Pregnancy Boom at Local High School

[almaty 19]

more like hornry girls? all 16 or younger..

[zqt3344 21]

more like hornry girls? all 16 or younger..

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Update

No pregnancy pact, says US mayor

A US town mayor says there is "no evidence" to support claims that 17 Massachusetts schoolgirls became pregnant because of a "pregnancy pact".

When details first emerged of the high rate of pregnancies at Gloucester High School, the school's principal had speculated that the girls had a pact.

The number of pregnancies at the school has quadrupled since last year.

But Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk said the spike in pregnancies was comparable to increases in other cities.

"Any planned blood-oath bond to become pregnant - there is absolutely no evidence of," she said.

Memory failure

Ms Kirk said she had asked Gloucester High School's principal about his comments and he had been "foggy in his memory" about how he had come to believe there had been a pregnancy pact at the school.

"When pressed, his memory failed," she said.

The news of the Gloucester pregnancy cluster comes as statistics suggest that teenage pregnancy rates are increasing throughout the US.

Birth rates for girls aged 15 to 17 rose by 3% in 2006, the first increase since 1991, according to preliminary data released in December by the National Center for Health Statistics.

David Landry, a researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based non-profit group focusing on reproductive issues, said the declining teenage pregnancy rate of recent years appeared to be reversing.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Mistakes happens with memory.

[DeadPoolX 9]

Teenage pregnancy is a negative - I would imagine most girls learn that the hard way.

True. However, it would nice if less women had to learn "the hard way," wouldn't you say? It'd be better for them, their families and their children.

Now then... seeing as how our current method of handling things isn't working (and in fact, only making the situation worse in some cases), I'd say turning teenage pregnancy into a negative would actually be a good thing. When people schools actively congratulate and celebrate a 15 year-old's pregnancy, I'd say something has gone awry. Your opinion may differ.

Congratulating and celebrating is entirely different from providing support so girls can stay in school. Yes, the ideal is to educate kids not only on the "where babies come from", but also about STDs, contraception AND the responsibilities of child-rearing. Shaming girls, once the deed has been done, is just ridiculous. That IS going back to a time when girls were mysteriously sent off to family members to have the baby. And then the baby was raised as a sibling...

I'm glad to see you read my original post.

In my first post, I said that I didn't agree with the age-old tradition of "sending girls off to give birth." That still doesn't mean I find the current social setting agreeable. Teenage pregnancy is not something to condone. This isn't even a purely moral issue -- it's a health (physiological and psychological), financial, and educational problem as well. Teenage mothers had greater problems in all of those areas and those issues trickle down to the child or children.

I agree that excessive shaming "after the fact" probably won't do very much (more should be done to prevent the pregnancy ahead of time), but a mistake like that shouldn't be immediately forgiven either. When I was in high school, I vividly remember the teachers actively congratulating the pregnant students, while making "small talk" with them, such as asking "when you are due" and "do you know the sex of the child yet?"

While that sounds nice and friendly, it's also ridiculous -- at least on school grounds. Educators aren't there to be your friends; they are there to teach and they certainly shouldn't be encouraging teenage pregnancy (which they are by those actions, since other teenage girls see and hear it).

I don't know, I see DPX's point. I don't think he's talking about stoning, just addressing the issue of why would this group of girls want to make a pregnancy pact. What happened in this community to reverse the typical image of teen pregnancy? That needs to be fixed.

But I also tend to agree with what Julie said before about this being a unique case. I have a hard time believing that most teenage girls do not already view pregnancy and motherhood as something that is not good for their life right now.

These teen role models are not helping though...Jamie Lynne Spears anyone?

Thank you, Jenn. That's what I'm getting at.

I agree in that it's unique....

Also, about the "shaming" bit, how exactly does that help an innocent baby that did nothing but be born to a mother who is too young. Don't you think the shame would carry on to them?

I'm hardly suggesting a "scarlet letter" or any such nonsense. The main point, perhaps, of shaming someone who has made such a mistake is to make them an example to others. I realize that sounds cruel, but without examples like that (where many teens have the erroneous belief that birthing a kid will bring you adoring attention from your loving child, peers, family and everyone in the community), they may not stop to think of the consequences.

We do, but we're not teenagers. Teens, by and large, do not think ahead -- they react and are, by all accounts, quite hedonistic. Having children doesn't sound too pleasurable to me, but many people have a mistaken idea of what it is to be a parent. Teens seem to forget that being a parent is a 24/7 job and that means all the "fun stuff" you used to do before children takes a back seat, at least while the kid is young. What usually occurs is the teen doesn't like this and so she foists the kid off on "grandpa and grandma" while she goes off partying.

I am not sure who is 'congratulating' these teens, except the group themselves. Society doesn't 'congratulate' teen pregnancy, it has learned to accept it and I don't know anyone who would suggest teen pregnancy is some kind of career option. Creating an atmosphere of 'shame' can only lead to marginalization. It's not really possible to have 'shame' in a vacuum. What would be positive would be to educate these kids in the entire implications and realities of their pregnancy and motherhood because surely they have some very glamourized image of what it will be like? However, that is down to their parents at this time.

As I said before, I've been witness to many teachers congratulating pregnant 15-to-17 year-old girls in the halls of my high school and that was somewhere around a decade ago. Whether or not teenage pregnancy has gone up or down, I can't say for certain (that probably depends on what area of the country you're looking at), but the point is that what should very clearly be a negative isn't often perceived and expressed that way to very impressionable young women.

[Sister Fracas 5]

Teenage pregnancy is a negative - I would imagine most girls learn that the hard way.

True. However, it would nice if less women had to learn "the hard way," wouldn't you say? It'd be better for them, their families and their children.

Now then... seeing as how our current method of handling things isn't working (and in fact, only making the situation worse in some cases), I'd say turning teenage pregnancy into a negative would actually be a good thing. When people schools actively congratulate and celebrate a 15 year-old's pregnancy, I'd say something has gone awry. Your opinion may differ.

Congratulating and celebrating is entirely different from providing support so girls can stay in school. Yes, the ideal is to educate kids not only on the "where babies come from", but also about STDs, contraception AND the responsibilities of child-rearing. Shaming girls, once the deed has been done, is just ridiculous. That IS going back to a time when girls were mysteriously sent off to family members to have the baby. And then the baby was raised as a sibling...

I'm glad to see you read my original post.

In my first post, I said that I didn't agree with the age-old tradition of "sending girls off to give birth." That still doesn't mean I find the current social setting agreeable. Teenage pregnancy is not something to condone. This isn't even a purely moral issue -- it's a health (physiological and psychological), financial, and educational problem as well. Teenage mothers had greater problems in all of those areas and those issues trickle down to the child or children.

I agree that excessive shaming "after the fact" probably won't do very much (more should be done to prevent the pregnancy ahead of time), but a mistake like that shouldn't be immediately forgiven either. When I was in high school, I vividly remember the teachers actively congratulating the pregnant students, while making "small talk" with them, such as asking "when you are due" and "do you know the sex of the child yet?"

While that sounds nice and friendly, it's also ridiculous -- at least on school grounds. Educators aren't there to be your friends; they are there to teach and they certainly shouldn't be encouraging teenage pregnancy (which they are by those actions, since other teenage girls see and hear it).

I don't know, I see DPX's point. I don't think he's talking about stoning, just addressing the issue of why would this group of girls want to make a pregnancy pact. What happened in this community to reverse the typical image of teen pregnancy? That needs to be fixed.

But I also tend to agree with what Julie said before about this being a unique case. I have a hard time believing that most teenage girls do not already view pregnancy and motherhood as something that is not good for their life right now.

These teen role models are not helping though...Jamie Lynne Spears anyone?

Thank you, Jenn. That's what I'm getting at.

I agree in that it's unique....

Also, about the "shaming" bit, how exactly does that help an innocent baby that did nothing but be born to a mother who is too young. Don't you think the shame would carry on to them?

I'm hardly suggesting a "scarlet letter" or any such nonsense. The main point, perhaps, of shaming someone who has made such a mistake is to make them an example to others. I realize that sounds cruel, but without examples like that (where many teens have the erroneous belief that birthing a kid will bring you adoring attention from your loving child, peers, family and everyone in the community), they may not stop to think of the consequences.

We do, but we're not teenagers. Teens, by and large, do not think ahead -- they react and are, by all accounts, quite hedonistic. Having children doesn't sound too pleasurable to me, but many people have a mistaken idea of what it is to be a parent. Teens seem to forget that being a parent is a 24/7 job and that means all the "fun stuff" you used to do before children takes a back seat, at least while the kid is young. What usually occurs is the teen doesn't like this and so she foists the kid off on "grandpa and grandma" while she goes off partying.

I am not sure who is 'congratulating' these teens, except the group themselves. Society doesn't 'congratulate' teen pregnancy, it has learned to accept it and I don't know anyone who would suggest teen pregnancy is some kind of career option. Creating an atmosphere of 'shame' can only lead to marginalization. It's not really possible to have 'shame' in a vacuum. What would be positive would be to educate these kids in the entire implications and realities of their pregnancy and motherhood because surely they have some very glamourized image of what it will be like? However, that is down to their parents at this time.

As I said before, I've been witness to many teachers congratulating pregnant 15-to-17 year-old girls in the halls of my high school and that was somewhere around a decade ago. Whether or not teenage pregnancy has gone up or down, I can't say for certain (that probably depends on what area of the country you're looking at), but the point is that what should very clearly be a negative isn't often perceived and expressed that way to very impressionable young women.

DPX, I'm not going to go back and quote all of the points I made after the threads you quoted. I'll only say I don't think we disagree all that much.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Teenage pregnancy is a negative - I would imagine most girls learn that the hard way.

True. However, it would nice if less women had to learn "the hard way," wouldn't you say? It'd be better for them, their families and their children.

Of course - although given that the local (predominantly Catholic) community has problems with the school offering birth control - I'd say that the responsibility for that must lie with the parents...

[Peikko 1,575]

If it is indicative of a trend upwards in teen pregancy in the general population then it does need to be addressed. However, back to the point of 'shaming' to prevent unprotected sex, I just can't see that as a productive idea. Teen pregancy has to be accepted because it is a reality. However, no one here has suggested that it should be glamourized - it's a hard option and not one that anyone should undertake because it's fashionable, or on some other whim.

This has to mean that these girls are missing something in terms of edcuation; on what it means to be pregnant and a mother, on what careeer options are available to them and how they view themselves and their potential.

That's not to say that girls should not look forward to being mothers, but that being a mother is not a career option. You need financial stability and a caring, supportive relationship to bring up children. For some reason they don't understand this and they need to be taught it, not scared or bullied into simply not having sex.