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Kids Having Kids Is Now So Normal

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 29, 2008

When I attended my 40-year high school class reunion last year, topics of discussion dealt with how much things had changed in those four decades, which is to be expected from a bunch of 50-somethings. That night we really put the "old" in "old school."

A significant change was highlighted by one of my classmates who had just retired from teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. She noted that many high schools in the city now had onsite day care - for the children of students, not teachers.

When we were going to school in the 1960s, very few girls got pregnant. We could only recall a handful.

More important, back then families, communities and schools handled out-of-wedlock pregnancies quite differently and, dare I say, more effectively. It was done by means of powerful social taboos. For those who violated them, it meant giving up a child for adoption or a "shotgun marriage." Occasionally, it meant having an abortion, which was illegal at the time.

Don't Blame The Schools

But times have changed, and nowhere is it better illustrated than in a recent Time magazine story about a "pregnancy pact" made by a group of girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts. According to the article, as far back as October "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, according to the principal, on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant then when they were."

Since this story went national, most of the focus has been on the school and what they should have done to prevent this, it needs to be put in perspective.

First of all, the Gloucester "pregnancy boom," as Time headlined it, only involves 17 girls out of a school of 1,200 students. While those numbers would have been scandalous back in the day, I know many a local principal who would be happy with them.

But it shouldn't be the responsibility of schools to prevent unwed teenage pregnancies. That's the job of families, churches and communities. Yet our schools are charged with being all of these institutions, which is unfair.

Stigma Is Long Gone

I'm amazed at how so many teens, despite all their street smarts, can be so ignorant when it comes to birth control and the struggles single parents face. I'm also stunned at how the stigma once attached to unwed parenthood has all but disappeared.

As one local teacher recently wrote:

"As a high school teacher, I am terrified when I see my students taking on this huge life-changing decision way before they are ready. ... I would encourage parents to get involved and stay involved. Parents dare not leave this decision to the schools, strangers and kids. A 15-year-old kid is not the best mother for a child. And, being a parent at 15 is not the best thing for a child."

Or as one Gloucester girl who gave birth her freshman year told Time about how pregnant schoolmates told her how lucky she was to have a baby, "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally. I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."

And that's a better lesson than any teacher could give.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune editorial writer.

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