This whole piece at Motherlode irked me. It is about a 17 year old school student who faked a pregnancy for several months as an investigation into stereotypes and discrimination for a school project. It is an amazing social experiment to have devised and undertaken. The student recorded people’s reactions to her during the months of her fake teenage pregnancy. She apparently had plenty of examples by the end of the project of others seeing her in a very poor light once they thought she was a pregnant teen, and an Hispanic pregnant teen, at that.
The Motherlode piece uses this as a jumping off point for discussion among readers and in doing so asks “Are you surprised that Gaby Rodriguez felt shunned? Are you saddened that she was? Or a little relieved?”
And that, together with the author’s (Lisa Belkin) bit about being astonished to see that the student felt ostracised because of “how glamorized teen pregnancy has become lately as high school-aged mothers have become reality stars on shows like “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom”” had my eyes rolling right into the top of my skull.
Really, it surprises Lisa Belkin that pregnant teenagers are ostracised when she, herself, is using them as a topic for her readers to judge and moralise over on her blog? That a particular group of mothers are open season on a parenthood blog, for godsake, should tell Ms Belkin something about the way teenage mothers are ostracised. Teenage mothers do it tough; they usually start and continue on through life incredibly poor, while still usually managing to be great parents. Teenage pregnancy is many times, but not always, an indicator of other vulnerabilities. For instance, it is associated with having a significantly older male partner, it is associated with sexual abuse (and with experiences of child sexual abuse while growing up, particularly), it is also associated with being in a violent relationship (which often includes the sabotage of contraception by male partners), and indeed, with having come from a family where violence was inflicted on their mothers. Given these facts, how do we want girls who are coping with these vulnerabilities to be treated in our society? We really want them shunned for their own good?
The way we use this group of mothers as a target for our nastiness; the way we want to make examples of them to others; the way we feel justified in slut-shaming them (while absurdly, ignoring the fathers of their children) is incredibly sexist, generally also racist, and most definitely classist. These prejudices ignore the fact that ideas about age-appropriate pregnancies are based more on cultural and historical norms than absolute conditions. It also ignores the fact that our distaste for risk-taking behaviour in girls, which is a normal trait of adolescence and is probably also essential for maturation, is simultaneously often highly celebrated in young men (eg. extreme sports, adventuring and becoming soldiers). And finally, we, even us progressive types, combine all of this with a convenient hypocrisy around a woman’s right to choose with regards to her own pregnancy, and the right for all mothering work to be valued, supported and respected.
We should be able to talk about the difficulties involved in parenting at a young age and the decisions involved in that path to parenthood without dehumanising young mothers. But, we so very much don’t, as evidenced by many of the comments on that post on Motherlode:
- Of course, fellow students felt she had ruined her life. Otherwise, yeah, she learned her friends feel teenage pregnancy irresponsible. Well, it is.
- Usually the attitude seems to be that it’s an unfortunate choice but what’s done is done, and that the mother and baby will need support, which people are prepared to give. There’s also an attitude of “This will help my daughters see what a mistake it is to be a teen mom.”
- It’s not that MTV glamorizes teen pregnancy – it’s that the white trash on that show are paid very well to participate. They’re paid far more than they would be at Walmart – which is where they would be otherwise.
- So she proved that people speak ill of teen pregnancy? Wow, revolutionary. So people should refrain from calling pregnant teens “irresponsible,” or suggesting they have “thrown their lives away”? What a ridiculous perspective that is; the simple fact of the matter is that if someone is pregnant at seventeen she probably is irresponsible and it probably will mess up her life. Don’t want to be ostracized – don’t get pregnant…. People learn nothing from a situation that does not afford strife, and from this principle there appears no reason that society should do anything to help pregnant teens acclimate to a judgmental social environment.
- But there is value in just this kind of “gossip.” It helps others know how they will be viewed and what may happen to them and may make them think twice before ignoring birth control if they choose to have sex.
- I will probably also tell my daughter to not associate with teen moms or teens who think it’s cool to get pregnant, as they will only bring her down. I favor better sex education programs and a better social safety net for the poor but I don’t know that it ought to be made too easy for teen moms either.
P.S. You can probably imagine what I think of the conversation that is happening here in Australia around the Labor Government’s new welfare policies for teenage mothers – and there is a fantastic rant from Wildly Parenthetical that raises many of my concerns.
The truth is that it is tragic that a lot of teenage working class girls don’t think they have any other option but to get pregnant. They don’t think that they will even get a job, let along one that is financially or intellectually rewarding. In fact, a lot of poor teenage girls don’t even get this far, as they have been subjected to ‘a bottom of the pile, you don’t matter and we, as teachers are phoning it in’ education, that doesn’t even attempt to make them feel that they have agency in the world. This is what infuriates me – the wilful dismissing of the effects of economic and cultural poverty – it is their fault, and bears no relation to their life experience up until the point they get pregnant. But there again, if societies had to deal with this this would probably cost money.
I don’t want to sound like I am arguing that it is completely tragic for teenagers to have babies, though. Teenage parents are viewed through such an ageist, classist lens, and it is hard for me to remove that from my own reactions. My base reaction is to shudder and think they are ruining their lives, how can I talk them out of it, are they bringing another generation into poverty with them.. blah blah blah. But I can see that for many teenage mothers it feels like a wonderful decision to be parents, just as it did for me in my 30s, that it is a time of enormous optimism and hope and excitement for them in their lives. Like most new parents, the reality brings a different perspective too.
I remember seeing a conference presentation where an academic study on homeless teenage mothers found that having a baby presented a window of time where these girls suddenly felt optimistic and ambitious and motivated, sometimes for the first time in their lives. If supported, those mothers could really turn around their lives from that point, but they so often weren’t supported and the window closed for them. I don’t want to deny teenage mothers their agency, their right to be empowered as mothers. Just because it isn’t my decision doesn’t mean that it is a bad decision for everyone else.
I have been so mad about this new policy! I really wanted to know what you thought about it too, bluemilk (sharing the rage). I had already seen that post you linked to and heaved a sigh of relief because at least I am not the only one who thought like this about it.
I have seen teenage mothers in a new light since I realised a few important things about the high number of Aboriginal / TSI women who have their first baby at a younger age. If your life expectancy is 20 years shorter than the average for your country… if you realise that generally a pregnancy is a thing to be happy about for most women… the problem is not that some teenage girls get pregnant and decide to keep the baby (where are the fathers? why aren’t we harassing them?), the problem is that our society doesn’t do education and work in a way that’s flexible (hmm sounds familiar) for women who have their first babies (or all their babies) young. oh and we all like to judge them for it.
Besides, there is NO good age for a woman to have a child in our society. I wrote out my thoughts on this specific aspect of the issues yesterday, I really need my own blog again so I can post this stuff!!!
There’s a forum I’m on at the moment which has a lot of expectant mothers, and the whole place is structured socially to pit younger mothers against older mothers. It’s mostly US based – there is an ‘Australian’ forum as part of it which most of the Aussies stick to as it’s less aggressive – and it’s quite astonishingly rough.
There’s an incredible amount of rage about ‘welfare queens starting young and taking out cash’ from the elders, resulting in the teens defending themselves by talking about how irresponsible ‘old’ women in their thirties are for having children.
No one ever asks where the male partners are, and I’m consistently saddened by the inbuilt attitude that pregnancy is considered to be a free ride for ‘everyone but me’. You’ll have someone discussing her older partner (sometimes twenty five or older when she’s fourteen or fifteen) and the response is ‘slut who wants welfare where as I’m doing it hard’ not: Why is a man of that age pursuing a teenager sexually? Why is she so vulnerable that it’s important to date someone with a power imbalance that great?
And why doesn’t everyone recognise that this parenting gig can be pretty hard at various points for everyone, and no one ‘deserves’ that as punishment for sex any more than they ‘deserve’ to be forced to give birth as punishment for sex?
I too have seen this sort of split on forums. In particular, the women who became mothers when they were older like to lecture young moms on how much they don’t understand about parenthood and its costs.
The thing that bothers me (in addition to all of the implicit isms you point out in this post) is that often these young mothers are specifically seeking out help on the very issues the older mothers snidely remind them they don’t understand.
My mother made quite a point, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, of not saying “threw her life away” or “ruined her life” when describing situations that merely got you off track for a few years.
There’s some evidence that pregnancy doesn’t actually put young working-class women off track at all – at least in the US and UK. Arline Geronimus has published a study (it’s a little old, I think the two parts of it were completed in the early and late ’90s) of sisters that showed delaying childbirth didn’t affect poverty rates. If that’s widely true, then poverty causes poverty, not teen motherhood.
Which doesn’t mean it’s a derailment for specific individual women. But the young moms at my high school have mostly turned out fine, much to my surprise, since I was raised to think having a baby young ruined your life.
One of my stepsisters had her first at 19, recently finished her degree in her 30s and now is the professional working mom of 3 children who are past their demanding babyhoods and able to be home after school with minimal supervision.
You can colour me unsurprised by the experiments findings.
I was a teen mother as was my mother. (My mother was 17 when she had me, I was 19 when I was pregnant with my first. One of my sisters was 16 when she had her first child and two of my brothers were teen fathers. My other two sisters who have children were in their 20’s one was 22 the other was 28. I have 1 brother and two sisters yet to reproduce if indeed they decide to do so at all, however they are in their mid-late 20’s and late 30’s now)
I am also Indigenous. (My mother isn’t)On the Indigenous side, Most of my aunts and uncles were teen parents. (My favourite Aunt had her first child at 14 and she is still married to his father today…that child is now 37 and she herself now has a doctorate of education, something I am extremely proud of given she was a young indigenous teen mother who didn’t even finish year ten that society had written off as an irresponsible hopeless case.) But there is no way she could have managed to raise four children as a teen parent and then pursue study if not for (albeit meagre)welfare and the support of a large extended family (she too was raised by a single mother after my grandfather died when my aunt was 3.)
My teen mother who dropped out of school at 15(Also raised by a single mother whose husband ran out on her after she developed Guillain-Barre Syndrome and was rendered completely paralysed- all she could move were her eyes- because he didn’t want to be saddled with an invalid…alarmingly, not the worst thing he did to my Grandmother, she recovered, but due to her illness was classed and disabled and due to laws in the 50’s-60’s about how much work a person on a disability pension could make supplemented the family income by sewing tablecloths for a manufacturer at 8cents a piece) raised us girls while working part time and running a small farm (for self-sustainability) and doing the book keeping for my step fathers small business. She got her HSC results the day after my daughter was born. (And kicked my ass with her TER)
So with regards to our PM’s new tough love policy….yes, the assumption that all teen mothers do it as a money grab is incredulous to me. (What freaking money?) And that they are a drain on tax payers, whose children do they think will foot the bill for their aged pensions? Isn’t giving their mothers that small helping hand (since obviously the young men getting these girls pregnant can’t be responsible enough to provide) an investment in their own future?
Sorry for the epic reply. It was longer, this is the trimmed version. 🙂
Pirra that is a fantastic comment to have shared, thanks for taking the time to write that here.. I think the points you’ve made about teenage parenthood are SO important.
You’re welcome. I have a lot of gutsy, intelligent women in my very matriarchal family. The obstacles all of them have over come in their lives is awe inspiring to say the least. I hope some day to grow up to be at least half the woman they all are/were.
This is a wonderful and sad tale of teenage and single motherhood from Fuck Politeness here – http://fuckpoliteness.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/part-one-on-the-new-single-parent-education-program-my-experience-or-do-you-think-you-deserve-it/
A must-read!
This is an awesome post. That is all.
“…but I don’t know that it ought to be made too easy for teen moms either.”
That comment in particular irks me – as if we as a society have even scratched the surface of “making it easy” for teen moms – let alone mothers of any age or socioeconomic status. That argument is scarily similar to the one against gay marriage – “don’t wann ecourage ’em!” – or the one against welfare – “but it’s so EASY to be poor!!” We could throw all the financial aid and child care assistance in the world at teenage mothers (which we don’t) and it would never become “too easy.” GRR!
I saw that piece, too, and just did not even look at the comments. I have a friend who had a baby before she graduated high school, and I get really, really furious on her behalf when I read all the moralizing and shaming and the completely unfounded judgements. What makes me saddest, is I think she internalized a lot of these kinds of comments, many of them sort of unspoken, even. I think a lot of the really awful stuff she has gone through since then arose partly because she was trying to prove she was none of the things she was accused of, and partly because at some level she believed she must be all those things, and had to pay some kind of price to redeem herself. What teen moms need is support of all kinds, and access to information and guidance. This parenting business is a tough gig in current society at any age, but I think there are challenges specific to teenagers that make it even tougher and one of them is social stigma.
[…] Shunning for your own good. Blue Milk on teenage pregnancy. […]
My friend set up this amazing programme (which was a response to the Bush Administration’s policy, which sounds very similar to the Gillard one)
http://www.allourkin.org/mission.php
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[…] Motherhood doesn’t make teen mothers poor, most of them are very poor to begin with. This is one of the reasons why shaming is not some kind of cure for poverty. […]
[…] And as I also observed back then in 2008, the slacker mum movement often neglects to directly acknowledge the debt it owes feminism. It’s frequently liberation without the radicalism. This means the discussion can lack perspective and a sense of purpose. And that becomes particularly apparent when you read supposedly confessional pieces that are pulling their punches, something I refer to in this article of mine at Daily Life. If your ‘revealing truths’ reinforce how much you belong to the most powerful income/class groups of mothers then while you’re taking a risk in revealing them it’s not a particularly big one, and you’re probably not liberating a genuinely marginalised mother, such as a teenage mother, or a mother with a drug addiction, or a m… […]
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[…] social transfer is involved rich women are as capable of “getting themselves pregnant” as teenage girls are claimed to be. Because conception is something that women and girls do to themselves, presumably by deliberately […]
[…] social transfer is involved rich women are as capable of “getting themselves pregnant” as teenage girls are claimed to be. Because conception is something that women and girls do to themselves, presumably by deliberately […]
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