From the ArcaMax Publishing, Kathleen Parker Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/kathleenparker/s-369529-321298
It was such a good story: Teen girls make pregnancy pact.
What?! No!! America's presses didn't exactly screech to a halt,
but the media lapped up the story, with reporters descending on tiny
Gloucester, Mass., from as far away as Brazil and Poland.
Teens making a pact to get pregnant enjoyed several news cycles not
because it was so unbelievable, but because it was, alas, so
believable.
And, because it's summer.
And the Democratic primaries are over.
Which is to say, we were due a sensational blockbuster with some
sexual sizzle: Teen girls gone wild!
The salacious saga had all the elements we crave in a good yarn. Sex,
teens, politics, illegitimacy -- and then some. There was even a
homeless sperm donor, presumably seduced by one of the girls in order
to join her chums in Labor & Delivery.
Except it wasn't quite true. There are apparently 17 (maybe) pregnant
girls in Gloucester High School -- which would be four times the usual
pregnancy rate -- but officials now say the pact was post-preggo
rather than a conspiracy to become pregnant.
Or was it? As waistlines thicken, so goes the plot.
The original story, broken by Time magazine, was based on comments by
the school principal, who said the recent spike in teen pregnancies
was the result of a pact among some of the girls. The principal has
now been overruled, both by the town's mayor and by the mothers-to-be,
some of whom are enjoying a very short date with fame.
Pregnant Lindsey Oliver, 17, who appeared on "Good Morning America"
with her baby's father, Andrew Psalidas, 20, said the girls became
pregnant by coincidence, after which they agreed to help each other
out.
The couple said they hadn't intended to have a child and were simply
unlucky. Now, they're just trying to do the right thing. Why all the
fuss?
Teenagers getting pregnant is, indeed, less interesting without a
conspiracy. How the pact story got started is unclear. The principal
is taking a timely vacation and has offered no further comment.
Confirming the pregnancies, meanwhile, has proved problematic owing to
privacy concerns.
Without the pact, we're merely left with the crude banality of several
babies about to be born to children and a few dozen dangling questions
unanswered.
Here's one: Where's Dad? Not the "fathers" of these unfortunate
pre-borns, but the fathers of these pregnant girls. Where, in other
words, is the shotgun?
Back in the day when birth control and abortion weren't readily
available to high school kids, fathers were pretty good deterrents to
pregnancy. Boys knew they'd have kneecap problems if they got daddy's
little girl pregnant. If they were lucky, they'd be married by the
morning after.
Girls, meanwhile, were less likely to risk pregnancy because
alternatives to motherhood were few, adoption being the most likely.
It wasn't a foolproof system, clearly, but the specter of lifelong
consequences, combined with societal and parental disapproval, helped
keep the illegitimate birthrate down.
Today, using the term "illegitimate" is more likely to spark
disapproval than the activities contributing to the plague of unwed
pregnancies. For sure there are far fewer fathers around to give young
males The Eye. It is a fair guess, though not possible to confirm at
this point, that at least some of Gloucester's pregnant daughters are
from fatherless homes.
That guess is founded on sound social science indicating a strong
correlation between father absence and a high risk for early sex and
unwed pregnancy. Not only do fathers provide the masculine affection
so many girls seek elsewhere, but they teach their daughters how to
handle male sexual aggression, as well as to understand their own role
in stimulating that aggression.
Thus far, there's been little mention of the family dynamic that often
foretells the tragedy of children having children. Instead, most of
the debate has centered on whether these girls and boys had enough
access to sex education and contraceptives.
Other conversations have circled around the influence of movies, such
as "Juno," that glamorize teen pregnancy. In the movie, 16-year-old
Juno is adorably pregnant and far wiser than the film's adults.
Whatever happened in Gloucester, we know this much. Today's girls and
boys daily marinate in a culture that offers little instruction in
responsibility and self-control -- or the importance of marriage as
antecedent to procreation -- but celebrates single motherhood and
encourages sex without strings.
The surprise isn't that 17 girls are pregnant at one high school. The
surprise is that there aren't more.
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Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com