The Gloucester Women, their pregnancies, and the media analysis
Sat, 2008-06-28 00:55
#1
The Gloucester Women, their pregnancies, and the media analysis
Sat, 2008-06-28 00:55
#2
I thought this article was kind of interesting:
[url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2acad17e-4451-11dd-b151-0000779fd2ac.html]http...
quote:
Like every debate over teen pregnancy, this one is a duel of dogmas. On one side is the view that chastity is a moral absolute. The chairman of the school board has suggested prosecuting the girls’ boyfriends for statutory rape. On the other side is the view that, where birth control is available, girls forgo it only out of either ignorance or shame. This is the view of most news media and of Gloucester’s mayor, who blamed her town’s pregnancies on George W. Bush. His No Child Left Behind programme diverted to academics money that should have been spent on sex education, which is now taught only until age 15.At the risk of sounding crude, though, the parts of sex education relevant to preventing teen pregnancy can be taught in five minutes. It may flatter our self-regard to believe that the modern, western pattern of child-bearing arises from superior knowledge and sophistication, but it does not. It arises from our priorities. The Gloucester pregnancies are not about information the girls don’t have. They are about an argument the girls don’t buy. It is a fool’s errand to try to convince a girl that bearing a child is “sad” (a word used with appalling frequency in press accounts) or to argue that last year’s hit movie Juno leads girls astray by glamorising pregnancy. (Apparently glamorising sex is all right, especially if it serves some transcendent purpose such as selling shampoo, but glamorising motherhood crosses the line.)
Having a baby is not sad. The reason not to have a baby in your teens is the risk that it will spoil something in your future – maybe your family life, your career or your economic prospects. In their landmark study of unmarried mothers, Promises I Can Keep, the US sociologists, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, noted that poor women need a “reason to wait” if they are to delay having children. It had better be a good reason. Time flies, after all. Whether or not a teenager’s having a child is a misfortune, teenagers themselves may see it as a lesser misfortune than a 40-year-old’s wishing for a child she cannot have.
Amy Benfer also wrote a very interesting piece in Salon.com, which reminded me of a post Michelle made that I can't find:
[url=http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/06/27/pregnancy_pact/]http://www.s...
quote:
"There was definitely no pact," said Lindsey Oliver, a pregnant 17-year-old from Gloucester, who appeared on "Good Morning America" with her boyfriend earlier this week. "There was a group of girls already pregnant that decided they were going to help each other to finish school and raise their kids together."Is this the truth? I can't know for sure. But soon after Oliver's appearances, e-mails flew around the Salon staff among other women who were not, like me, former teenage mothers but could still see a certain wisdom in this plan. "I can attest that having close friends who happen to have children the same age as your own child is one of the things that makes being a mother, dare I say, fun," wrote one woman.
"I have thought several times about how this story resembles the plan my single urban working girlfriends and I have openly fantasized about: We'll have kids on our own but together. We can share childcare responsibilities, help each other have lives while raising kids. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it definitely struck me as a plan that didn't sound unfamiliar in another context," wrote another.
Benfer has a very pleasent pen.
*****
As an academic, most of the peopl I interact with on a frequent basis seem like they plan on having kids very kate, in their 30s, sometimes later. On the other hand, I went to a orthodox Jewish high school, and I constantly hear of weddings and babies on facebook. I don't really have an opinion... actually that's false. I kind of have thirty opinions on all this.
I wish those girls the best. I hope the support thing works out.
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
Sat, 2008-06-28 05:59
#3
500_Apples, could you [b]please [/b]change that horrible thread title? It looks like a Moral Majority version of "The Stepford Wives". If you can accommodate a thirty-first opinion, consider that you are talking about women, not "pregnancies"...
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Sat, 2008-06-28 07:04
#4
Le T
Careful Martin, if you give the impression that you disagree with him he will most likely rip your head off and waste the whole thread defending the title.
Sat, 2008-06-28 07:13
#5
Actually, I am confident that he will agree... and find a better reason to try and mess with my head.
Sat, 2008-06-28 15:39
#6
quote:
Originally posted by Le Tйlйspectateur:
[b]Careful Martin, if you give the impression that you disagree with him he will most likely rip your head off and waste the whole thread defending the title.[/b]
As usual your first contribution to a thread is a belligerent post.
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
Sat, 2008-06-28 15:42
#7
quote:
Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]Actually, I am confident that he will agree... and find a better reason to try and mess with my head.[/b]
You're right on both counts.
I agree with you here, and we'll definitely disagree on something else eventually :-)
Sat, 2008-06-28 17:08
#8
remind
This thread should be closed
Sat, 2008-06-28 17:18
#9
quote:
Originally posted by remind:
[b]This thread should be closed[/b]
Another antagonizing first post.
Sat, 2008-06-28 18:34
#10
What women? This is about teenaged girls. I don't like infantilising teens by calling them "children", but they aren't adult men or women either.
The fact remains that they are setting themselves up for a life on the dole, unless mum and dad are conscripted to be parents when they would rather have done with all that stuff. I don't think the consequences of pregnancy by young, usually alone and uneducated teens should be papered over.
Feminism does not mean advocating such retrograde things as young women seeing their destiny as baby-making machines. It means fighting for equality in the workplace and in life.
The stuff about 40-somethings with flagging fertility is beyond contempt in terms of sexism. I never wanted children and I still don't. That is no failure.
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:04
#11
That article you linked to, and want to base this thread on, sets up the discussion with offensive (and sexist undertones).
500 Apple is just trying to stir up shit here, as he often does. This thread should be shut down, or else the terms of the debate need to be changed. It's so typical of right-winger sympathizing elements to present complex issues as a dichotomy between two-narrow minded choices, and use that as a cover for why they themselves espouse what would otherwise be categorized as socially ignorant points of view.
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:09
#12
13 posts doesn't qualify you to be a moderator. If you have a problem, contact Michelle or oldgoat.
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:14
#13
quote:
Originally posted by Kevin Laddle:
[b]That article you linked to, and want to base this thread on, sets up the discussion with offensive (and sexist undertones).500 Apple is just trying to stir up shit here, as he often does. This thread should be shut down, or else the terms of the debate need to be changed. It's so typical of right-winger sympathizing elements to present complex issues as a dichotomy between two-narrow minded choices, and use that as a cover for why they themselves espouse what would otherwise be categorized as socially ignorant points of view.[/b]
That's a contrived possibility,
Or I just read up a couple articles on it, I thought it was interesting, so I posted it wondering what others think.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
***
Aside from that, I'll point out this is the third post in this thread that starts off in an antagonizing manner. There's something terribly wrong with this place lately - it's changed.
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:17
#14
quote:
Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
[b]13 posts doesn't qualify you to be a moderator. If you have a problem, contact Michelle or oldgoat.[/b]
Uh, no sir, I'm going to express my opinion thanks very much. If you have a problem, please
[url=http://voipolino.com/Chief_Wiggum.png]report it to Sargeant Igiveadamn[/url].
![http://voipolino.com/Chief_Wiggum.png]report](http://voipolino.com/Chief_Wiggum.png]report){kind=link}
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: Kevin Laddle ]
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:19
#15
quote:
Originally posted by 500_Apples:
[b]That's a contrived possibility,
Or I just read up a couple articles on it, I thought it was interesting, so I posted it wondering what others think.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
***
Aside from that, I'll point out this is the third post in this thread that starts off in an antagonizing manner. There's something terribly wrong with this place lately - it's changed.[/b]
How was I being antagonizing? I made a commentary on the articles you posted. I don't believe they can lead to any fruitful discussion, and explained why. If you disagree, then I'm all ears.
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:25
#16
remind
As i stated above this thread needs to be closed
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:28
#17
quote:
Originally posted by Kevin Laddle:
[b]How was I being antagonizing? I made a commentary on the articles you posted. I don't believe they can lead to any fruitful discussion, and explained why. If you disagree, then I'm all ears.[/b]
Maybe the two of us have a different interpretation of:
quote:
[b]500 Apple is just trying to stir up shit here, as he often does. [/b]
I would call that antagonizing.
***
Fruitful discussion?
Well let's see we have economics, social norms, class, gender, curious obsession by the mainstream media, and a few other things being elements to this story, I'm sure there are a lot of complicated and inobvious ways to look at it.
You suggested shifting the framing of a discussion, so why don't you go for it by posting another article?
What I found interesting, about the first piece, was a claim to a statistical reality by the writer, that for girls who grow up lower-income there's little opportunity cost long-term. I don't know if this is true, and if so in which way is it true and how it's true.
The second article discussed among other things how motherhood is often very lonely. Mostly I enjoyed it because the writer is a very good writer and it was stuff I didn't know anything about what she saying (it was new to me). I do think it's probably not a historical constant that parents are often raising their kids alone, without friends who are parenting kids of a similar age.
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:31
#18
remind
quote:
Originally posted by remind:
[b]As I stated above this thread needs to be closed[/b]
Seriously!!!!
Sat, 2008-06-28 19:34
#19
quote:
Originally posted by remind:
[b]This thread should be closed[/b]
quote:
Originally posted by remind:
[b]As i stated above this thread needs to be closed[/b]
quote:
Quoting herself: [i]As i stated above this thread needs to be closed[/i]
Originally posted by remind:
[b]Seriously!!!![/b]
Preempting the possibility of an edit and saved for moderators.
[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]
Sun, 2008-06-29 08:16
#20
Is there not already a thread on this topic? What does this have to do with humanities and science?
Closing this.