parts of the country … and if so, what can be done to help educate these kids that what they are doing is wrong and very dangerous (ie. the unprotected sex with whoever just to get pregs). I’d be very interested to see if this sort of “pregnancy pact” phenomenon is more widespread … or just a localized thing. If anything, this proves that safe-sex education is of dire importance. Man … this is just so crazy.
[Photo credit: INFdaily; Source]
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