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Teens get money for college if they don’t get pregnant

Jill

So… that means that if they do get pregnant, they’re cut off? Oh right, because teen moms don’t go to college! Because they’re lazy and morally lax, of course. I’m sure lower rates of college attendance among teen mothers has nothing to do with deeply-ingrained social biases against teen mothers — the same kinds of biases that make programs like this sound totally acceptable — and practical difficulties, like finding childcare and affording both school and a baby.

Obviously we should work with all women, younger and older, to make sure that pregnancies are planned and wanted. For most teenagers, pregnancy erects substantial barriers. Of course we should focus on trying to lower the teen pregnancy rate.

But that focus should come out of a greater goal of helping teenagers — and that includes teen mothers. Mama or not, girls should be able to go to college. Too many teen moms are forced out of school, or assumed from the get-go to be lost causes. Programs like this don’t help.

Posted in Sex

16 thoughts on Teens get money for college if they don’t get pregnant

  1. Wouldn’t you assume that somebody with a family to support would need MORE help with college, not less?

    Also, does this apply to boys, too? Free money until they impregnate a partner?

  2. As a teen mom (well, 24 now) and college student — I couldn’t agree more. How’s about a program for young mamas who desperately want to go to college but can’t afford the necessary child care or course fees? And hardly have the time since working forty hours is not a choice, but a requirement…?

    *raises hand*

  3. I agree with calamityjill — we should be making it easier for mothers (and fathers who are involved with their children) to attend college.

    My mom dropped out of college to have me. She says she doesn’t regret it, but the woman is a fucking genius who has never done anything that the world would recognize as a valid use of her intellect, and she should have been a goddamn college professor. I don’t feel guilty (because choice!yay — her father offered her the option to abort me, and she said no, and so I know she wanted me BECAUSE SHE HAD A CHOICE), but I do feel saddened by the waste. So many people she could have shined her light for, and now my brothers, myself, my children and my cousins will end up being the only ones who ever see it.

    Teen pregnancy doesn’t actually have to be harmful to a woman at all if it isn’t too young (ie, she’s old enough that her body can safely carry) and it doesn’t derail her ability to develop a career; in fact, college students have vastly more free time than people who work for a living, and when you’re very junior in your career no one expects the level of dedication that’s expected of an older person, so you could have a kid when you’re 18 and by 35 that kid is about to go to college and you’re just hitting your career stride and now you don’t have to take time off. (There are issues with having a kid when you’re young enough to barely know who you are, but there are also issues with having a kid when you’re too old to have the energy to deal with them, says the 40-year-old mother of a 3-year-old.)

    So if we put resources into helping those girls who *do* get pregnant and keep their babies go to college *anyway*, we would do a lot more good for them and their children than if we just give them bonuses for not getting preggers. And such resources would help boys too, because it would be a lot easier to man up and be an involved father to your children if you don’t feel that doing so would derail your entire future.

  4. I agree that teen moms should be encouraged to go to college and that they shouldn’t have their opportunities limited. I want to make that clear up front.

    Now, I’m not trying to derail with the rest of this. I want to start a legitimate conversation.

    I was under the impression that the teen pregnancy rate was higher in impoverished communities where there isn’t a lot of opportunity for young women. While sex ed and access to contraception are factors, I really believe that young women are far less likely to become pregnant even without great sex ed and access to contraception if they believe they can accomplish goals where being pregnant will be an obstacle.

    This program does that, because it provides funding for university. How likely is it that it would reduce teen pregnancy anyway if the money wasn’t conditional? Am I completely off-base in suggesting that just providing the opportunity might be enough? And would the program be ok with us if it was exactly the same – the participants took all the same classes with goal-setting, etc – except that they got the money regardless of whether they became pregnant?

  5. Actually, this program is a twin to one our PP affiliate runs through our education department.

    The money you receive is a pittance. It’s basically a tiny, but potent, incentive to get the girls to finish the course (although we pay it out to the girls directly, in cash).

    I really don’t see how this encourages the stigmatization of teen mothers any more than any other after-school sex ed program.

  6. I read about this over on Feministing and didn’t see what the problem could possibly be. I wasn’t considering the irony of the consequences of the money being taken away if the girl got pregnant, though. Here’s a bunch of money for college! …You’re pregnant? No more money for you! Now that you’ll need more of it and it will be substantially harder to earn while you have to take care of your child, we’re going to make it more difficult on you!

    As far as the potential for paying teenage boys not to impregnate teenage girls, it’s not as easy to prove that the guy is a father than if a girl is pregnant. Not to mention expensive. If he wants the money and tries to deny paternity, testing is expensive and who would pay for that?

    The fact that it’s only really feasible to do this with young women inevitably looks like they’re making pregnancy the sole responsibility (and fault of) the girl, though. I just don’t see any way around it in this particular instance. Which is too bad.

  7. first off, ya bad program. second off, ya a bunch of sex discrimination questions because men, while they have equal responsibility (more or less) for starting a pregnacy they are not treated equally. The woman gets rewarded for no pregnacy/ punished for becoming pregnant. The man is never addressed. this program should reach across gender lines or not exist. there are a bunch of complicating issues with how to involve males in this kind of legeslation. what happens if the father is not a student? what happens if the father begats more than once, how can we accuratly discover just who is the father, and how can we accuratly discover who has fathered a child (thus not elegible for the reward of not getting a student prgnant) and has just not been reported. also, would there be harsh treatment of a pregant student who refuses to name the father, dosn’t know, lies? it’s sticky and unequal and punitive. thumbs down on this one.

  8. I can see the reasoning behind this program. I’ve read that some teens have children intentionally because they don’t have any opportunitys for further education. If this program can help those young women then I think its a good thing. (Despite being really weird)

  9. But Kiki, then, just providing scholarship money for girls should help prevent teen pregnancy. If girls intentionally get pregnant or are not motivated to prevent pregnancy because they don’t have educational options, then providing those options should help. You don’t have to make not getting pregnant a condition of getting the money.

    And, as Jill and others point out, we may be wrong to always label teen pregnancy a bad thing. If a girl has a wanted baby and has the resources to also get an education, that’s a good thing, right? One of my college classmates had a 2-year old when she started college at 18. She was able to do it with lots of scholarship money as well as lots of family support taking care of the baby. I am sure it wasn’t easy but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She would be about 35 now and her little girl is probably starting college herself.

  10. Okay, people. Are we actually suggesting it is ethical to pay people to have babies/not have babies/take contraception/get sterilized?

    C’mon now. This is Feminism 101.

  11. Okay, people. Are we actually suggesting it is ethical to pay people to have babies/not have babies/take contraception/get sterilized?

    C’mon now. This is Feminism 101.

    This. In the link, it mentioned that this wasn’t an abstinence-only plan; the participants are given sex-ed that includes BC information…..but it still read to me like, “don’t get caught.” Nothing was said about what happens to girls who experience birth control failure. Are they held up as examples to the rest of the participants as “someone who threw her future away”?

    To me, this only reifies the message that as a woman, your choice should be either education and career, or having a family—only men get to have both.

    Let that sink in a bit. Because the difficulties that teen mothers face in getting a college education are part and parcel of the same difficulties that older mothers face in getting or completing their education, or getting or keeping their jobs. It’s the same-old same-old continuum that says to women, “you don’t belong here.” That women should be relegated to the scraps that men don’t want—low-wage, no-benefit shit jobs.

    It isn’t any magically easier to find (or afford) child care when you’re in your twenties or thirties. It doesn’t suddenly become easier to balance a child care/school schedule with work hours after getting another decade or so into your life. Employers aren’t any more keen at recognizing that workers have lives outside of work, nor do you magically become a more powerful individual agent for your own advocacy—employers and institutions still (believe it or not) hold more power than you do, even if age has given you more power and experience.

    News flash: far too many schools assume that one is child-free because as a practical matter, the traditional population (read: men) was effectively “child-free” whether they were or weren’t. Employers still take the attitude of….”well, that’s what you have a wife at home for” and think it’s enlightened if instead of “wife” the word is “nanny” or “grandma”. See a pattern here? Why is the phrase “you can’t have it all” only directed at women? Men have always “had it all” in terms of career and family.

    There is still, still an assumption, even in this day and age of more women than men pursuing higher education, that women who choose parenthood are throwing their future away—that we are actively choosing the “mommy track” rather than actively being discriminated against (sometimes even by other women).

    That is the backdrop against which this program is operating.

    Then again, I’m biased. I’m hoping like hell that my daughter doesn’t catch the flu that’s going around, because in my world, a man taking a week or so off on a hunting trip is alchemically taking less time off than if I have to stay home three days with a sick kid. It’s amazing what an employer or boss can see when looking through sexist-colored lenses.

  12. What twists in my gut about this is that the whole program aims its monetary rewards / punishment system at young women, as though pregnancy is something we do by ourselves and not something that, you know, generally involves a male partner. I know of no program that is aimed at the male partner in this way – basically, they can tell who’s the mom by who’s pregnant, and it’s easier to make the problem “pregnant teen moms.” Equal responsibility (that is, assuming that the pregnancy is the result of choice and not coercion), but not equal treatment.

    To say nothing of making college accessible for everyone, pregnant or with children or what have you… sheesh.

  13. Alara, I agree with the rest of your post, or can at least see what you’re getting it, but this:

    college students have vastly more free time than people who work for a living

    yea, not always true says the girl who worked her way through college and has way more free time now that she works for a living.

  14. yea, not always true says the girl who worked her way through college and has way more free time now that she works for a living.

    That’s true. I wasn’t considering the situation of people who put themselves through college.

  15. As a former teen mom, it was college that allowed me to get through those first few years with a minimum of daycare expenses and with a productive end-goal. I encourage any teen mom to get her ass into a land grant university if it’s possible, and to forget working if she can and just take advantage of all the loans available. Loans are a pain in the ass, but temporary, and the amount of free time available to (non-working) college students is conducive to early child rearing.

    If just seems so backward to me to provide a disincentive in the “you made your bed” mentality to teen parents by withholding resources for education when it’s one of the better options available to them.

  16. Thinking on the parenthetical addition to cha-cha connor’s contribution makes this even worse. What if the girl gets pregnant from being raped? She is being punished for that? F-ed up! As is the whole idea of the scholarship anyway.

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