Teen Pregnancy Pact In Massachusetts High School Rocks City

Reuters:

A Massachusetts city is investigating an apparent teenage "pregnancy pact" that has at least 17 high-school girls expecting babies, four times more than last year, including many aged 16 or younger.

A high school health clinic in the city of Gloucester became suspicious after seeing a surge in girls seeking pregnancy tests. Local officials said on Thursday nearly half of those who became pregnant appear to have entered into a pact to have their babies together over the year.

Read the whole story: Reuters

Comments

[ohiodem250]

I'm a Democrat but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for these kids' condoms. Nobody ever paid for mine and I damn well won't pay for theirs. Maybe if these kids had jobs so they could make money to pay for their condoms they'd realize how much more they'd have to work to raise a kid...then they probably would avoid pregnancy like the plague.

[Jazzcomedian]

In the Black community there has been an epidemic of teen pregnancy with many of the young girls saying when asked why, "They wanted something to love, who would love them." Now we have these White teenage girls who are forming pacts to have babies. In both cases it seems as though the parents have not had the requisite serious talk with their children (boys included) about STDs, pregnancy, and protection, as they enter this active hormonal state we all know so well. I'm not in favor of the "abstinence" the conservatives preach because I don't think it's realistic, but liberals aren't preaching promiscuous behavior either.

I do know that my friends that have kids say that young girls are dressing more suggestive much earlier than previous generations. Something is amiss, and I don't know the answer. I can't even speculate as to why. I'd like to hear what the girls and their parents have to say. Until we hear from them, we'll never have a clue.

[georgiaR]

I would like to know if one of these girls was on the honor roll. They sound incredibly stupid to me.

[bentenrai]

As granny says, street smarts will always win over book smarts.

[Trueheart]

Not stupid. Ignorant. Insular. Living in a culture which doesn't really have a problem with young people getting married right out of high school and assuming traditional roles as fisherman and fishwife. Having a baby isn't the worst thing that can happen to a 17-18 year old. That's how old my mother was when she had me, and she went on to become a psychotherapist.

[Trueheart]

I lived in the City of Gloucester for many years. Over the last few decades, a lot of wealthy yuppies have moved into the area, but the locals persist in holding on to an island mentality. When CBS ran this story, they described it as a "sleepy fishing village," but it ain't. Fishing has always been a tough way to make a living. Drag netting and factory ships have pretty much shut out individual enterprise. Men feel powerless and obsolete. The lifestyle revolves around risk-taking, heavy drinking and brawling. The girls are bold and brash, capable of throwing a punch as good as the boys, and don't hesitate to do so. The community celebrates flamboyant behavior.

A generation ago, this "pregnancy pact" couldn't have existed without an accompanying wave of shotgun weddings. But the availability of welfare makes it possible for a young girl to get along without a husband....so why not? In 9 months, they'll be having a mass christening at St. Ann's and by spring, they'll march their strollers down the Boulevard and have their very own Easter parade. This story will become just another event in the outrageous cultural history of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

[Catharsis]

Can you do a documentary? I might actually pay money for it.

[Trueheart]

Yes, but my perspective on the culture of this small city would probably make me a candidate for a pair of cement overshoes.

By the by....have been talking to friends there, and they insist that there was NO PACT. There was a spike in high school pregnancies, but 17 girls did not get together and pledge to get pregnant. The high school has a free day care center for teen mothers, who are encouraged to complete their education. The stigma attached to being an unwed mother has been removed.

[Trueheart]

If you are serious, it would have to be done with a great deal of sensitivity. I could hook you up with some very talented people in Gloucester who might do it, but not if it made a freak show out of the locals.

[TheBlackCat]

True,
My dad's family is from from Beverly, and he keeps a sailboat in Gloucester. Very good depiction of this town. You should expand this post into an essay on the subject.

[Chrisa]

Where are their parents? Wouldn't the world be just a little better if good parenting was still the 'in' thing to do. Maybe then teenagers today wouldn't be such shallow narcissists.
Teenagers also need to understand that not everything is going to be okay. In Hollywood, you can put virtually no work in, but it will all work out in the end. Teenagers just don't understand what it means to be successful. To put it in layman's terms, all except a special few are as dumb as rocks. It doesn't have to be like this, but it is. Americans have become so spoiled, especially teenagers, that we expect everything to drop on our front door without any work. They're going to get a surprise, come 25, when life isn't what they thought it would be. Out of options, they would then be doomed to failure and misery in some impoverished hellhole for the rest of their lives.
Is anyone surprised by these cases, when our own culture treats women like dirt? I'm suprised more don't happen, but I'm sure more will. We are in a moral recession, striving toward moral bankruptcy.

[hypnotoad72]

Two things:

1. While some of the problem is our youth being reckless, entitled, apathetic, taking credit for others' work, and so on... that's just one piece of the puzzle. Since children grow up, look at their ambient environment, and invariably do what it says, there's a LOT more going on.

2. Our culture isn't perfect, but it does treat women far, far better than women in other cultures. Why not send women over to those countries and see what happens in a month... naah, try one week...

3. "Life is what we make of it" - an oft-forgotten phrase and proof that life is full of surprises, to answer your question "Why did you say 'two things' when there's three?"

[Trueheart]

I would bet the farm that most of these kids have parents who started their families right out of high school. Having a child at an early age is not necessarily a death sentence or a recipe for disaster. Gloucester is an economically depressed city with a dying fishing industry, but it has a strong sense of community, and these girls will not be ostracized. They may even enjoy a bit of celebrity because of the way this story about a phony "pact" has been so widely distributed in the press.

[Chrisa]

Welcome to the new American culture. The culture where women are only as good as their bodies. Our new culture not only says that women are useless if not good looking, but also says that there's no need to be intelligent and female. You just wouldn't want to be fat or ugly. That's the worst thing in the world.
Wonder why girls are doing this? Take a look around. We've become so perverted as a nation that our very moralistic core is self destructing. There's no decency left in today's youth. It's all been stripped away by perverts with power. These perverts in power, unfortunately, are who control the airwaves. Thus, we get crap like reality shows that only show beautiful, skinny woman, and throw it into teenage girls' faces: want to be know and recieve attention? be like this.
The truth is, kids today have no idea how to become independent of their parents. They would never hack it in the real world. Ask the average teenager what their dream is. I guarantee that they'll say something like "being a hollywood actor / actress." Our media keeps feeding them pipedreams, but it is not entirely their fault. We've become so jaded as a culture that we can no longer understand fact from fiction. People need to understand that these reality shows and stars like Paris Hilton are not reality, yet we have teenagers dressing like Atlantic City whores.

[sandiegoconservative]

Careful. You are trying to state morality issues on this liberal web site.

[hypnotoad72]

Like conservativism, liberalism has many facets and levels within. Many liberals happen TO be moral, and disagree with those who say it's "freedom" to be as sleazy or disrespectful as they want. BIG difference.

[uheardme]

Perhaps if morality was shared on a conservative website, we would see so many republicans hooking up in mens' rooms and brothels all over the country.

[hypnotoad72]

Or no need to be intelligent; the media keeps saying how everything's being offshored.

[Maurerguy]

I can't believe folks are buying this story. This is the classic unsubstantiated scandal that turns out on closer examination to be bogus. Sure, it's a great excuse to pontificate about the state of the nation, something I have been known to do, but I'll be astounded if this story isn't debunked, or else quietly "disappeared" within the next couple weeks.

And why is Huffpost competing with Fox and the Enquirer to jump on this kind of story anyway?

[ohiodem250]

It's funny how this comment can come out of the context of a culture that openly disdains and mocks the Muslim hijad. Maybe we wouldn't have as many teen pregnancies if American women all wore veils. Obviously, I just simplified the issue. But I think it goes to show that both ways of life have particularly wicked corollaries. In summation, the new 21st Century ideology should be one that shuns ideologies: wrap your head around that.

[Trueheart]

I agree with much that you have to say about the way sexuality is marketed to the young. But I think what is going on in Gloucester is not new. In fact, it is old. My grandmother used to say "The first baby is usually a 7-month child." What's different is that in her day, the advent of that 7-month child's birth precipitated what is commonly known as a shotgun wedding. The next step in this story is that an army of social workers will be assigned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to force the girls to name the fathers so that they can be held accountable for child support. What a world!

[wandagag]

Wow, when I first heard this story yesterday I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I mean, how cool is it that a group of girls 16 and under were able to coordinate a mass pregnancy. SEVENTEEN people??? Awesome! I can't even get FOUR friends of mine to agree on a place and time to get dinner, let alone start families. (And we're 23.)
Seriously, these girls have shown an incredible amount of foresight and planning that will totally be of use to them in the business world. So many people my age are apathetic and have no motivation. It so refreshing to hear a case of kids younger than me getting together, setting a goal, and moving 100% towards that goal. Decisiveness is a rare thing and these girls have it. If only our government had a fraction of the creativity and resourcefulness these girls have shown in getting pregnant we might actually have jobs and working public institutions.

[hypnotoad72]

Our government is $9 trillion debt, losing jobs all over the place, and seems to think continuing the same things will resolve those problems.

If you ask me, those girls are far dumber...

What's the legal age for boinging again? Methinks the boys who got them preggo might be guilty of statutory rape...

[kburlz]

This is because we are undereducating kids on sexuality. It was obviously going on in this school seeing as how the nurse and doctor quit due to related issues. With all this absticence only crap, we are teaching as little as possible, and now we're surprised when these kids fill in the blanks themselves with dumb decisions.

[hypnotoad72]

And then we hear other stories like the two 14 year olds (M+F) caught boinging each other in a bathroom, and thought it was okay because he was using a condom.

They don't sound very naive to me.

I'll agree; more education is needed. Abstinence, responsibility and respect for one's self and for others, how condoms don't always prevent disease or pregnancy (they can fail)... of course, whether that's up to the parents (too busy with x number of jobs or maybe too apathetic) or the school systems (that don't care much about anything and haven't for decades, I must say...) is another issue.

Real change is going to annoy quite a few on the furthest ends of the political spectrum; especially those on the Left, ironically.

[Redrover666]

Well at least they didn't compromise far left ideology and violate those girls privacy by talking with their parents.

Bravo democrats!

[Jazzcomedian]

I'm not a prude, and I have no problem with casual or pre-marital s*x as long as it's protected, but something is amiss in our society. In the AA community there has been an epidemic of teen pregnancy with man of the young girls saying, "They wanted something to love, who would love them." Sad. Now we have these White teenage girls who are forming pacts to have babies. Sad. In both cases it seems as though the parents have not had the requisite serious talk with their children (boys included) as they enter this active hormonal state we all know so well. I'm not in favor of the "abstinence" the conservatives preach because I don't think it's realistic, but I don't think liberals are preaching promiscuous behavior either.

I do know that my friends that have kids say that young girls are dressing more s*xually suggestive much earlier than previous generations. Something is amiss, and I don't know the answer. This is mind-boggling. I'd like to hear what the girls and their parents have to say.

BTW, the reason I put a star in the words is because the "bad words" filter won't let me spell it out, and refuses to post it. Weird

[uheardme]

This is an epidemic in a white community. Stay focused.

[wadenelson1]

"One by homeless man"

"The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."

[hypnotoad72]

If Jesus came back, the furthest on the Right would call him a Communist, and those furthest on the Left would call him a Bible-thumping lunatic...

And that's the saddest aspect of it all...

[TheBlackCat]

Ain't that the truth!!

[LaShon]

IMO, todays culture has a lot to do with influencing teens. Making life seem more glamorous then it really is. Movies like Juno and Knocked Up (which are great), teens may watch and try to imitate or even think they may have the same outcome. And it's not just the movies, but much, much more that's going on in our (anything goes) world today.

At any rate, with the rising cost of fuel, food, etc., you just have to ask, What Were They Thinking?

[scornflakes]

I blame the E*Trade commercials with the talking stock-trading baby. These girls obviously expect their babies to be financial whizzes right out of the womb.

[livesimply]

Good one....their babies can earn their livings.

[livesimply]

It is amazing to me that people try to make this a political issue. It is very, very sad; for the girls, for their parents, but mostly for those poor babies they are bringing into the world because they are the ones who will suffer the most from the girls' stu pid, selfish choice.

[browndog2]

Strollers in the hallways. How quaint. And to say the town is rocked is very mis-leading. They are, but only due to all the media coverage.