teen moms.

totally not broaching a controversial subject here or anything.

actually, this isn't the time [braindead from GRE this morning] or place do this issue justice, but i did find something new that i wanted to share: girl-mom.com. it's a website devoted to "support, community, and education for young mamas." i really like the mission statement at the top of the website:

Teenage pregnancy is not a "crisis" or "epidemic," like so many people would like us to believe. The only true epidemic associated with teen pregnancy is the overwhelming and universal lack of support available to young mothers. The only true crisis is the denial of the fact that teenage girls can be, are, and always have been, both sexual and maternal beings, with the capacity to love, procreate, and nurture.

We love our children fiercely. We protect and care for them like any mother, of any age, would. Through Girl-Mom, We hope to slowly show that to the world.

Girl-Mom in no way encourages teen pregnancy, as some critics have implied. Girl-Mom encourages mothers. We encourage all young women who have chosen to become mothers. We encourage all young mothers to stand up for themselves, to fight for their children, to empower themselves and to defy the notion that being young means that you are unworthy of parenthood.

in the old days, before i read arlene gerominus, i thought i might spend my days doing teen pregs prevention outreach in the community somewhere. turns out, geronimus argues, for some people - low-income women of color, black women in particular - the teen years are the best ones to do your childbearing. how is this possible? a variety of structural reasons. what it boils down to is that many of these young women aren't going to college. some can't even finish high school without having to hold down a full-time job. if these women are going to have kids, biology is going to kick in sooner rather than later, while they still have support networks to depend on at least in part for financial assistance or childcare. it's the weathering hypothesis. google it.

obviously, it doesn't always make this much sense. many women who become pregnant in their teens don't have anyone to turn to. some are not so jazzed about being pregnant, but others are, and this is not as irrational as many think. well-meaning ivory tower feminists can preach about the benefits of education and "going places" in the world by postponing childbearing, but the reality for many women is that they aren't exactly movin' on up to the east side. teenage childbearing is a much more complicated issue than we often make it out to be. i'm sure many of these young women would argue that the problem they have with their "situation" has a lot more to do with the dearth of affordable healthcare and childcare and general support than with the children themselves.

i'm not saying we should give up on helping all young women [and young men, for that matter, since reproductive health is everyone's responsibility]. i will always advocate for education and outreach, as well as services for teenage mothers who want to get back on the career/education track. but these women are amazing [seriously, read some of this stuff], and they deserve respect, not pity.

it's funny how nothing is ever as simple as it is in high school. sometimes i think naïveté was a blessing that peaced out far too soon.

[note: here is what i think i'm citing: A. Geronimus, "On Teenage Childbearing and Neonatal Mortality in the United States," Population and Development Review, 13:245-279, 1987. but i could be wrong. i can't seem to find my coursepack... and yeah, i know it's old, but it's still relevant]