Time Magazine has published a story about a cohort of teenaged girls who made a pregnancy pact. The New York Times basically rewrote the article today (they gave credit to Time), though it adds an interview with a school board member. You can read either, but read one of them.
School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after 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 on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.
This is taking place in Gloucester, Mass., hence the somewhat panic-stricken double report. You see, the reason these young women chose to become parents sounds very familiar.
“It’s the social environment these girls are coming from,” she added. “They think that a baby can give them love or give them status or fill an empty space in their life, and these girls are very, very young."
And I ain't defending it but this sounds kind of familiar too.
Ms. Kirk, a member of the school committee, also said that some of those who impregnated the students were men in their mid-20s.
Interesting that the social environment is the problem here. That sounds as familiar as the rest. Let's take a quick look at that environment.
The past decade has been difficult for this mostly white, mostly blue-collar city (pop. 30,000). In Gloucester, perched on scenic Cape Ann, the economy has always depended on a strong fishing industry. But in recent years, such jobs have all but disappeared overseas, and with them much of the community's wherewithal.
“This is a city in transition going through a hard economic time,” Ms. Kirk said. “There are cuts in economic programs, cuts in services, cuts in after-school programs, and they’re all impacting the social climate. We really let these kids down.”
The local economy tanks and through the magic of cause-and-effect these girls come up feeling...well, I can't honestly say I know what they're feeling. I just know my niece's cohort made the same pact some 20 years ago, when the economy tanked for Black men.
"If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).
In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills.
I expect the culture in Gloucester, Mass. to be the next explanation offered.
This is going to spread as the revolution of lowered expectations progresses. And it's one of the reasons I insist these patterns of behavior be recognized as common American reactions, in Black folks as well as white folks.
Because you see that, somehow, it will be addressed. I can't tell you how at the moment; I assume the New Deal was less than obvious to folks before it was implemented too. But it will be addressed and there's already talk of help for "deserving families." And Gary, Indiana is as deserving as Gloucester, Massachusetts.
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This angers me, but it shouldn't.
This sort of response is to be expected from white America and the white media. But I have to admit that it annoys me a little. They always seem to be shocked and amazed at developments in their community that is old news in ours. While I can't say that I ever heard of a group Black teen girls making a pregnancy pact - purhaps that IS a white thing, I don't know - I can say that issues such as on-going job loss and teen pregnancy, et al, are old issues in our conmmunity that hardly see the attention of moring news shows. I have other thoughts on this as well....
This amuses me, but it shouldn't.
I'm waiting for the big Oprah special on what's wrong with the white community.
Though, on a more human level, I am sad for these girls, their families, and their kids. It's gonna be a tough row to hoe, and I hope this at least does increase sympathy and help for Gary, Indiana.
And by the way, P6. I know you said you weren't gonna write anything good about Obama, but can't you at least smack Joe Watkins?
Tomorrow. The foolishness
Tomorrow. The foolishness doesn't evaporate.
I watched the segment that
I watched the segment that MSNBC ran on this story and one of the things that struck me as telling is that one of the school officials who was interviewed almost immediately said that all of the girls involved were white. I'm sure that someone will take him to task for saying it. I have to admit, however, that when I first heard of the story I knew intuitively that all of the girls were white. I don't mean this in any pejorative sense but this type of behavior seemed quite at odds with what I knew about the behavior of adolescent Black and Latino girls.
Me, too, PT. I don't think
Me, too, PT. I don't think girls of color are big on "pacts," and even if girls of color had made a pact, you know that wouldn't have tried to make out like it was just this group of mixed up girls and not something symptomatic of the community at large.
Also, whenever the race isn't mentioned, it's usually cause the culprits are white.
Time for a "courageous" speech.
Well, I'm waiting.
Isn't any politician going to make a "courageous" speech about illegitimacy in the white community? Decry the absence of fathers in these babies' lives? Encourage the young men who impregnated all these girls to take responsibility?
Anyone?
Quaker - You must be talking
Quaker -
You must be talking about another country.
Joe Watkins
...you at least smack Joe Watkins?"
Watkins smacks himself every time he appears on television to defend the Republicans. His role is to make white folks feel better about the Republican Party. There is not one black Republican in the House or Senate. In fact, I think there are less than a half-dozen Republicans who are black holding down any elective seat at any level in the United States.
Unless and until Joe Watkins and his fellow black Republicans like that guy Ron Christie, who appears much too frequently (so does Mary Frances Berry) on NPR's News and Notes, succeed in getting some black Republicans elected to office in majority or predominantly black electoral districts, black folks can ignore them. If the MSM was honest about the game they would ignore them as well. Watkins and Christie don't represent anybody but their former and current employers.
Country?
I'm afraid it's not just another country. It's a parallel universe.
"It's a parallel
"It's a parallel universe."
Where a large number of the residents get recurring bouts of amnesia every 24 hours.
Canaries in the mine. They tell you what's gonna happen
now whether you choose to listen..oh well.
Heard tail end of this in passing. Thanks for giving the 4-1-1
This is a cruel thing to
This is a cruel thing to write but how many of the parents and grandparents of these girls were or are so-called Reagan Democrats? That is, folks who bought into shredding the social net safety because it only benefited, they were told and came to believe, the naygurs. These "hard working Americans, white Americans" as Sr. Hillary identified them helped to plant the seeds of the destruction of their own communities by supporting politicians who promoted policies that were not in the best interests of their constituents. Now many of these same folks, not all, want Barack Obama to beg them for the chance to put this ship back on a safer course. I like to see myself as a democrat with a small "d" but there are times when I feel the mob is getting exactly what it deserves. This feeling lasts for about two minutes.
PT - As a historian, Mary
PT - As a historian, Mary Frances Berry just plain hurts my feelings. I need Ron Christie to get his eyes fixed. And we all know those folks are either Reagan Democrats or just plain ol' Republican.
Quaker - Parellel universe is being polite about it. I'm, too, waiting for the "courageous" speech that'll actually be courageous.
Mary Frances Barry is a
Mary Frances Barry is a dyed-in-the-wool Clinton supporter. She was still making disparaging comments about Obama this week on News and Notes and she is supposed to be the liberal foil to Christie's conservative rapier. I find it difficult to believe that the host of that program is not aware of this imbalance and either supports it or has acquiesced to the process.
Oh! Then that's why Berry
Oh! Then that's why Berry was so upset about TUCC's congregation's response to Pfleger.
I've only seen her on TV a few times, and she always comes across as rather conservative on race issues. Why isn't she as forthright on TV as her books suggest she really is? I'm not saying she should "angry." But a little truth-telling on CNN can't be a bad thing.
Mary Francis Berry is okay.
Mary Francis Berry is okay.
Berry
All right, P6. Thanks for letting me know.
Mary Francis Berry
Yes, I did not mean to imply that she is not okay but she is HUGELY biased against Obama. That is okay too, but not in the context in which she appears on News and Notes. It's not kosher. I have two close friends who worked for her for years and they like her but they think she is not being clean about Obama. She offers no real defense to the criticisms lodged against him by Christie. That is not okay.
Berry couldn't even muster a defense of MICHELLE OBAMA
the other day. So very thru with her.
Done.
Y'all are too deep.
Y'all are too deep.
Poor white folks, house
Poor white folks, house negros that they are, generally can't imagine that if the plantation starts to go under, they're going to get sold down the river too, just like their Black field brethren, with the same devastating consequences to their families.
Returning to the original subject
I'm not an expert on the particular case of this alleged pregnancy pact, but there is an historic context here.
(NOTE: As of this comment, P6 posted about the NYT's correction (?).)
Making an anthropological generalization, all human communities are obsessed with status. Economic collapse is usually selective—that's what makes it so cruel—so it usually creates a problem of insider-outsider conflict as a part of the industrial system implodes. The insiders are those who still have jobs; sometimes they may have immediate solidarity with their neighbors, but more than likely their reaction is shunning victims. That's why it's no longer polite to refer to someone who's been victimized as a "victim," despite the undeniable reality that she/he is. We aren't ready to attack the social vice of shunning victims, and continue to insist that we, individually, aren't victims.
So when a group suffers economic collapse it may limp along promising itself that its members will eventually be re-absorbed into the surviving industrial system. All that is necessary is to keep up appearances. Hence, the importance of pacts among the young, who feel they must bear all the costs of keeping up appearances... to no purpose. A pact reduces the individual guilt, as teen pregnancy becomes another collective disaster rather than a personal failing.
Meanwhile, the tragedy (for the parents) is that they're now déclassé. The households who are getting by now have yet another pretext to shun their economically ruined neighbors. And that's where "Reagan Democrats" come from.
______________________________________________
I noticed this article on teen pregnancies in Sweden versus the USA & UK: "The contraception paradox," Public Interest (1993). Basically, the social welfare system tended to weaken class standing; teen pregnancy ceased to make parents of the young mothers déclassé, with the result that there was less resistance to contraceptives, which meant fewer teen pregnancies. Massive public piety is always and everywhere a strategy for class signaling.