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Two Words: Shut Up.

Jill

This article, and the comments in response, make me want to throw something. The (white, male) author bemoans the frequency of teen pregnancy amongst the low-income, mostly non-white girls he teaches. He writes:

It happens too often. A female student approaches my desk, says “Mr. Okun?”, and and whispers the two words no adult wants to hear from a teenager: “I’m pregnant.” I want to scream, I want to cry, I want to shake her with anger. What have you done? Life is not hard enough already? Is it over, have you given up? What about finishing high school? What about college? What about your own dreams? What about enjoying the last of your own childhood? How can you parent a child when you are just a child yourself? How will you support your baby, how will you support yourself? Where is the man, will he be here next year? Will I see you and your baby coldly waiting alone for a city bus that will not come? Please look me in the eye and tell me you know what you have done.

Yes, those dumb low-income teenagers have never, ever considered the consequences of getting pregnant, and they desperately need a white dude to berate them. And it gets worse, from the very first comment:

This happens to black girl teenagers everywhere and abortion is not used often enough… [insert story of author’s own abortion] … Join me in funding abortions for black teenagers.

Other commenters discuss how they don’t “believe” in abortion, which is funny since they follow up by railing against it. Most of them emphasize that adoption is the best option.

Now, I’m all about access and funding for all reproductive choices, including abortion, contraception, pre-natal care, adoption, and well-baby services. But I think we’ve done enough to coerce women of color into compromising their reproductive rights, while encouraging middle- and upper-class white women to “out-breed” them by having as many babies as possible.

Contraception, abortion, adoption and sexual health education are all important. But we need to look at why we think young women shouldn’t be having babies, and make sure that those reasons are accessible in every community. The “if you have a baby you don’t be able to go to college” argument doesn’t hold much water if the pregnant girl was never considering college in the first place. For a lot of low-income young women, getting pregnant and having a baby is a perfectly rational decision: It secures her health care, independence, and social status. If her life plans include working at a low-skilled low-wage job and having children, it makes sense to have those children early. When young women lack options, there are few negative costs to giving birth early.

How we deal with the “problem” of teen pregnancy largely depends on how we view and frame the issue in the first place. If what we’re bothered by is young, low-income women of color having babies and becoming social drains,* then it makes sense to promote abstinence, contraception and abortion; cut off welfare funding; poo-poo teen pregnancy; and generally ignore the problem. If what we’re bothered by are the lack of options facing young, low-income women — and particularly low-income women of color — and we recognize that early pregnancy is often a logical consequence of those limited options, and that the negative “consequences” of pregnancy can be mitigated, then it makes more sense to take a holistic view of social and reproductive justice.

Commentators often link teen pregnancy with a variety of social ills — poverty, high-school drop-out rates, crime, and on and on. But tying all of these problems to teen pregnancy and single-mother families seems short-sighted. There’s no question that it’s difficult to be a pregnant girl or a single parent and still be able to finish school or hold down a full-time job. But a correlation between early pregnancy and poverty does not mean that early pregnancy causes poverty. We should be concerned for women and girls in their own right, and we should fight poverty because we don’t want people to be impoverished — not because poverty is only bad for babies. We should fight the cycle of poverty by attacking the myriad and interconnected root causes, by promoting social justice for all people, and by strengthening our social safety net, not by blaming the victim and attacking the most vulnerable groups.

We can decrease the early pregnancy rate by giving young women options beyond what they have right now, by embracing a holistic vision of physical and spiritual health, and by giving them the tools to prevent unwanted pregnancies. We can mitigate the negative effects of pregnancy by making sure that every woman, regardless of her physical condition or her parental status, has full access to health care, to education, to employment, and to the resources she needs to provide for herself and her family. And we can quit lecturing and shaming young women as if finger-wagging will do anything at all to improve their situation — you know, the one we supposedly care so very much about.

______________________________
*Obviously not my view nor my terminology

37 thoughts on Two Words: Shut Up.

  1. Well . . . to be fair, it’s not like the dude *actually berates* the girls, as implied in the post. Here’s what he says he actually does:

    Although her news disappoints me, I try to react without emotion or judgment. “What are you going to do?” I ask. But if she has already told me she is pregnant, we both already know. “I am going to have it,” she replies. I used to argue for abortion, which only enraged us both. At this point, what is done is done. All I can do now is offer her my unconditional support. I will give her a referral to counseling and pre-natal care and keep my personal frustrations and opinions to myself.

    Inevitably, a few months later I will be invited to take photographs at the baby shower. I go because I like the student and I want to show that I support her and her family on this joyous occasion. But, in some cases, are we celebrating tragedy?

    How does one not answer yes to that question? Now certainly it’s a difficult and touchy issue, because this kind of argument is so often used as a bludgeon against minorities and the poor. But I think the author’s point is a valid one: he sees many, many lives ruined by teen pregnancy. This isn’t a particularly *new* point, nor is it presented with any special new insight, but it’s hard to say it’s not valid, no?

    It’s undoubtedly true that “we’ve done enough to coerce women of color into compromising their reproductive rights, while encouraging middle- and upper-class white women to “out-breed” them by having as many babies as possible.” I just don’t think this author is adding to that pyre.

    And writers really shouldn’t be judged by the comment section . . .

  2. It happens too often. A female student approaches my desk, says “Mr. Okun?”, and and whispers the two words no adult wants to hear from a teenager: “I’m pregnant.”

    I personally find it very difficult to believe that droves of poor, minority, teenaged are confiding this in a white male authority figure who views them all as future ‘welfare queens’ (even if he doesn’t say as much, that attitude would come through.) And for what benefit? What’s even a cool teacher supposed to do for them in that situation? You think these girls might go to their school psychologists or guidance counselors first? Perhaps seek advice from their own friends and family before going to this guy? I do.
    These people who like to judge others for situations they can’t imagine for themselves like to pull fabricated anecdotes from their tuckuses.

  3. But AAnon, I think it’s impossible to divorce the writer’s upset at seeing young (mostly non-white) teenagers having children from the history of reproductive abuse that women of color have faced. White people in this country have long actively punished black and brown women for reproducing, and have long tried to compromise their reproductive capacities. Discussing this issue with absolutely no understanding of that history does damage.

    And while he says he addresses them non-judgmentally, his column suggests that he is thoroughly judgmental. I doubt they’re so dumb that they can’t see that.

  4. And my broader point isn’t that teen pregnancy is a-ok; the point is that it’s a complex issue, and that his way of addressing it was short-sighted and irrelevant to the actual lives and experiences of a whole lot of women and girls.

  5. In the school district where I work we have a huge drop-out rate and yes, a lot of girls get pregnant when they’re young because hey, they want to have kids some day, so what the hell? It’s not like they’re going to college. That being said, there’s a big difference between the 18-year-old girl who figures she’s ready to have a kid in Grade 12 and the 13-year-old who thought her spotty periods meant she couldn’t get pregnant.

  6. Having children young and poor does not necessarily “ruin a life,” AAnon. My mother was 20 and unmarried when she had me and we spent some of my childhood on welfare. Now she owns her own home and business, and even when times were hard, she always said that she never, ever regretted her choice to have me. That choice obviously affected her other choices, but it didn’t pigeonhole her onto a path of destitution and ruin.

    I agree, Jill, that it’s patronizing to assume that pregnant teens have obviously lost possession of their mental faculties. They know what they have done, because they have seen single parents struggle their whole lives. Let’s not pretend that their decision occurred in a vacuum — let’s examine the social forces that convinced them to a) have unprotected sex and b) keep a child that will complicate their lives.

  7. As for the issue of confiding in a teacher, it does happen (even to us white guys). My take on it is different from Okun’s. I wrote a post about it today, but I agree with Jill that the answer is fighting poverty rather than assuming that teen pregnancy is an invariable cause of poverty and a sentence of doom. As for how to respond to kids who confide this sort of thing, I wrote this:

    …rather than shaming or bemoaning the choices these young women make, we can rejoice in their courage — and we can partner with them to raise their babies.

    The young women (from youth group or my classes) who come to me to tell me that they’re pregnant do so for many reasons, but mostly — I think — because they want to know that they will have my strong support as they go through whatever it is that they are choosing to do. I’ve noticed a common thread in how these conversations go: at the moment she tells me she’s pregnant, the young woman will rarely meet my gaze, as it’s too difficult to face me and risk seeing what she fears will be my ire or my disappointment. But once she’s gotten out the words, she’ll usually glance up and study my expression, looking for signs of my true feelings. If my words don’t match my expression, she’ll see it — just as I expect Will Okun’s students see his true feelings on his face.

  8. The author never mentions the ages of these children he’s teaching. A 15 or 16 year old who gets pregnant and figures, “Hey, I was just going to have kids anyway,” probably isn’t going to finish high school. Sure, there’s a damn good chance they weren’t going to college, but these days a high school diploma is a minimum for any kind of decent job. It’s their choice to have kids while still they’re still kids themselves, but I don’t believe it’s wrong to be upset knowing the difficulties they have set themselves up for considering their lack of basic education and emotional maturity. These aren’t exclusively race things- I would feel the same way about a white girl in the same situation.

    Yes, historically minorities have been (and still are) discriminated against, but making it a race issue isn’t the solution. It’s OK to feel sad about a girl feeling that hopeless and knowing her limited options.

    Some of the people leaving comments are ignorant, but they shouldn’t be painted with the same brush as this teacher who the girls obviously feel safe approaching. I know I felt that way in high school and college about some of my teachers.

  9. I agree with your holistic approach Jill. However, it must still be immensely frustrating and depressing to see young women (and men) making poor choices that will drastically change their futures at such a young age. Needless to say, the women are usually left holding the bag (or baby in this instance), but I’m sure it is hard to see day in and day out.

    White male teachers have feelings too. Sure, we’ve had 500 years of history about how they and only they have felt, but I think they are still entitled to their opinions and feelings.

    And what do you expect from a comment thread, reasoned discussion? *snark

    Good Lord, I mean look at what some of these people write:

    This happens to black girl teenagers everywhere and abortion is not used often enough.

    Straight offa a white power website if you ask me. Oh wait, it’s the NYTimes.

  10. First, this instantly made me think of this post:

    Alas: For Many Poor Black Girls, Teen Pregnancy Is A Rational Choice

    which itself contains this helpful on-topic link:
    http://www.inequality.org/teenparenthood.html

    Anyway.

    I am not sure whether you’re trying to claim there’s no link between poverty and children? Kids are expeeeeeeensive. i have three myself. It’s just hard–harder to work, harder to sleep (which affects your ability to work); harder to have free time (which affects your ability to be yourself, and to work…)

    In my world, it’s pretty much an accepted fact that kids cost a lot of money, both directly and as an opportunity cost. If you want to be more successful–not guaranteed, but to maximize your chances–you won’t have kids. Or you’ll have fewer kids.

    This applies across the board, to rich white people and poor minorities. You CAN do relatively well if you have children, but it’s harder to do. It’s especially hard if you’re poor because a lot of the steps out of poverty rely on very small margins,which disappear quite speedily as a parent.

    I don’t want people to be impoverished, but i’m not above recommending that they alter their childrearing as a method of reaching that goal.

  11. I’ve read several arguments that pregnancy doesn’t cause poverty in these situations but actually the other way around. The poverty pre-dates the teen pregnancy.

    Fix poverty, fix teen pregnancy.

    Besides, WoC actually have a better chance of surviving a pregnancy if they have that child young–as well as increased support systems. But after decades of living in toxic neighborhoods with poor nutrition and spotty health care, the maternal mortality rate skyrockets.

    Again, fix poverty.

  12. WRT Jill, I agree that the context is important, and was very much left out by the piece. I really disagree, though, with the idea that “his way of addressing it was short-sighted and irrelevant to the actual lives and experiences of a whole lot of women and girls.” What he *thinks* is different than what he *does* — the latter is, in reality, to “offer unconditional support . . . referral to counseling and pre-natal care and keep my personal frustrations and opinions to myself.” Isn’t that exactly what we want him to do??

    (Unless by “way of dealing with it” you mean writing the article?)

    Imagine if this guy had written an article about the same set of circumstances but phrased it as “It’s important to offer unconditional support and assistance to pregnant teens, even if — perhaps especially if — you know that for many of these teens a pregnancy will cause significant hardship. And p.s. so that girls and women can make choices, instead of being surprised by and fearful of their pregnancies, we should have more sex education and birth control options available to all women but especially those who are commonly overlooked.”

    Wouldn’t we be praising that kind of statement? Because I think that sentiment is inherent, if not explicit, and even recognizing the historic (and, indeed, continuing!) wrongs perpetrated upon the kind of women he writes about, it’s not wrong to observe that for many of those (though of course, as Lott says, not all!) who come to him, their situation was not a choice, and even if it was, it was not one that will allow many of them to pursue and achieve their goals.

    Of course fix poverty, and of course provide opportunity, and of course birth control and support and options (I don’t say that dismissively, I just mean to agree with all of it) . . . In addition, is it wrong to express sadness at what is, for many, an unexpected and unplanned event (I would think that if not, there wouldn’t be a whispered and frightened confession to a trusted teacher) that will constrain option? If there was a rash of high-income white girls getting pregnant in high school when they didn’t plan to or want to and had no one to turn to but a teacher, that would be sad too, no?

  13. Wahoo, I love when I get to contribute some research to these debates! Before I begin, to Mary I say, no one is “making it a race issue.” Race, class, geography, age/generation, and gender are all inextricably bound up in this story due to the contrasting social positions of the older, authoritative white male narrator talking about his relationships with his young women of color students. Seems to me that Jill and all us commenters are talking about the rest of those social and material characteristics; why are we supposed to leave race out, esp. when it is a central factor in the position of these women as students in urban, low-income communities (i.e., our long history of racial and economic subjugation of non-whites and poor people, not to mention our disinvestment in cities in their context as the home of immigrants, low-income and communities of color).

    Anyway, we should all be reading Arlene Geronimus, a professor at Michigan whose research focuses on teen pregnancy and the role of race and class in shaping both life chances and understandings of adolescent pregnancy. An abstract that I think is EXTREMELY RELEVANT to this discussion is:

    Why is the broad American public disapproving of urban African American teen mothers and unaware that the scientific evidence on the consequences of teen childbearing, per se, is equivocal? I focus on the links between culture, identity, and privilege. I argue that the broader society is selective in its attention to the actual life chances of urban African Americans and how these chances shape fertility-timing norms, in part, because this selective focus helps maintain the core values, competencies, and privileges of the dominant group. Delayed childbearing is an adaptive practice for European Americans and an intensely salient goal they have for their children. Yet early fertility-timing patterns may constitute adaptive practice for African American residents of high-poverty urban areas, in no small measure because they contend with structural constraints that shorten healthy life expectancy. European Americans put their cultural priorities into action ahead of the needs of African Americans and employ substantial resources to disseminate the social control message meant for their youth that teenage childbearing has disastrous consequences. Their ability to develop a more nuanced understanding of early childbearing is limited by their culturally mediated perceptions. Thus, cultural dominance can be perpetuated by well-meaning people consciously dedicated to children’s well-being, social justice, and the public good. The entrenched cultural interdependence of and social inequality between European and African Americans leads African Americans to be highly visible targets of moral condemnation for their fertility behavior, and also sets up African Americans to pay a particularly high political, economic, psychosocial, and health price.

    (Full article here; subscrip req.)

    Surely, the author of this article placed his students’ fertility in the larger contexts of racial and economic inequity that differentially shapes their life choices and chances, as well as within the cultural contexts of rising single parenthood among white and black women, if not all ethnicities/races (this last bit I don’t know). But all that probably got edited out due to readers’ lack of interest.

    No one’s denying that the guy is attempting to demonstrate some sort of symapthetic humanity by talking about his support of these young women and the difficulties he sees for them due to their relative lack of resources. But by painting himself as a resigned platonic, fatherly cuckhold (because haven’t they betrayed him somehow with their sexual activity?) soldiering on despite these women’s poor choices, he makes himself out to be a martyr, and the person in this narrative worthy of our empathy and support, in contrast to these women whose moral worth he effectively questions, and in the process encouraging us to do the same.

  14. I’ve read several of his other columns and I can assure you that Mr. Okun is, indeed, a “nice white lady”. He never fails to get a plug in for his photography, as if the kids he works with are some kind of exotic natives. Another classic was his recent piece on some gang related murders which was essentially his own personal interpretation of Doughboy’s moving monologue from Boyz in the Hood. I concur with everything you’ve said in this post, Jill, and I definitely feel like Mr. Okun never considered any of the points you’ve raised here. And for those of you that think the kids can’t pick up on his “aren’t I swell for being here with y’all??!!” attitude? You must know a different kind of teenager than the kind I know. They can tell.

  15. Alas, a blog published a study I think last year, which argued that for many Black teens in particular (I don’t remember if it also discussed Latinas as well) having children as a teenager is actually the smartest reproductive choice. Their health and social support peaks in late teens, and when you compare earnings for white women with a high school diploma vs. Black women with a high school diploma, the stats are much closer than they should be (meaning, getting a diploma isn’t that big a financial advantage for Black women). Then I read, only a few weeks ago, a study which made similar arguments: that, for example, the children of teenaged Black women were less likely to die in infancy than those of older Black women, presumably because teenaged women were less likely to have a job that interfered with their ability to take care of their baby. So, if those studies are actually on to something, and if further studies could replicate the findings, that would indicate that … Black women are fucked (truly, no pun intended) whether or not they have kids as teenagers.
    BUT …
    The tone of this post, and the comments (and, hello, the title) I think reflects a really wrong conclusion. I think lots of people here have identified that teenaged pregnancy is not the cause of the oppression of Black women — it’s the symptom of it. But even if giving birth at age 15 may be the best option for some (primarily biological) reasons, it’s still a fucked-up ! What is wrong with being sad at seeing, right in front of you, a sign of this oppression and knowing what the human cost will be for the young woman and her child(ren)? When you see a young Black woman who’s decided to give birth, to see this as about her “right to reproduce” is to miss something important — it’s not like these young women are carrying out an independent decision to take a course of action that’s actually beneficial to them, and the only problem is that these narrow-minded white teachers don’t get it. You’re seeing a young woman who likely did not have the self-esteem and/or the knowledge to use birth control, and who is choosing to continue an unplanned pregnancy because she has been convinced that her life is of less value than the zygote inside of her body. The same system that deprived her of a decent education, and her male partner of a decent job, that deprived her of knowledge about her body and how to protect it from pregnancy (and how to decide what kind of relationships she wanted to have anyway) has also pushed its morality on her — the morality that says she has to make babies, and that she doesn’t have the right to choose not to.
    What’s wrong with hoping to convince her otherwise? If a woman was choosing to stay married with an abusive man because she thought it was her role in life to be a good wife, wouldn’t you struggle with her to see that she could leave?

    Part of the reason this is sooo damned hard to get right is that there is a lot of blaming (though I don’t agree that this teacher is doing that) and there are a lot of hand-wringing liberals who blame the young women for their situations, and a crushing weight of Bill Cosbys and Juan Willamses who tell people that Black women choosing to have babies at 15 is the reason why so many Black men are in prison, why Black people have to contend with falling-down schools and crumbling neighborhoods and why something like half of the Black men 20-29 are unemployed at any given time. That shit does have to get thoroughly taken on and challenged, and there’s not nearly enough in the way of studies or essays that get at that one. (Though it’s more on the “crime and punishment” issue, check out “Reply to Heather Mac Donald on ‘Black-on-Black’ Crime; Crime & Punishment…And Capitalism”)
    Frankly, though, more people need to dare to tell young women, who have to contend, not just with society’s overall anti-abortion bullshit but likely a lot of Church patriarchy too – that they should have abortions! As part of fighting for a vision of society that sees women as fully half of humanity – understanding and owning her sexuality, protecting her body from unwanted pregnancy and from diseases, and seeing her body not as some machine for making babies.

    And, while we’re speaking of rights – what about the right of women, young or not, to be a part of actually transforming this fucked-up situation once and for all? How does that right get realized? And how does viewing things in terms of mitigating the negative effects of pregnancy, or even in terms of a woman’s “right to reproduce” (that phrase itself should give a clue as to its limitations) limit our vision of what women are capable of, and deserve?

  16. I am not sure whether you’re trying to claim there’s no link between poverty and children? Kids are expeeeeeeensive. i have three myself. It’s just hard–harder to work, harder to sleep (which affects your ability to work); harder to have free time (which affects your ability to be yourself, and to work…)

    In my world, it’s pretty much an accepted fact that kids cost a lot of money, both directly and as an opportunity cost. If you want to be more successful–not guaranteed, but to maximize your chances–you won’t have kids. Or you’ll have fewer kids.

    Certainly kids are expensive. But my argument is that the poverty exists first, and the childbearing comes next, because for a lot of low-income young women with limited options, it makes sense to have children earlier rather than later. Obviously having children doesn’t improve their economic situation, but humans take things other than economics into account when making decisions. And for a lot of girls, there are many benefits to early childbearing. What we need to do is expand options for these girls and alleviate poverty so that they have a wider range of choices to evaluate.

  17. Or, to be even more clear, no, I am not trying to claim that there’s no link between poverty and children. I just think the issue is a lot bigger than that.

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  19. Other commenters discuss how they don’t “believe” in abortion, which is funny since they follow up by railing against it. Most of them emphasize that adoption is the best option.

    And every one of them should go adopt one of the numerous children waiting in American orphanages and foster homes. Oh wait, they don’t do that. Well then, they should shut up, or at least go take a look at the state of adoption in this country. It’d be nice to see someone who cared about what would happen to these kids once they were released to the adoption system. They’re so quick to relegate these kids to possible years of waiting for parent, possible abuse of the most horrific kinds, and often they’re the same folks who won’t consider children for adoption who are “too old” or “too brown”.

    The poverty pre-dates the teen pregnancy. Fix poverty, fix teen pregnancy.

    YES. This is the key. But since it’s all those girls’ fault that they were STUPID and got pregnant, and it’s all their fault that they’re poor in the first place, they don’t want to look at that. GRRR to these people.

  20. # Jill Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 6:50 am
    Certainly kids are expensive. But my argument is that the poverty exists first, and the childbearing comes next, because for a lot of low-income young women with limited options, it makes sense to have children earlier rather than later. Obviously having children doesn’t improve their economic situation, but humans take things other than economics into account when making decisions. And for a lot of girls, there are many benefits to early childbearing. What we need to do is expand options for these girls and alleviate poverty so that they have a wider range of choices to evaluate.

    I see your point. I think it is a bit of a catch 22 though.

    While it would be nice to end poverty, I think that ending poverty is going to be much more difficult for people who are parents than for people who are not (this seems obvious to me at least: if you assume any sort of fixed resource availability the options available to help a single person out of poverty are generally much wider than the options available for multiple people, e.g. parent and child(ren).)

    It becomes, for example, the difference between
    “provide work training for this person and then find them a job”
    and
    “provide work training and childcare during that training, and then find them a job that will also allow them to parent their child(ren), and also provide childcare while they’re working.”
    Given that we live in a world where (unfortunately) merely getting childcare is very difficult, it’s hard to see the second example above as anything other than MUCH more difficult.

    I’m also not sure whether the rational analysis is the best thing here. DO we really think these girls are acting rationally? They’re 15. It’s more likely IMO that they’re acting based on extremely limited information.

    And we don’t OTHERWISE think people will always act rationally, right? Especially not when they’re 15. After all, when people discuss things like, say, the ability of welfare laws to affect people’s rational parenting decisions, those are widely decried*. Or when they look at the decision to drink or smoke–not rational. So it seems suspicious that rationality is all of a sudden bring trotted out to defend the pregnancy decision, when other rational issues don’t have an effect.

    And it also doesn’t make sense to pass the buck to the poverty issue. Yes, if nobody was poor, pregnancy rates would be different. A lot of things would be different, because we would live in an entirely different country in many respects.

    Is that a worthy goal? Sure. But it is a goal of an entirely different magnitude than the issue of whether young girls are having babies some years too soon. Substituting poverty issues for pregnancy issues is the same thing as functionally taking the pregnancy issue off the table.

    *I’m not a fan of harsh welfare rules. I’m just using this to illustrate the rationality debate.

  21. Jill Wrote: We can decrease the early pregnancy rate by giving young women options beyond what they have right now, by embracing a holistic vision of physical and spiritual health, and by giving them the tools to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

    What is “a holistic vision of physical and spiritual health” and what policies could in any way support such a floating abstraction?

    Jill also wrote: We can mitigate the negative effects of pregnancy by making sure that every woman, regardless of her physical condition or her parental status, has full access to health care, to education, to employment, and to the resources she needs to provide for herself and her family.

    Again, what specific policies do you actually think would be able to provide all these things for all people, and how could you ever pay for such a thing. What tree bears the fruit of “spiritual health” and where can we all pick some for free. Also, who decides what qualifies as a “holistic vision of physical and spiritual health”? Such bromides are easy to state, but require a lot more heavy lifting to be seriously considered as policy.

    Also, either a policy works or it doesn’t. Whether one is a white, male attorney in my case, or a white, female law student in Jill’s case, neither background has anything to do with the success of a given social policy. To act otherwise is to restrict the number of options and resources available.

  22. more people need to dare to tell young women, who have to contend, not just with society’s overall anti-abortion bullshit but likely a lot of Church patriarchy too – that they should have abortions! As part of fighting for a vision of society that sees women as fully half of humanity – understanding and owning her sexuality, protecting her body from unwanted pregnancy and from diseases, and seeing her body not as some machine for making babies.

    I appreciate the point you’re making here–women should value their lives and see abortion as a real possibility–but I am uncomfortable with the way you’ve phrased it. Telling someone that she should have an abortion is, to me, just as invasive and offensive as telling someone that she shouldn’t.

    Women should be aware and accepting of the idea of abortion as a *choice*–but saying, “You should have an abortion,” or, worse, pressuring her to make that choice b/c you feel making that choice shows a greater respect for her body/sense of self is exactly like telling a woman she shouldn’t have an abortion b/c of xyz. Both approaches imply that the woman is unable to think for herself.

    Make girls aware of the reality of a baby (though I believe most of the girls in the situation of this article are more than aware–babies aren’t the cuddly dolls that suburban girls think they are), make them aware of their own potential, but don’t go pushing abortion on those who don’t want one.

  24. What is “a holistic vision of physical and spiritual health” and what policies could in any way support such a floating abstraction?

    Policy ideas:
    -Universal health care
    -Free and accessible contraception, pre-natal care, abortion, and well-baby care, without shame and without stigma
    -Free or affordable child care for working parents
    -A secure social safety net, including financial support for low-income families (i.e., welfare), again without stigma or shame
    -Meaningful public education
    -Positive, comprehensive sexual health education
    -Promotion of ownership and wealth accumulation, and policies which make it easier for low-income people to own homes and land and otherwise build up their private assets

    Basically, what I meant by that phrase was “physical and mental health.” It means breaking down the barriers that race, gender, and class put in our way — internally and externally. It means serving women’s bodies as well as their minds and their personal development.

    Part of the problem is that not everything can be solved with policy. A big part of the puzzle is fixing our deep cultural issues with regard to race, gender, class and sexual activity. That can’t be solved through the law alone.

  26. Damnit, Jill, just when I’m going on vacation you start floating a comprehensive vision for “physical and spiritual health”, public policy and personal transformation. Now I have to think about this for the next six days without a computer to soothe me.

  27. I’m being a broken record here, because I KNOW I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Interesting factoid: the nation in the world with both the lowest abortion rate (as a percentage of all pregnancies) and also the lowest teen pregnancy rate is the Netherlands.

    Universal healthcare, comprehensive sex ed, easy/subsidised access to birth control, relatively generous benefits for the unemployed/the poor, subsidised higher education, all these factors DECREASE both abortions in general and pregnancy in teenagers. Because a high-schooler living in poverty who’s been educated as to how birth control works, can access it without stigma, and can potentially improve her life situation by going on to higher ed without incurring crippling debt, and has a realistic prospect of upward social mobility, that girl has a hell of a lot of motivation to postpone childbearing.

    Things over there are by no means in the Netherlands, but statistically speaking what they’re doing is working a hell of a lot better than hte alternative.

  29. Raincitygirl: And the Netherlands somehow accomplishes all this in a sexually liberated, non-religious society. The fundies are barking up the wrong tree with their abstinence and religiosity (but I think most of us knew that).

    I wonder where the fathers are in all this. Young girls don’t get pregnant through parthenogenesis, after all. The fathers of these girls’ babies need to know that it’s THEIR baby and THEIR responsibility, too. And older men who prey on young girls need to be severely dealt with.

  30. I don’t see why you have to attack a guy who has really put his money where his mouth is as far as trying to make a difference. He seems very dedicated to being involved in his students’ lives, and he tries to be supportive without pressuring them.

    I am sure he is a victim of the classic white-liberal misconception that he can change the world by caring hard enough. But I am personally not going to be so nihilistically nonjudgmental that I will refuse to say that it’s noble and right to try to help kids to escape neighborhoods that are infested by gangs and drugs.

    We have situations where cops and prosecutors are trying to build cases without witnesses, because, while we wring our hands over the question of whether a lethal injection hurts, people are being regularly executed in places like Trenton for the capital crime of testifying in court or talking to the police.

    If you see your child shot in the street and you tell the police who did it, you are a snitch. You will be murdered, and the gangsters will feel no guilt. And as long as police and victims’ advocates are called racist for pursuing black killers but not for ignoring black victims, the powerless will continue to be ignored.

    These are not vibrant neighborhoods for unconventional people whose lifestyles we should tolerate. The urban ghettos are juntas run by paramilitary gangs, and this is permitted to exist in the United States because objecting to gang culture opens one up to a charge of racism, and very few people actually care about the people in the ghettos enough to go in there and try to help people and risk being called condescending or “nice white ladies” or racists. And they also risk, you know, getting shot.

    At least Will Okun is out there trying to do some good, ineffectual as he may ultimately be. Most of you probably wouldn’t spend one day in the neighborhood where he teaches for his entire yearly salary.

  31. I really don’t want to present it as some kind of paradise. I’ve got family who grew up there, and family who still live there, so no, it’s not utopia. But it IS better. And they’re not an outlier, because other countries with similar social supports also have low abortion rates/low rates of teen pregnancy. I believe the second lowest rate in both categories is Germany, another of the dreaded Old European halfway-commie welfare states. Across the board, easy access to contraception and abortion are STRONGLY correlated with fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions. The mroe restrictive the laws, the more likely any given pregnancy in that particular country is likely to end in abortion.

    I have never ever had an alleged “pro-lifer” provide any sort of answer to my Netherlands factoids (and I’ve trundled it out many a time). Not once. It’s a surefire conversation-stopper. I wait eagerly to see if this post will break the pattern.

  32. I’ve commented on this issue before, but as a social worker in Brooklyn, I will say that although I find the writer’s tone to be very condescending, I can certainly agree with the circumstances. I don’t think it’s only a white male response, I have many friends who work as teachers and social workers in the city, male and female, all races, who feel the same way (self-disclosure–I am a white female). I certainly agree that this problem won’t go a away on a macro level until we do get the reforms listed above (and I think it’s far easier to think on a macro level if you don’t have to face the problems in the field) , but in terms of the reality of the present, it seems that the one thing these girls CAN control is their choice to delay pregnancy until they have graduated high school and gone to college and moved out of poverty (not easy, for sure). so the smack to the forehead when a girl you really care about tells you she’s pregnant is not necessarily based in racist/sexist thinking, it’s about wanting kids in your life to do well and feeling frustrated that they’ve made a choice that generally keeps women mired in poverty. i also think that teachers in low-income areas have a harder row to hoe than the average person and can use some credit, but that’s an aside.

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  34. This is interesting because just the other day I was watching over a group of 7th and 8th graders during their free period outside. They were running around with footballs and frisbees, some of the girls were practicing for cheerleading tryouts, others were clustered around one of the tables talking about school or some movie or boys, for all I know. All in all, it was a normal enough situation and since it was a pretty day, I was enjoying the chance to sit in the sunshine and relax after a long week.

    I grew up in an extremely conservative, white, school district and it took me several years of living in a larger, more diverse city to learn how to see Hispanics and African Americans as more than the stereotypes I had grown up with. The school district where I now substitute is largely Hispanic, with a white minority, pretty much the opposite of what I grew up with.

    After a few days, it no longer matters what their skin color is or what their last name is, because they are just like kids everywhere else. They forget to do their homework, they have trouble with their math problems, they love to play on the internet and gossip with their friends. They have the potential to go far and as teachers – even a part time teacher like me – we want more for them than a small town life flipping burgers.

    These kids, however, never forget what they are. Under the cheerleading outfits, away from the football uniforms, the band instruments, the books, tests, the cafeteria and the classroom, they still belong to a culture that says children are the ultimate goal.

    I was watching these kids – most of them in their early teens and just now starting to figure out the whole boy/girl thing – and I realized that in some ways we are doing them a gross disservice. We tell them they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up, but we don’t give them the tools to achieve that. We had them propaganda and slogans, but we don’t teach them how to put it to work. College is an option, but it’s not one that is pushed as hard as it should be.

    There’s a decent state university just ten miles down the road and it’s entirely possible to go to school part time and work full time to pay for it all, but we don’t really tell them that. We coo over their baby pictures and ask if they need extra time to complete their assignments, when we should instead be teaching them how to manage their time and expenses to graduate high school and go to college. After all, to break the cycle, we have to start somewhere or in fifteen years someone will be having the same discussion with the daughter as I did with her mother. .

  35. I just re-read my post and saw this …

    “it’s still a fucked-up !”

    yeah — was supposed to say “it’s still a fucked-up situation!”

    sigh.

  36. I am not sure whether you’re trying to claim there’s no link between poverty and children? Kids are expeeeeeeensive. i have three myself. It’s just hard–harder to work, harder to sleep (which affects your ability to work); harder to have free time (which affects your ability to be yourself, and to work…)

    In my world, it’s pretty much an accepted fact that kids cost a lot of money, both directly and as an opportunity cost. If you want to be more successful–not guaranteed, but to maximize your chances–you won’t have kids. Or you’ll have fewer kids.

    I think that this argument is wrong for the same reasons that an abstinence focus can be. It doesn’t work to hold a group of people to a different standard because they’re poor. It’s true that a teenage girl–and I think this goes for most teenagers, even the wealthier ones–will have an easier time finishing school if she doesn’t also have a child to take care of. I don’t think anyone would disagree with you that children cost money. It doesn’t follow that teenagers will stop having children, that the simplest solution is the most realistic one.

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