Things I don't get #1,657: teenage moms and the media.
The latest example of a phenomenon that completely baffles me.
Long story short, teenage girl gives birth in a hospital, leaves the next morning. She is being sought by police. It's a far from uncommon story. This one is less egregious than most in that the girl had her baby in a safe place and left it in a safe place. We've had many in my state where the mother -- often from a very poor family -- kills and tries to hide the baby out of (very real) fear of punishment.
There's the usual talk about wanting to reunite her with her baby, and the obligatory mention of concern for the mother's health, but stories like this, publicized in the news, have never seemed to me to be anything but an attempt to shame young women, to put their identities out there as a way of singling them out. Stories like this SHOULD be attempts to draw attention to the social and cultural factors that cause this sort of thing. The question shouldn't be "Why would she do that?" but "Why would she feel she HAD to do that?"
Can't the police follow up on this without bringing it into the media, issuing a description and a photo of her as though she were a criminal, and making a spectacle out of something that ought to be private, for the girl's own safety, if nothing else? I won't say I think abandoning a baby is a fantastic thing to do, but she did it in a hospital. Safer even than a police station. And chances are, a girl desperate enough to do this? There are problems in her life that this kind of publicity isn't going to help.
It's not even a case of they don't know who the mother was, which is often the case. This time, they do know. Her name is right there in the news.
The girl is 17. If the idea behind this sort of thing is that we should protect children, we should be protecting these young women who are, by legal definition, children themselves.
The idea of sending the police after a girl who likely felt she had no other choice, and who is probably both frightened and emotionally hurting, is just ludicrous. There's no talk in that article about helping her out, about finding out what might be wrong in her life that led her to make this choice.
It's terrible that this kind of thing happens, but not only for the reasons most people go on about -- the effect on the baby. Someone is looking after this baby, thank goodness. I hope that this young woman is okay, both physically and otherwise. Someone has to care about her, beyond caring about what she did.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Long story short, teenage girl gives birth in a hospital, leaves the next morning. She is being sought by police. It's a far from uncommon story. This one is less egregious than most in that the girl had her baby in a safe place and left it in a safe place. We've had many in my state where the mother -- often from a very poor family -- kills and tries to hide the baby out of (very real) fear of punishment.
There's the usual talk about wanting to reunite her with her baby, and the obligatory mention of concern for the mother's health, but stories like this, publicized in the news, have never seemed to me to be anything but an attempt to shame young women, to put their identities out there as a way of singling them out. Stories like this SHOULD be attempts to draw attention to the social and cultural factors that cause this sort of thing. The question shouldn't be "Why would she do that?" but "Why would she feel she HAD to do that?"
Can't the police follow up on this without bringing it into the media, issuing a description and a photo of her as though she were a criminal, and making a spectacle out of something that ought to be private, for the girl's own safety, if nothing else? I won't say I think abandoning a baby is a fantastic thing to do, but she did it in a hospital. Safer even than a police station. And chances are, a girl desperate enough to do this? There are problems in her life that this kind of publicity isn't going to help.
It's not even a case of they don't know who the mother was, which is often the case. This time, they do know. Her name is right there in the news.
The girl is 17. If the idea behind this sort of thing is that we should protect children, we should be protecting these young women who are, by legal definition, children themselves.
The idea of sending the police after a girl who likely felt she had no other choice, and who is probably both frightened and emotionally hurting, is just ludicrous. There's no talk in that article about helping her out, about finding out what might be wrong in her life that led her to make this choice.
It's terrible that this kind of thing happens, but not only for the reasons most people go on about -- the effect on the baby. Someone is looking after this baby, thank goodness. I hope that this young woman is okay, both physically and otherwise. Someone has to care about her, beyond caring about what she did.
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.