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Did anyone else see the piece about teenage parents in high school in the Washington Post Outlook section on Sunday? It's rare to get the kind of close-up look offered by Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at Alexandria's T.C. Williams High School, where 70 girls—almost all low-income black or Hispanic students—out of a 2,000-plus student body are either pregnant or already mothers and now have an in-school day care facility, Tiny Titans. He focused on an issue blurred in the Bristol Palin coverage: mainstreaming adolescent parents and its dilemmas. Welsh was unsettled less by the absence of stigma and more by the not-so-tacit atmosphere, and assumption by the girls, of approval. Sure, there is a required "family life" course at school that duly covers the dangers of teenage sexuality and pregnancy, and the Adolescent Health Center is a few blocks away. But as a social worker in the support network put it, "I don't personally accept it, but once a girl is pregnant, I have to be all open arms."
It made me wonder if schools have considered even more mainstreaming, with a twist. What might be the impact of having teen mothers—after they're done boasting about their pregnant bellies (as they evidently do) and deep into dirty diapers—help give those "family life" classes? Welsh quotes one mother who sounds ready to give her classmates an earful about "how difficult their lives are going to be if they have a baby." Are there enough others to be a group of peer advisers? If the adults can't convey disapproval, maybe the kids could help—and convincingly.
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Judith, I agree that the right messenger (at the right moment) could deliver most of your speech on gender. But maybe it would be easier for a woman to achieve liftoff. Anybody else remember Nicole Hollander's Sylvia cartoon on the wage gap? From her classic, Ma, Can I Be a Feminist and Still Like Men? (A: Sure, just like you can be a vegetarian and like fried chicken.) In it, four people respond to the question, How do you feel about equality for women? "I feel that women should get equal pay for equal work,'' says the white guy. "I think it's only simple justice that women get equal pay for equal work,'' says the Hispanic guy. "I think if a woman's doing the same job a man is doing, she should get the same pay,'' says the black guy. "Equality for women,'' says the Hillary stand-in, "means that our potential for physical, intellectual and emotional growth be supported and nurtured. It means being recognized as full and valuable members of this society. It means being given a chance to risk, to grow, to make a contribution to a better world, side by side with men.'' I think about this not infrequently. (Though perhaps not as often as I do my very favorite Sylvia, in which two hookers walk into a bar. One tells the other, "So he dresses himself up in this chicken suit, covers himself up with mostaccioli ... and then looks around real scared. He says: 'How do you feel ... about Title IX?' And I say, 'Senator, anything that turns you on, turns me on.'' And then I trigger the hidden camera.'')
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