Teenage pregnancy: Your thoughts?

It astounds me that I got better sex-ed from a Catholic school than most people get in public school.

Anyhow, usually people don't phrase it like that. I've met people who seriously think we should be teaching kids exactly how to have sex (and usually that we should be giving them birth control in the process) somewhere between Sixth and Eighth Grade...

And then there's the Swiss kindergarten thing linked to a while back...

-shudder-

Let's just say that after watching Maury for years, I am very, very glad that I missed the window of opportunity to become a pregnant teen. Of course, I plan not to have any children with my own body ... ever, to be honest. That doesn't make me a child hater; I just don't want to be pregnant.

I've seen a few episodes of Teen Mom, and it "glorifies" teen pregnancy only in that it portrays the mothers as people with every day problems and trying to make the best of it, as opposed to the old daytime talkshow freakshow where they parade the most provocative individuals they can find.

Teen moms are people who made bad decisions. This doesn't make them bad people.

edited 5th Sep '11 2:02:31 AM by JethroQWalrustitty

What is there to offer thoughts on?

Teenage mothers are exactly like any other mother, how well their parenthood will go depends on a ton of factors, the strength of the relationship with their partner, their health, their financial situation, I could go on.

I suppose one is probably less likely to have any of these things be in the "good" sector of the scale earlier in life, but there's no reason they can't be. Even if they're not, some teen moms turn out great anyway. I know an 18 year old ex-classmate of mine who is raising her daughter on her own, she's doing decently enough to support both of them, and I believe her when she says she's happy.

I've never seen a non-moralistic argument as to why they shouldn't. Eighth grade is around when people start having sex, in my experience.

edited 5th Sep '11 2:32:14 AM by BlixtySlycat

Doma Doma: "What what what. If welfare is a safety net, why would you be less qualified if you have a dependent?"

Discourage the idiots, and hopefully help them to starve to death if they won't be discouraged.

Negative incentives don't work that way. They penalize but don't prevent. Conservatives seem to be hell bent on causing a humanitarian crisis in the name of common sense.

Penalising works just as well as far as I'm concerned. Anyone who won't be prevented from doing bad things, even knowing that there are penalties to it, deserves to be penalised simply for being that stupid.

edited 5th Sep '11 4:51:12 AM by ekuseruekuseru

The end goal of most of these systems is to fix the problem. If your system won't do that then it's pretty pointless, regardless of whether or not it 'punishes' people.

Why punish, when you could solve problems? Why cause more problems out of principle?

Fuck it, I will never understand people who lack the first semblance of solidarity and pragmatism. I freely admit I'mm an idealist, but at least my ideals aim towards a society that's good for most people, not a society that punishes anyone who doesn't succeed.

This "crime" isn't particularly worth such justice, I think. It's still before the point where my will to help them hasn't been overpowered by my disgust for their idiocy.

You realize that they're usually paid a ton of money to be on the show? Once it's over they get a fat paycheck...

True solidarity (regardless of whether it's worth worrying about, or even desirable) can only exist once the screw-ups are out of the picture.

I never said, after all, that I was theoretically committed to helping these people. I'm theoretically committed to not helping these people, but rather to encouraging them to help themselves (that is, discouraging them from not helping themselves) - what I mean to say is, I propose not helping "these people" because they are "these people". The pragmatic action from this point of view is to enact policy which effects negative incentives for under-age pregnancy.

I don't see how what I've proposed is anti-pragmatic. What would be the pragmatic thing to do would be to decide upon a stance and apply policy to support that stance. So if it's "prohibit", you remove the problem as it occurs. If it's "discourage", you provide incentives in favour of things that aren't that, or penalties against the problem. If it's "non-intervention", you let society deal with it. And so on.

And while personally, I'm for discouraging it, because non-intervention isn't working, politically and philosophically I'm for non-intervention regardless of whether it brings about what I would prefer to be the case.

As a matter of fact, pragmatism and idealism are divorced concepts. A pragmatist must be a realist in theory so that they can really apply that theory - the very basis of pragmatism.

Anyway, starting to get off topic, so I'm done with that line of discussion.

edited 5th Sep '11 8:09:33 AM by ekuseruekuseru

Relevant, how? The point is, that the show features a variety of teenage mothers, showing what hardships they face, with some group meetings and such to act as a support group. The fact that the network isn't just cashing in on their suffering and leaving them broke is a good thing.

Because teens make stupid decisions. If you allow a mistake like that ruin some people's and their innocent children's lives by cutting benefits as a punishment, it won't affect the rate of teen pregnancies, not at least on the short term, but it will create hideous social reprecautions, in the short, and in the long term.

The best method for lowering rates of teenage pregnancy is education. Time. Social programs that ensure that if someone makes that mistake they won't be left on their own, and their children won't jus do the same afterwards.

Except it fucking is. How many times must facts be repeated in this thread to deaf ears of ideologues?

He's right; Teen sex, pregnancy, and abortion have all been on a steady decline from the late 1980's to 2005. Pregnancy and abortion haven't just been going down by per capita rate, either — they appear to have been dropping in actual number despite increasing population.

The last-minute spike in all of them in the last year covered by that study is worrying, however.

edited 5th Sep '11 1:06:39 PM by Pykrete

It's relevant because the experience of the women is fake. They just have to put up with it for a little while, and then they get a fat pay check and are taken care of. It gives an unrealistic representation of what it's actually like to be that age and pregnant...

They have family members turn against them, broken relationships, problems with school. And yes, the money will keep them from going to abject poverty, which is a good thing. Yes, it's not entirely authentic, but I rather not watch a documentary about a mother losing their future, while with a young child (I saw plenty of that when I was a kid).

Rather than looking at this in terms of whether we're helping or hurting the teens, I think it might be better to look at this in terms of whether we're helping or hurting their children.

Also, obligatory.

edited 5th Sep '11 3:13:28 PM by feotakahari

In which case, giving the mothers money helps the children. QED.

...or may end up for alcohol, cigarettes or drugs instead of helping the child.

...yes, people who are underage are the only group of "parents" I can think of where preemptively taking the child into social services is probably a better plan than leaving it with the parent(s)...

When talking about the mom's on the show, noo, I don't think any of them are that irresponsible. And aside from drug addicts, there is a negliable percent of mothers actually so selfish as to use any extra money they have on themselves instead of the kids.

Using a small minority of bad teen mothers to justify penalizing all teen mothers is just cruel and shortsighted.

I also am against automatically taking kids of teen moms in custody. If the mother is underaged, her parent's responnsibility to look after her still apply, and apply also to her child. Simple as that.

It may coem as a surprise to you, but not all teen mothers are terrible parents, not all of them are drug addicts. And if you bothered to take a cursory glance of the stats posted, you'd realize that your parents, grandparents, or some of your friends parents or grandparents might have been teen parents. It was much more common in the past.

Racism and sexism were more common in the past too. Shall we go back to using them as the standard, as well?

People who imply that just because someone made a silly mistake that they knew better to make, or if they were born into a disadvantaged home, deserve to starve really need to try to make it on minimum wage these days.

Some people make stupid, life-ruining mistakes as teenagers, you say?
I never did, and I don't see what's wrong with holding other people to the same standards to which I hold myself. For the most part, they pass, anyway.

It seems a pretty basic consideration, if you have a behaviour in society which is somehow unacceptable, irresponsible or unsustainable, that making it less unsustainable, less irresponsible, and thereby less unacceptable by means of government handouts does nothing to actually remove the problem. There seems to be a pretty decent consensus that teenagers are not suited for parenthood, for any of numerous reasons, and recognising this I think that we can at the very least identify it as a somehow unacceptable, irresponsible or unsustainable phenomenon. So let's be pragmatic about it.

edited 6th Sep '11 5:34:45 AM by ekuseruekuseru

Missing the point by a lightyear. I'm not saying that it being common is a good thing, I'm saying that it has been a fact of society for long, it used to be more common, and despite that, the modern generations turned out OK enough.

I'm not saying more teens should get pregnant, I'm saying that if a teen gets pregnant, society needs to support them for the sake of the child.

[ed.] I didn't screw up as a teen either, but I know a lot of people will. I won't hold my performance as a standard for other people. I was also terribly anti-social, i wouldn't want that as some sort of categorical imperative for youth.

You are far from being pragmatic. You want to increase the amount of suffering and social problems in order to penalize people who don't meet your own moral standards.

Except that it does. How can you constantly miss the actual proven facts presented to you? There is no way to completely remove "the problem" of teenage pregnancy short of execution of any teenage mother. There are many ways to allievate the phenomenon, and society seems to be well at work on doing that.

edited 6th Sep '11 5:59:17 AM by JethroQWalrustitty