A small historical slice of teen pregnancy in the United States
In the bad old days when a teen girl turned up pregnant, there was going to be a wedding. As the old joke goes, "It was a formal wedding. Her daddy brought the white shotgun." Society, finding the shotgun marriage a bit harsh and sometimes unenforceable, has been adjusting their collective views on teen pregnancy ever since.
When I was in high school, there was a fair amount of sex going on among the student population. It was far more discrete then it is today. There were lots of rumors and some bragging, but for the most part physical evidence of actual sexual contact was concealed at all costs. A rumor can be written off to the parents as vicious gossip started by some arch enemy. God forbid that eye witness testimony get back to the parents and the teen(s) involved find themselves grounded until they turn 21.
One fairly reliable proof of intercourse is pregnancy. Unless you are really into the second coming of Christ, not many are willing to buy into the immaculate conception theory. Roe v. Wade was just over the horizon so short of a trip to a clinic in Mexico, there was no way to conceal pregnancy. As a result the girls of my generation took extraordinary steps to avoid becoming pregnant.
Birth control pills were difficult to get and state law at the time forbade their distribution to unmarried women. Contraceptive steps consisted primarily of condoms. Our local druggist was a Holier-then-thou type who would run screaming to the parents of any teen attempting to buy condoms. That meant many of the condoms used among my high school's population came from the insert-two-quarters machine on the bathroom wall in the gas station. To this day, those are not what anyone calls A-stock material. Failures occurred frequently. I busted a couple of those. According to my peers, I was not the only one busting those things.
A few girls did get pregnant during my four year stint in high school. Sadly, their peers, who would brag among themselves about their latest antics in the back seat of the GTO, would suddenly not know the newly pregnant friend. It was a sad thing to watch a formerly popular girl adjust to the lonely life of an outcast. Most of the time, the pregnant girl ended up leaving to "spend some time helping an aunt out of state" or some other euphemism for "shipped off to have the baby out of sight of the local community."
Linda got pregnant at 16 years old. Based on the recommendation of her parish priest she ended up confined in a semi-secure facility. She indicated that it was at least partially staffed by nuns. She said it was pretty much a prison setting with nice curtains and pictures on the walls. Once inside, the nuns along with added pressure from her parents, forced her to sign adoption papers. She delivered her child and that child was whisked away without her so much as getting a glance of it or even knowing its sex. Linda never recovered from the traumas suffered at the hands of her parents, the nuns and her former friends. She committed suicide over the following summer.
Another girl got pregnant late enough in high school that she graduated and got married all within seven days. That marriage lasted all of 19 months and left her as a 20 year old single mom with two babies to feed. Her ex-husband, the former high school all-star jock, opted out of the child support thing by moving out of state. (Back then that trick worked.)
However these lessons were not lost on the other girls of my generation. They saw, they learned and bent to peer pressure. The net result was increased vigilance and maybe a little less casual screwing around.
Fast forward to the late 1970s. The sixties gave us free love. The first part of the 70s gave us Roe v Wade and a law guaranteeing access to birth control to anyone regardless of age or marital status. The stigma of unwed pregnancy still kept girls very cautious about their sexual activities. The girls of the next generation were still dealing with parents rooted in past morality. The fear of announcing an unwanted pregnancy to parents was among the worse thing a daughter could face. Some didn't face it.
During this time I worked on an ambulance. We made a run to an upscale subdivision on an uncontrollable bleeding call. What we found was a teenage girl losing critical volume through a vaginal bleed. She had already saturated a couple of towels when her mother got up to see why she was going to the bathroom so often. Upon seeing all the blood her mother dialed 911. Once we got her mother out of the room, she told me she was pregnant and tried to abort using a coat hanger and instructions her boy friend gave her. She emphatically said that she did not want her parents to know under any circumstances.
"They will send me away," she said through the tears and pain. She lost consciousness on the way out of the house and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Fast Forward again to the 1990s. Things have changed dramatically. Pregnancy no longer carries the stigma it did in 1960s and 70s. High schools now have day care facilities that serve students who are also parents. A pregnant high school student is given support from the community, school and their peers alike.
I picked up my daughter early from high school early one day. There in the front hall was one of her friends, also waiting on a ride. Her friend was very pregnant. She was so big that my first thought was she ate a beach ball. Either that or she had a set of triplets in there. My daughter and her friends came out and greeted the round girl. They hugged her, patted her belly and told her things like, "You look so pretty" and "You are so lucky" and what a beautiful baby she was going to have. I sat there watching my daughter dote over her pregnant friend thinking, "Oh my God, [my daughter] will be pregnant before the year is out."
My daughter and I left the school. While driving the scene kept playing through my mind, my daughter congratulating this girl and telling her how lucky she is. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it and trigger my daughter's auto-rebellion response. After a time, using the most casual voice I good muster I asked her, "[My Daughter], do you really think [pregnant girl] is lucky?"
"Oh Hell no," she said, "Her life is over."
With a sigh of relief, I relaxed. "Just curious." I said and dropped the subject.
Today, you cannot open a news paper or watch a news program without hearing about the 18 Gloucester High School girls that intentionally got pregnant. No, they were not trying to trap boy friends. They set out to get pregnant as a group so they could pool their resources and raise their babies together. I don't think that any of us will ever know how they ever got it in their heads that this was a good idea.
No amount of free contraceptives would have stopped this act stunningly bad judgment. In their state of mind, the last thing they wanted were contraceptives. In fact, one of the girls was so desperate to fulfill her pregnancy wish, she enlisted the services of a 24 year old homeless man to accomplish her goal.
It was free pregnancy testing through the school that tipped authorities off to the "pregnancy pact."
The school started looking into the spike in teen-aged pregnancies in October when the students - all under 16 - filtered into the school health clinic for pregnancy tests, Sullivan told the national magazine.
“Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan told the magazine.
Some of the students, upon hearing the news, started talking of plans for baby showers, Sullivan told the magazine.
Boston Herald: Gloucester High teens involved in pregnancy pact
Yes, times have changed dramatically.
Do I want to go back to the bad old days where pregnant teenage girls were shunned and shipped off? No.
Do I want to see the unwed pregnancy shamed to a lethal level? Absolutely not.
That said, when we as a society have reached a point where over 20 girls can some how collectively arrive at the mutual decision that having babies as high school girls is a good idea, somewhere we dropped the ball. Dropped it and kicked it in the toilet. Something has to change.
EDIT and CORRECTION:
All those years ago, Linda named the facility she was held in during her pregnancy and delivery. I received a comment (below) signed by Sr. Marguerite, l.s.p. stating that the organization I remember Linda naming never worked with unwed mothers.
After doing some research and making a couple calls to some friends in Denver, it appears this is the case. The web page from the organization Linda named has no reference to any maternity care. Everything I can find on a Sunday night indicates that organization never cared for unwed mothers.
A friend I drove ambulance with back in the 70s thinks it is possible that at one time a residential teen pregnancy center shared a building with the organization in question, but he said there is way too much water under the bridge and he cannot swear to it. That sounds familiar to me as well, but that was then is this is now and frankly, I cannot remember for sure either.
In the interest of a fair and accurate telling of the tales from my mis-spent youth, I deleted any reference to the organization I thought Linda named.
I would rather be corrected then wrong.
A tip of the hat to Sr. Marguerite for bringing this to my attention.
When I was in high school, there was a fair amount of sex going on among the student population. It was far more discrete then it is today. There were lots of rumors and some bragging, but for the most part physical evidence of actual sexual contact was concealed at all costs. A rumor can be written off to the parents as vicious gossip started by some arch enemy. God forbid that eye witness testimony get back to the parents and the teen(s) involved find themselves grounded until they turn 21.
One fairly reliable proof of intercourse is pregnancy. Unless you are really into the second coming of Christ, not many are willing to buy into the immaculate conception theory. Roe v. Wade was just over the horizon so short of a trip to a clinic in Mexico, there was no way to conceal pregnancy. As a result the girls of my generation took extraordinary steps to avoid becoming pregnant.
Birth control pills were difficult to get and state law at the time forbade their distribution to unmarried women. Contraceptive steps consisted primarily of condoms. Our local druggist was a Holier-then-thou type who would run screaming to the parents of any teen attempting to buy condoms. That meant many of the condoms used among my high school's population came from the insert-two-quarters machine on the bathroom wall in the gas station. To this day, those are not what anyone calls A-stock material. Failures occurred frequently. I busted a couple of those. According to my peers, I was not the only one busting those things.
A few girls did get pregnant during my four year stint in high school. Sadly, their peers, who would brag among themselves about their latest antics in the back seat of the GTO, would suddenly not know the newly pregnant friend. It was a sad thing to watch a formerly popular girl adjust to the lonely life of an outcast. Most of the time, the pregnant girl ended up leaving to "spend some time helping an aunt out of state" or some other euphemism for "shipped off to have the baby out of sight of the local community."
Linda got pregnant at 16 years old. Based on the recommendation of her parish priest she ended up confined in a semi-secure facility. She indicated that it was at least partially staffed by nuns. She said it was pretty much a prison setting with nice curtains and pictures on the walls. Once inside, the nuns along with added pressure from her parents, forced her to sign adoption papers. She delivered her child and that child was whisked away without her so much as getting a glance of it or even knowing its sex. Linda never recovered from the traumas suffered at the hands of her parents, the nuns and her former friends. She committed suicide over the following summer.
Another girl got pregnant late enough in high school that she graduated and got married all within seven days. That marriage lasted all of 19 months and left her as a 20 year old single mom with two babies to feed. Her ex-husband, the former high school all-star jock, opted out of the child support thing by moving out of state. (Back then that trick worked.)
However these lessons were not lost on the other girls of my generation. They saw, they learned and bent to peer pressure. The net result was increased vigilance and maybe a little less casual screwing around.
Fast forward to the late 1970s. The sixties gave us free love. The first part of the 70s gave us Roe v Wade and a law guaranteeing access to birth control to anyone regardless of age or marital status. The stigma of unwed pregnancy still kept girls very cautious about their sexual activities. The girls of the next generation were still dealing with parents rooted in past morality. The fear of announcing an unwanted pregnancy to parents was among the worse thing a daughter could face. Some didn't face it.
During this time I worked on an ambulance. We made a run to an upscale subdivision on an uncontrollable bleeding call. What we found was a teenage girl losing critical volume through a vaginal bleed. She had already saturated a couple of towels when her mother got up to see why she was going to the bathroom so often. Upon seeing all the blood her mother dialed 911. Once we got her mother out of the room, she told me she was pregnant and tried to abort using a coat hanger and instructions her boy friend gave her. She emphatically said that she did not want her parents to know under any circumstances.
"They will send me away," she said through the tears and pain. She lost consciousness on the way out of the house and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Fast Forward again to the 1990s. Things have changed dramatically. Pregnancy no longer carries the stigma it did in 1960s and 70s. High schools now have day care facilities that serve students who are also parents. A pregnant high school student is given support from the community, school and their peers alike.
I picked up my daughter early from high school early one day. There in the front hall was one of her friends, also waiting on a ride. Her friend was very pregnant. She was so big that my first thought was she ate a beach ball. Either that or she had a set of triplets in there. My daughter and her friends came out and greeted the round girl. They hugged her, patted her belly and told her things like, "You look so pretty" and "You are so lucky" and what a beautiful baby she was going to have. I sat there watching my daughter dote over her pregnant friend thinking, "Oh my God, [my daughter] will be pregnant before the year is out."
My daughter and I left the school. While driving the scene kept playing through my mind, my daughter congratulating this girl and telling her how lucky she is. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it and trigger my daughter's auto-rebellion response. After a time, using the most casual voice I good muster I asked her, "[My Daughter], do you really think [pregnant girl] is lucky?"
"Oh Hell no," she said, "Her life is over."
With a sigh of relief, I relaxed. "Just curious." I said and dropped the subject.
Today, you cannot open a news paper or watch a news program without hearing about the 18 Gloucester High School girls that intentionally got pregnant. No, they were not trying to trap boy friends. They set out to get pregnant as a group so they could pool their resources and raise their babies together. I don't think that any of us will ever know how they ever got it in their heads that this was a good idea.
No amount of free contraceptives would have stopped this act stunningly bad judgment. In their state of mind, the last thing they wanted were contraceptives. In fact, one of the girls was so desperate to fulfill her pregnancy wish, she enlisted the services of a 24 year old homeless man to accomplish her goal.
It was free pregnancy testing through the school that tipped authorities off to the "pregnancy pact."
The school started looking into the spike in teen-aged pregnancies in October when the students - all under 16 - filtered into the school health clinic for pregnancy tests, Sullivan told the national magazine.
“Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan told the magazine.
Some of the students, upon hearing the news, started talking of plans for baby showers, Sullivan told the magazine.
Boston Herald: Gloucester High teens involved in pregnancy pact
Yes, times have changed dramatically.
Do I want to go back to the bad old days where pregnant teenage girls were shunned and shipped off? No.
Do I want to see the unwed pregnancy shamed to a lethal level? Absolutely not.
That said, when we as a society have reached a point where over 20 girls can some how collectively arrive at the mutual decision that having babies as high school girls is a good idea, somewhere we dropped the ball. Dropped it and kicked it in the toilet. Something has to change.
EDIT and CORRECTION:
All those years ago, Linda named the facility she was held in during her pregnancy and delivery. I received a comment (below) signed by Sr. Marguerite, l.s.p. stating that the organization I remember Linda naming never worked with unwed mothers.
After doing some research and making a couple calls to some friends in Denver, it appears this is the case. The web page from the organization Linda named has no reference to any maternity care. Everything I can find on a Sunday night indicates that organization never cared for unwed mothers.
A friend I drove ambulance with back in the 70s thinks it is possible that at one time a residential teen pregnancy center shared a building with the organization in question, but he said there is way too much water under the bridge and he cannot swear to it. That sounds familiar to me as well, but that was then is this is now and frankly, I cannot remember for sure either.
In the interest of a fair and accurate telling of the tales from my mis-spent youth, I deleted any reference to the organization I thought Linda named.
I would rather be corrected then wrong.
A tip of the hat to Sr. Marguerite for bringing this to my attention.