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A post from guest blogger Amanda Marcotte:
This is perhaps the least surprising finding of social science to date: "Rates
of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative
religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and
rates of abortion." In 2008 the larger public got a taste of what
watchers of the social conservative movement have known for a long
time, which is that they've quietly started to celebrate teenage
motherhood. When
Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston were trotted out as American heroes for
the Big Knock-Up during the Republican National Convention, that was a
wink and a nod to this growing enthusiasm in the Christian right ... (Read more in DoubleX.)
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While Bristol Palin was enjoying another prime time moment making her ambassadorial debut as the Candie's Foundation's abstinence spokesperson—Meghan, you're right, what dizzy come-hither-hypocrisy is at work there!—you probably missed... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Back at Jessica and Bonnie: To me the saddest part of that NYT slideshow interview with Elizabeth Cousins, the 16-year-old mother in Brooklyn, was the moment when she explained that she'd thought about abortion, but reconsidered because "people" told her that this might be her only chance to be a mother. It's one thing to decide against abortion because you have a deep moral repugnance for the practice. But how awful to bear a child at 15 (her daughter is 19 months old now) because your ignorant teenage friends tell you something that patently wrong. Assuming she has regular cycles and normal fertility, Elizabeth will have at least 300 more chances to get pregnant in her lifetime. There are plenty of things she will need to worry about in life, but having a baby as infertility insurance at age 15 creates a hell of a lot more problems than it solves.
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Hanna, I feel pretty much the same about Bristol Palin’s predicament as I felt about the Crihanna debacle. The baby beaus weren’t going to stay together anyway, so why stay together in the midst of such drama? At these young ages, there are no guarantees—and actuarial tables, if not common sense, would counsel against making puppy love permanent. Sure, Rihanna and Brown became the breadwinners for their older family members at 21 and 19, respectively (a whole different story), and the 18-year-old Palin became a “role model” before even leaving the province of underaged handle-chugging, but someone (um, you know, parents) should have reminded them: You are not adults.
So of course Levi isn't "hands on." We should applaud Palin—however belatedly, she came to the right decision. But why don’t we teach kids that it’s OK to break up? Give it two years, max—and if by then you’re over 25, split or get married. Seems clinical, but is it any worse than this surreal mythology of true romance that allows teens to tear at each others’ emotions until, one day, there are bruises—or a baby on board?
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OK, OK. Eve, you’re right. The bailout (whoops, stimulus—whoops, recovery) bill passed the House, without the family planning funds, and without any Republican support. So the big bad Democratic majority didn’t need to kowtow to Republicans after all—which means that Democrats are entirely responsible for the diminished support for women’s reproductive health. Maybe this is politically intelligent, but I don’t see how just yet.
To Rachael: I’m not particularly irked that this bill is saddling my generation with debt. Yes, this is a scary moment, about which I don’t think anyone knows enough, no matter which study which economist is brandishing. But, hyper-liberal that I am—and because in Washington, we get to call these things whatever is rhetorically expedient—I’m going to name all this cash a “strategic investment.” One that, in the case of contraception, is desperately needed in many Medicaid-qualifying households, and one that pays dividends in the long run—for individuals and, as I mentioned earlier, for Americans interested in expanding health care coverage. See Katha Pollitt for more on the topic, and on projected savings.
More importantly, providing birth control to underserved women should be solid political ground for Dems. Two thirds of the country supports birth control for teens. I don’t see why an aversion to GOP culture-warring—which didn’t stop passage of the bill—should be enough to get America’s hard-won Democratic leadership to fold like a cheap cocktail umbrella. So the Blue Dogs are howling—why no similar pressure on blue-state Republicans? Worse, this successful peer pressure allows Republicans to dismiss birth control and, say, new sod for the national Mall, in the same breath—though one is a public and personal health policy concern, and the other a matter of horticulture. (Both create jobs, but that’s beside my point.) At what point does the conciliatory tone that Obama so desperately seeks become an abdication of power? Because, let’s not forget what he told Republicans on Monday: “I won.”
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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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According to an article published in the London Times today, we Brits are now the most promiscuous nation in the world (of the western industrial nations, that is). In terms of one-night stands, total number of partners, and our "relaxed" attitude to casual sex, we beat Australia, the United States, Italy, and France. France! Where having extra-marital affairs is a favorite national pastime! If nothing else, at least now we might lose our reputation for being frigid and repressed.
In all seriousness though, Britain has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe as well as the highest teen STD infection rate in Europe (although both are significantly lower than here in the United States, where abstinence-only sex education doesn't seem to be helping much). Premature sex education in British schools (it can be taught to children as young as 4) has long been blamed for the epidemic, along with the inappropriate sexualization of children by toy manufacturers and the media. But here's a thought. In Britain, we also drink more than any other country in Europe (apart from Ireland and Finland, bizarrely), and our alcohol-related death rate has doubled since 1991. We've also, according to this reasonably insulting story in the New York Times, been causing havoc on summer vacations with our abhorrent, booze-soaked behavior. Could there be a correlation somewhere between the beer goggles and the newfound sluttiness?
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Linda Hirshman has a thoughtful piece in Slate reacting to Bristol Palin's pregnancy and pointing out that no, no one wants their 17-year-old daughter to get pregnant. The odds are stacked against teen mothers, no doubt. But so many stories I read on this topic present those scary numbers, add a brief caveat that "of course there are exceptions, but" and go on to rail against pro-lifers for wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade.
If you'll indulge me for a few minutes, I'd like to hit "pause" and tell you about one of those exceptions. My mom got pregnant when she was 16. With me. Thankfully, it was 1972, before Roe, or we might not be having this conversation. Well, the rest of you would be. She and my dad had to get married in the little side chapel of their church, not at the grander main altar, because of her "condition." Before they even got that far, a few of my mom's cousins called a family meeting and decided my mom had to have an abortion lest she embarrass the family. I guess you'd call them pro-choice.
My mom finished high school a year early so she wouldn't have to juggle a baby and classes. She and my dad lived in a tiny apartment, and saved up to buy a modest house when I was 6 months old. (My first car cost more than that house.) My dad worked five days a week at one job, and on one of his days off, he'd work at my grandfather's clothing store to make the $17 they needed for the weekly grocery bill.
Eventually, my parents bought their own business, a mom-and-pop grocery store. It didn't make them millionaires, and it required a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but they worked side-by-side for more than 20 years. They still found time to haul us to swimming practice and baseball practice and come to our games and help us with our homework. And they did well enough to put two kids through college, set aside a nest egg for retirement, and start college funds for their ever-expanding brood of grandchildren. More than 35 years later, they're still happily married.
Yes, my parents were an exception, very clearly. But today is not the 1960s or 1970s, either. Young women have vastly more opportunities in high school for sports and other activities that keep them busy and improve their self-esteem. Birth control is more readily available. For girls who do get pregnant, schools—both high schools and college—have more programs to help moms get their educations and support themselves and their children. Let's empower our daughters to make the right choices for themselves, to either avoid sex when they're not ready or use birth control when they do. And if all else fails, love them and support them and, if you're running for vice president and the world is going to find out, stand up and tell the world you're proud of them. Yes, it takes hard work, and it takes sacrifice. Are we not raising our kids—daughters and sons—to work hard, to put the needs of others ahead of their own when the situation calls for it?
Whenever we have conversations about Roe v. Wade, pro-choicers always point to how awful life is for women who keep their babies, how hard it is. Hirshman decries the Republican position on abortion as "cruel." But can't we please acknowledge that there are victims, and that the pro-choice position has its own brutal cruelty? Does anyone consider how many worthwhile lives are sacrificed? Is it worse to grow up poor or not at all? My own life is pretty damn important to me, and I'm thankful every day that I'm here.
So, while everyone else is snickering and making jokes about shotgun weddings, I'd like to wish Bristol Palin, her boyfriend Levi, and their child the best. It's not an easy job you have before you, but the rewards can be amazing.
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- Learn about al-Qaida.
- Learn about Washington, D.C.
- Order Bristol's dress (Elastic waist!!! Is white inappropriate after six months?)
- Fire brother-in-law.
- Learn about Russia/Georgia/S. Ossetia (Locate Abkhazia???)
- Nurse Baby Trig.
- Order flowers for wedding.
- Fire people who haven't fired brother-in-law.
- Learn about ethics rules.
- Fire at brother-in-law? (Option: aerial shooting?)
- Nurse Baby Trig.
- Learn about Iran.
- Learn about U.S. Senate.
- Learn about contraception. (Too late???)
- Investigate homes for foundlings?
- Govern Alaska.
- Life insurance on J.M.?
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It's interesting that the original rumor had Sarah Palin in the role of the sacrificial mother, protecting her daughter from exposure as a knocked-up teenager and presumably guaranteeing the baby an upbringing in a firmly established family. The real story has Sarah Palin plunging into the limelight, thereby guaranteeing that it's the whole nation, not merely Bristol's high school peers and their parents, who know her daughter's situation. And this baby—certainly if Palin's ticket wins—can't exactly count on doting grandparents at the ready to back up the teenage newlyweds. As between the two scenarios, it strikes me that the first in fact might fly better, not just with the evangelical, pro-family base, but with everybody else, too. And what, I wonder, does the comparison tell us about the stigma, or lack thereof, of teenage pregnancy? The rumor presumed it was something to hide; the reality suggests it's fine to flaunt it. Ah, for the old days of the simple culture war paradigm, when "traditional" nuclear family values reigned in red America.
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A few years ago, I went to a wedding, in the trippy hillside Israeli town Szefat, between an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israeli and his Dutch soon-to-be-convert bride. She was eight months pregnant, her bulge apparent even under the white tentlike cotton that covered her from head to foot. Szefat is the place Jews go to dabble in mysticism and born-again Judaism. You might think that a knocked-up bride there would inspire, if not condemnation, at least embarrassed jokes. But I saw only joy and celebration around me: The only thing that mattered was that the bride would marry and convert before the birth of the child, making him a Jew (because Jewish law recognizes only matrilineal descent).
American evangelical Christians aren't the Jews of Szefat, of course. But on this point, I think fundamentalists of different faiths agree far more than they differ. I can't imagine Bristol Palin's pregnancy will be condemned much, if at all, by the religious base that Palin was picked to attract. Instead, the emphasis will all be on her impending marriage and on praising her parents for standing by her. At first, I didn't really believe that John McCain knew about the pregnant daughter when he tapped for his veep the mother whose abstinence teachings didn't take. But the more I think about it, the more I think McCain may have known and plunged ahead regardless, counting on Bristol's redemption to save his choice—and serve up a mesmerizing and distracting soap opera, too, as Dahlia so aptly reminds us. Forget that Palin got a passport only last year, or that she didn't even supervise garbage collection as a suburban mayor (her town of Wassila, Alaska, contracts it out). Instead what we're talking about are Palin's family dramas. Which many voters are probably reluctant to sit in judgment about, because on some level, who doesn't feel for the mother with the Down Syndrome fetus or the wayward teenage daughter?
I have to hope, though, that the other base Palin has been deployed to bring on home to the GOP ticket—independent and Democratic women who supported Hillary—will talk and ogle with the rest of us, and then remember that John McCain's running mate's daughter's pregnancy has absolutely nothing to do with what years eight through 12 of a Republican White House would be like. Talk about turning an election into a cotton-candy-fest of celebrity. Let's mine this vein, yes, and then move back to the big looming issues—economic, national, global—that will affect many more people than Palin and her family. Anne, I don't think the feminists who argued that family life is the stuff of "real" politics would want it otherwise.
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Isn't there an irony here? All of that stuff being discussed with such energy today, most of which must look to the Republican campaign like dirty laundry—teenage pregnancy, flights in late pregnancy, decisions about abortion, child-raising—is the sort of material that, once upon a time, feminists described as "real" politics, of far greater importance than the tedious bourgeois political debate. And now it really is, suddenly, "real" politics, thanks to an evangelical conservative woman who brought all of it into the very center of the bourgeois political debate.