You might assume this story is about teen pregnancy, but the Associated Press and I think it is much larger than that. The basics are that as many as 18 teenage girls in the small Cape Ann town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, decided to become pregnant simultaneously. The story became national news recently when the administrators of Gloucester High School announced that they had discovered a 'pact' among these girls. Their stated reasoning was that they wanted to raise their babies together. Tragically, none of them are over 16 and most are under.Of course, the top-reported commentary seemed to come immediately from the religious right. One Reverend bemoaned the absence of 'shame' among these girls and talked about how girls go around half-naked, etc. It always amazes me that the right never talks about the 'irresponsible fathers'. In fact, there has been little said about the sexual partners of these girls, most of whom are not in high school and as old as 24, including one homeless man.
Neither the men nor the girls have been publicly identified. Obviously some of these pregnancies are bound to fall under the caption of 'statuatory' rape, as the majority of the girls were too young to legally consent to any sexual intercourse. http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-pregnancy-pact,0,7055439.story
So the question remains, how the hell did this happen?
We all understand adolescent sexuality which includes mindless passion, lack of impulse control and an immature frontal lobe. Hence a certain number of young girls will become pregnant, although let's face it. This doesn't happen in a vacuum and they don't do it by themselves.
Gloucester High School has a large student body of about 1600 students and generally provides services to four teenage moms a year who do not opt for either the abortion or adoption alternatives. http://www3.sympatico.ca/gloucester.hs/schoolprofile/
The administrators and medical staff became very concerned when the number of pregnant girls had reached ten. Two members of the health team at the high school who wanted to give the students contraception options on campus were frustrated by the local hospital, Addison Gilbert. The only hospital in Gloucester, it manages the funds for the contraception program and balked at providing the contraception without parental consent. The two health team members quit in protest, obviously fearing a sort of epidemic was underway. Then the number climbed to seventeen and has now been upped by the Gloucester Daily Times to actually be eighteen.
For those of you without teenagers in your life, this may not be of interest to you. However, for me, a graduate of Gloucester High School and a resident in Gloucester for eleven years while growing up... this is a shocker. The Associated Press picked up a local news item on Boston's WBZ-TV and it has set the talk shows buzzing.
Statistically speaking, any combination of low education and teenage motherhood results in a much greater risk of the family ending up living below the poverty line. Using a little social engineering, Gloucester High elected to try to prevent this syndrome and has been operating a free on-site, day care for students' babies. The assistance is given so that these girls will not drop out but obtain their high school diploma. It has been a very successful program and historically many girls with babies now graduate, some even going on to attend college.
When the girls currently pregnant were later interviewed by school officials, however, it was discovered that the majority viewed the daycare as an additional incentive.
So what effect has popular culture had? According to Perez Hilton, a blogger, social acceptance of single parenthood is the villain along with the movie, Juno, which doesn't show enough suffering when the protagonist becomes pregnant and then later gives her child to an older single woman. However, when Juno tells her father, he asks how it happened. Duh. Eventually he remarks, "I thought you were smarter than that," or cutting, inept words to that effect.
Society has changed. Several of my professional business associates who hadn't manage to snag a man before their clock stopped are single mothers by choice. Other family members and friends have also remained single for years after the births of their children. Angelina (need I write her last name) did not need to be married to adopt or birth children, and she has been lauded for her anti-marriage stance. What is it? She will not get married until there is equality between men and women in our society. (From what I understand with the twins in utero, she may change her mind on this in the near future, but who am I to judge?)
By the way, the latest statistics available for the year 2006 revealed that 50.4% of women under the age of thirty who gave birth in our country were unmarried. This is the greatest number of single moms in our recorded history, and it is also the first time they became the majority. For now I will leave interpretations of this up to others, but helps explain why these girls were comfortable.
So we adults (who have learned only too well how to control our impulses... she said facetiously) can now ask, what they hell were these girls thinking? Unfortunately, they were thinking or this might never have happened. The health nurse began to suspect something was wrong when girls who came in for a pregnancy test were happier when they were pregnant than when they were not. I was a teenage girl once, and I can tell you that was not normal behavior then or now.
It must have all looked so easy. Bring the baby to school, let somebody else take care of it, and then bring the baby home and let Mom (and/or possibly Dad, if there is one in the household) take care of the kid. Candidly? It doesn't sound like a bad plan. I certainly wanted someone to help me with my two kids right up until they were in college. It would also have been nice to receive some welfare money, as I didn't have any spending money when I was a kid either.
Yes, I was playing the Devil's Advocate for a minute, but that will be some's viewpoint. That these are lazy, little bimbos who want it easy. They want somebody else to raise their kid for them at home. They think their parents will be agreeable to helping them and won't get angry. They foresee going to the park en mass with all their high school buddies, everybody's baby having guaranteed friends and a sort of hip, extended family.
And that is the real key here I think. These girls are lost. They feel alone and undocked and are not feeling loved or valued at home or in society. Their naive solution was to create their own extended family; a little gang of lost souls who decide they can all live happily ever after, in some sort of communal connection. Girls 13, 14, 15 and 16 are not women, but these girls have certainly pointed out how difficult it is for some females in our society to feel they belong to something.
We Americans have a lot of work to do on our families. We have to find ways to avoid divorce (the easiest way to produce drifting, unsupervised children), find ways to involve and inspire our children to believe in their own futures, find ways to convince men that they have to step up and father their children, and find ways to help young women achieve their full potential. Unfortunately, we cannot forget that these girls are desperately seeking love. Obviously these impressionable and impulsive 18 girls did not find it at home, school, or in the community of Gloucester.
This was a desperate choice and it highlights the need to come up with some real solutions before another group of girls does something just as destructive. After all, it is not just the girls who will suffer. Their children will have emotional, impulsive, immature mothers and potentially lack any contact with their fathers. I cannot think of a sadder scenario for those innocent little babies.
Of course, what is done is done. We all wish these young women and their babies well. Good luck, Gloucester. You are going to need it.
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Comments: 94
It's not only the girls that will suffer. It's the boys that got them knocked up (if they go through with it) who will have to pay child support and if they're older, there's a chance that law enforcement could be involved (statutory rape).
I must have missed the discussion yesterday, Richard, as I was actually working ... rather than Gathering.:) I'll have to see if I can find it.
PPSS I LOVE Gloucester!
Oh, and I am not talking 'problem kids' here. I am talking all kids.
But you are right. The men who fathered these babies? I hope they go to jail too. Anyone evil enough to bed a child deserves whatever they get in prison.
For example, according to Newsweek, Belmont High School ranked about 180th of the nation's nigh schools and Lexington was in the 400s, in top academic achievement. I know for a fact that Belmont has teen mothers every single year. Yes, Belmont is considering a day care center.
The problem is ages old and has to deal with many family issues.
Your article is Featured in the Triple Name Club.
Kathryn, the 18 number came from an article in the Gloucester Daily Times today that had raised the number by one. Thank you for the feature!
Our society has become a slave of economic forces...
The Gloucester pack is now the subject of a lot of discussion in Europe. It was the feature discussion on UK television this morning.
I'm a single mom who worked and raised my kids. They were home by themselves a lot, but they had direction and attention the minute I walked in the door. No friends, chores and homework to do and all checked when I got home and an expectation that they would use the lessons I taught them about personal responsibility and consequences for their behavior.
I honestly don't feel like a lot of parents put much thought into real world guidance for their kids.
Many teenage moms do well with one child and do not end up in poverty; however, two children as a teen seems to correlate with getting stuck at the bottom of the ladder for life. Intervention can certainly play a useful role in helping these girls grow up and prosper.
Gloucester's teen pregnancy issue is unique only in that it seems to be the first one that incorporated a 'pact' approach. Where there are boys and girls there will always be unplanned babies, but we are obviously failing to properly inform and educate our boys as well. As Kerrell said, this doesn't just affect the girls or the babies. It ruins many young men's lives as well.
Now the problem is planned teenage pregnancies. The reality is most aren't equipped financially or emotionally and can't afford a full time nanny to pass the baby to when they're tired. This trend will further damage the breakdown of values in society. Not values about sex . . . but the importance of healthy families to support children . . . the importance of fathers, particularly to boys . . . the importance of getting to know yourself (and to get your life started on sound feet) before the significant impact of adding a child to it.
Nothing good can come from this.
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
Sharon, obviously you made the best of everything, but I would also imagine that you do that in every aspect of your life. From what you've said about your kids, they are great people. Although I was not a single mom, my husband traveled extensively for the first 14 years the kids were alive, often being gone for two or three weeks out of the month. That was incredibly HARD on all of us. I worked, but I had a home office, so I was fortunate. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be alone, work away from the home, manage the finances and have the kids to raise. Yikes, my hair is falling out just thinking about it. Then if I imagine I am 13!
I had my first baby in my twenties. I don't think either parent is prepared for the actual responsibility. She was five days old when I thought, "Good God... if I can't watch her I have to find someone who can." It was like having a third leg that didn't do anything but lie there.
We may be hormonally primed for all of it, but it is no longer reflex. Life is too complex and society is too burdened with other things.
My suspicious mind thinks that an older man or even woman somehow managed to influence these girls and that many of them may be pregnant by the same person. Who knows if I am right, but someone very powerful and manipulative - maybe even a teenage girl already pregnant who didn't want to go through the 'disgrace' by herself - came up with this. It is the Gloucester equivalent of a 'clique', aka 'gang'.
Unfortunately, the girls do not have the maturity to see the consequences of their actions.
Grems, you are so correct. The school this year was only set up for a limited number of children, and now they are over-whelmed. In a time when funds are stressed to the max and people are not voting in school bonds and revenues are down, this becomes even more crucial.
Good day care for infants where I live can run from $1000 to $1500 a month. How would a 13-year-old pay for this when most two parent earners have a tough time? As you point out, Grems, these girls do not have the maturity to capably evaluate the consequences.
Even with supplements from the government, caring for children with special needs is expensive and negotiating the path to recieve those benefits is difficult.
This is merely the tip of the iceburg. Unfortunately, the ship has sailed and likely to crash. I wonder where the young women will be in ten years and their children.
First, it's common and functional for poor teenagers to give birth. IF they wait they often aren't healthy enough to bear healthy children. Traditionally the girls had children and their parents raised them; these girls must have lacked parental support or thought they have a better chance to get ahead by working together.
Second, this society provides one and only one route out of a bad family situation to teenaged girls - having and bearing children, and marrying if they are old enough. Make it easier for teenangers to leave home, and I think we'll see more constructive decisions.
Third, in teenagers who lack middle class routes to success adn upward mobility, a pact by a sizeable group of girls to have and raise children together is the path to career success and upward mobility. It took considerable creativity and intelligence to put together this plan. If they planned this as a means to escape from impossible home situations and unpromising futures, they should outright be congratulated. If they haven it together enough to stick with it and work together, they can manage to care for their children, attend school and train for jobs,a nd support themselves and their children. I'm not saying they necessarily will do that, but they could do all of that if they want to.
Girls with the means and parental encouragement to go to college ordinarily wouldn't do such a thing because for them following the straight and narrow is the path to success.
So let's not jump on them with all ten Puritan feet without even knowing them.
I'm also annoyed at the talk about one of the fathers being a 24 year old homeless man. "Homeless" is a big category of people, and anything could be true of this man and of that relationship.
That said, I think the greater detail on the 'homeless' thing was related to the one (or more) of the girls who it was rumored had 'picked up a homeless man' to father her child. Of course, this story gets more and more exaggerated each time one of us retells it, even though it has plenty of impact all on its own.
Everyone has a sixth subjective sense called INtuition, it is a direct connection to our own spiritual Soul and thus to God (and God's Love) ... but our religions and the rest of "normal" society calls that the animal nature, something bordering on evil and not to be trusted ... thus it is mostly rejected in favour of the 5 physical senses ... objectivity is always said to have value and subjectivity not.
Is it any wonder that people grow up such a mess mentally and physically ? They really have no personal value system without a sense of self-confidence that in truth can only come from withIN, by knowing their own Self, that being the Soul Self that transcends the lower self of ego ...
This whole society has pretty much become the Blind leading the blind ... from the top down for wealth and control ... the rest just out of ignorance ... We can gain all the knowledge possible, but with-out the wisdom that comes from a spiritual source, we have gained relatively nothing.
IMnsHO.
The only good thing about this is that it does not represent the national trend in the USA for teens. In recent years there has been a decline in the number of teen pregnancies, partly from less intercourse and partly from more willingness to accept the responsibility of contraception that accompanies acting like an adult in terms of sexuality. There has been a tremendous amount of argumentation between the contraception people and the abstinence people, and I personally feel that more progress is attributable to contraception (or at least communicating the concept that sex without contraception is unacceptable- which is just as good as teaching contraception) than is attributable to abstinence education. In fact, i suspect that some of the teen pregnancies are attributable to girls who take an abstinence pledge and therefore have no condoms within reach when they change mind in heat of passion. I realize that will be hotly denied by some.
Of course there will be instances of teens acting out irrationally like the Gloucester group. But I think that most girls will behave very rationally if parented in a positive, caring, and non-distant way. Some of us just fell off the horse. The rest of us need to climb back on and ride a bit better.
I wonder if they are missing something in their lives that they needed to do th this?
Did they think having a baby would be one big play date?
I wish these kids the best though,
Donald, I think you have gotten spirituality and religion confused.
The Taliban is a "government" of religion. There are hundreds of cults and religions built around the same words from the Old Testament. Salem tortured to death some good people due to a similar fanaticism.
So who's religion do you suggest, Donald?
Or would it not be better to do as Sharon and others here have suggested, and care better for our children, so they can have freer lives as adults? Would that not be the thing which Christ would suggest that people do were he walking among us today?
And, the scarcity of info about the fathers is no surprise; in my day, girls "got themselves pregnant" on a regular basis. The feminists' early insistance that men were pretty much a waste of oxygen exacerbated this.
This particular pact is another example of young people's insistance upon permanent solutions to temporary problems.
The therapist in me cringes at words such as these. "... young people's insistence upon permanent solutions..."
A child's mind is not emotionally or cognitively wired together until one is early in her twenties. A human child needs more parental nurturing than any other living thing on this planet. Deprive a child of that in any way, and you'll get a lot of problems.
I hope the best for them and the children they end of bearing. It's so sad.
The really alarming thing is that apparently a substantial number of the 18 actually discussed the possibility among themselves and decided as a group that they should each get pregnant! It is obvious to me that there were very strange group dynamics at work, but I cannot fathom what they were.
To begin with the number involved in the group seems abnormally large to simply have been the kind of close- knit clique where girls feel free to discuss such matters among themselves,
It also seems to me that such large a group should have included some girts who decided not to go along with the crowd. If it didn't include such girls, I wonder why it didn't include them? If it did include them, why did they remain silent and let so many of their friends engage in such a huge mistake? Lastly, if even one of them chose not to remain silent and revealed this to someone outside the group, why did the person or persons they spoke to not come forward and do what they could to prevent this from happening?
Oh, Jennie, how I remember 'girls getting themselves knocked up' too.
Thomas and Chris W., great comments. Please pass the condoms... but make sure somebody knows how to use them properly!
Then perhaps these little girls will not assume that having a baby is the equivalent of getting a new puppy.
Also thanks for the tip, Thomas, but I disagree. There are a lot of young people who think all kinds of crazy things about their use. I remember one misinformed family member telling me that you only needed a condom the first time you had sex each day....
Thomas, I respect completely your view, as it applies to your personal life. But the problem is to then dictate one's personal view on others, such that it causes suffering.
And now I'm going out on a limb just for you by going deep into where my own personal faith resides, Thomas, and suggest categorically, based not just on that I've academically researched from the 1st few centuries AD but also understand intuitively from a lot of other indicators, that were Christ walking the earth today, he'd absolutely be personally handing out condoms in Africa, India etc.... and America.
Our school districts in our area hold child care classes and school in a seperate building to discurage teen pregnacy.
Thank you for taking the time to post to the group,
Kids....kids.....kids.....anything to do with kids...
Sadly, and on a more serious note, these girls are not just pregnant. Their futures are totally messed up. If it was all peer pressure - this thought makes me even sicker the more I think about it - what a price to pay for an under-developed or broken spirit.
I cam here from an article in one of your local papers, triggered by one of my Gather 'googlebots'.
http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2008/jun/23/pregnancy-pact-girls-should-blame-themselves-mostl/?opinion
I found a different article than I expected. Thankfully.
In a society where women are DRIVEN to be in control sexually as well as in other ways, where the ACT of controlling is seen to be as a positive good, and where there simply are no legal or social repercussions for this kind of blank stupidity, this is not surprising.
As usual, it will be the children who will suffer, just like EVERY child USED to achieve a mother's goal.
Your comment, "It will be the children who will suffer, just like EVERY child USED to achieve a mother's goal", is quite profound. I couldn't agree more.
Your readers have offered many good suggestions for handling occurences like this one in the future and some of the speculation may shed light on how to prevent this type of pact from materalizing in other parts of the country.
I lift you the mothers, fathers, and the sons and daughters, grandmothers and grandfathers who are all tied to this pact until the end of time.
Very good article, Elizabeth!
What they have done should be a frightening wake-up call for a lot of families. Children need structure, encouragement and parenting far beyond the first days of school. Their family should be the center of their lives, and without that, it is likely they will find something to fill that gap.
Who ever said that the parents should be responsible ... can say I can agree with that really. Should the parents have been working with these kids. Most definatly but it seems to me that teens today think that everyone is supposed to fix their mistakes for them. This is neither good parenting nor sound judgment. We would have alot less problems in this country if children were taught to take responsiblity for what they do.
If this all a figment of the High School Principal's imagination; something he created to ? If so, he should write for a living, as I see a screenplay in his future.
For the purposes of this post, another journalist criticized my comment about wanting to see any adult men responsible for some of these pregnancies prosecuted under statutory rape laws. I should have pointed out that I am not including random teenage boyfriends in this category, who have the same impulse problems the girls have. As the majority of the girls were 13, 14, and 15 and none over 16 (generally considered the age of consent), I personally found the thought of 13 year olds pretty upsetting. Girls that age can experience life-threatening complications for them and their babies.
Terri
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It just doesnt seem right that the unready conceive so easily, while responsible, mature married couples often are unable to have children.
Part of me says intrinsically this is wrong, but another part chastises me immediately for passing judgment on these girls, their parent(s), and their future children. Dorine, who is to say the babies will not grow up well and be taught good values? Who is to say these young women are not misguided or that they are? It is all a matter of opinion, and one or another of us must be wrong, and perhaps all of us.
It is easy to pass judgment on one another. But it is very difficult to step back from our natural instinct to judge others. It is very difficult if not impossible, to let go of our strong opinions and look at a situation without prejudices, fears, and biases get in the way of a clear view. I am not accusing anyone here of anything. But I do hope that whatever happens, it shall be for the best. :)
18 oops? I think not. They will come to regret this one day when it is much too late.
Great article.
I recall secret tales being told at slumber parties (in the basement of my church; with all the girls in my confirmation class!). Sooner or later, the topic of "going all the way" with our boyfriends and having a baby seemed like a fast and easy way to wiggle out from under our parents thumbs. It seemed so grown up, independent, in control. We talked about being married couples, living on the same street, our children going to school together, and on and on and on and on.
One of us actually did it. A mother at 15 with a (reluctant) husband that was 19. The pregnancy was an "accident"...or was it? Actually, several of the girls in my confirmation class "had to get married", one of them forfeited her baby to adoption. None of them realized the fantasy of escaping their parents by way of getting pregnant as a teen. All of us learned a life-lasting lesson.
So will these young women.
So let's look at the society they grew up in. We have divorce rates that are just out of control - many families lacking a father figure (and of those families that have the father still attached.. probably working his butt off trying to make a living to keep the family going... and often with the mother as well). We have public schools raising our children - and the education they get is awful. The students who learn in high schools are treated like big children! What do I mean by this? I mean to say that the students are not given the opportunity to feel as though they have responsibility (i.e. saying the word "fuck" in the classroom for a teacher is "tee-heed" and "haw-hawed," but the student turns right around and says it a gazillion times a sentence?). Who cares about a little swearing in class? Who cares if controversial topics become discussed in class? "How are we to raise our children with good morals and values?" is the main question you hear when education comes up on the agenda.
Well first off, you can start by allowing these children to USE their brains and not brainwash them. Teenagers are not stupid - they have some conceptual grasp on what the world is like - they see it through their parents. Although they are not EXPERIENCING adulthood, they think they know what it's like well enough to make a decision such as starting to raise their offspring on the grounds of their high school. They see the opportunity, might as well take it right?
It's also been noted that these students live in a very poor area of MA... they probably are not seeing the better opportunities because of this (i.e. college opportunities, happy families, etc.) Is it fair to judge them based on their situations?
These girls obviously have a low understanding of what parenthood is like... but what first-time parent ever DOES have a good grasp on what they're getting themselves into? I speak from experience that before I ever had kids I was a bit naive despite how old I was.
I'm very thankful that my high school had the opportunity for me to go to college starting in my junior year - and EXTREMELY grateful. I HATED that scrutinizing eye that just plagues you in high school (i.e. the faculty and staff). I needed the freedom to explore my own boundaries and strengths... I needed to be challenged and debated with. I wanted my education to count for something in my mind - not be another grade. Even a lot of college students now feel that all they're doing is getting a silly sheet of paper to "move onto the next level."
If you go back in history to when our forefathers started the realms of public education, it was with the intent that it would be people coming together to understand the value and up the well-being of life... how do we communicate better? How do we feel about living? How do we learn about the stuff around us? How do we make this or that better? All this can be explained through the subjects of English, math, science, (and the list goes on!). Music and art is no exception to this rule either! How dare we belittle these girls to poor identities and low self-esteem... they knew exactly what they were doing... they just don't know how great the outcome will be (and obviously the typical talking down of the parents with "you won't understand until you're an adult" never worked either).
So seriously people, look at this through their eyes. They don't see themselves as immature and as if they haven't thought this through. They've most likely gotten past the first two years of their child's life with daycare services and such. Heck, they might even get to have the kind of fun with their girlfriends and their children together if they do this correctly. Does that mean that you should take the daycare services out of high school... I certainly hope not... why punish them for societies naivity? Society put the daycare service in the high school - who cares what it was like in the past?
Our roles as man and woman - husband and wife - father and mother - etc etc... change all the time. Unfortunately, they are not changing in a way that is exceptible to those who have a big voice or who have followed convention. Convention is not really conventional anymore - it's more of a goal! :)
So I speak now of this because I was a mother at 18 (I found out only a couple weeks before my senior year in high school and sophomore year in college) - but I finished (without daycare) and graduated with my class of 2002 from high school and with my Associates Degree the day before that! My argument is - challenge these kids... let them learn and give them REAL topics to discuss. Hold them to college standards! Let them go off campus without having to ask permission always. If they want money or a car, make them get a job. Let them know about sex and STDs and how to protect themselves. Give them realistic views of what parenthood is like! Don't make them carry around these stupid dolls - they don't take them seriously. Let them see what REAL parenthood is like by having them be housed in a home with children... and please... STOP taking these kids for granted. They understand only what we allow them to... stop harnessing them and let them find their feet!
I would almost go so far as to argue that they should be allowed to become adults at 16 now simply because of the constant struggle between parent and teen. And if you're going to argue "in the name of science," then also remember that science has gotten it wrong quite a bit too (need I mention cigarettes, red wine, female sexuality, or even gay issues???)!
Shaina K., many people throughout history have been born to teenage mothers and managed to become successful members of society. On the other hand, it is a well-known statistic that teen parents are often abusive to their children as they lack sufficient self-control over their emotions to withstand the demands of parenthood.
Of course, there are lots of young women who are wonderful mothers, nurturing, kind, etc., but there is heavier risk associated with the age group. That's just the truth.