Teenage girls with a baby are punished.

Emit

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Mon Mar-31-08 07:50 PM
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Teenage girls with a baby are punished.

Edited on Mon Mar-31-08 08:25 PM by Emit

And those of you who have never experienced what a teenage pregnancy is like in your own family or in a close friend's family, or from the perspective of volunteering with unwed teenage mothers, might not be able to imagine the punishment that comes with it.

I speak from personal experience. When my 14 yo sister became pregnant in 1970, she hid her pregnancy from my parents for 5 months out of fear and embarrassment. She hid it from her friends, and from her older two siblings (I was the youngest, 8 at the time). She hid it from school; from teachers and counselors. She had no one -- her only friend she told was miles away (we had just moved at the beginning of fall and she got pregnant in the summer before we moved). She didn't even tell the young teenage boy with whom she had conceived. I can assure you, the burden she bore at that time was punishment.

My sister was no longer able to attend her high school. The school wouldn't allow it, so she went to a home for unwed teenage mothers -- can you imagine being 5 months pregnant at the age of 14 and being sent away to some strange home in a big city? We moved shortly after my nephew was born, and my sister did go back to finish her HS degree, but the punishment continued. My mother stayed home to watch the baby, and that created untold discomfort between a young, confused, scared teenage girl of 15 and a mother who was resentful, and ashamed and angry at herself and her daughter. When my sister was a senior, she was nominated for HS Prom Queen. She was very excited and proud. Within a week of the contest, the female Principal called my mother and told her that my sister's name would have to be withdrawn, because, as the Principal put it, "An unwed teenage mother representing the high school was not the image the school wanted to present." I can assure you, the burden she bore at that time was punishment.

I could go on, and tell you about the opportunities missed for my sister, about how she rushed into marriage with with an unstable young man because she likely felt she had few choices. I could tell you about the resentment that was created from this situation between her and my parents, particularly my mother, who despite being a decent and good person, had such difficulty, such anger and embarrassment about the situation, that to this day, they can barely talk about it, even though they talk almost every day and love each other very much. It's hard to put into words how difficult this was for them both. I could go on and tell you about the missed education she had, about how her dreams were never really fulfilled, because what was best for her was to take short cuts in order to support herself and her child. I can tell you about how she missed the best part of her teenage years. But I won't go on, because frankly, it is painful. All of this, I can assure you, was punishment.

My sister never regrets the birth of her child, although she does regret the decision she made to have sex. Nor does she feel it was her child who punished her -- but she is sensitive to the punishment she received from her own family, her school, and society, in general. And while times have changed, and it is likely not unheard of these days for the HS Prom Queen to be a teenage mother, I can tell you there are still burdens that it creates -- shame from family and friends and teachers and schools, opportunities lost, that, in turn, become a punishment for the girl. I know this from my own experience as well, from working with alcohol and drug addicts in women-with-children programs, and from living down the street from a family who used to take in unwed teenage mothers.

Let's put this into perspective and context. Teenage girls with a baby are punished.

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