pregnant pause
by Sandra Kinne
Published: June 25, 2008
When I was a kid, I wasn’t fond of pinky swears or blood oaths. The only pact I remember making was at Girl Scout camp. I disliked the complete darkness of deep woods, and our bathroom – excuse me, outhouse – was about a quarter-mile away. Given my weak bladder, especially during ghost stories, I didn’t want to have to go there alone.
Because no one, particularly me, wanted to go to the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning by themselves, I proposed we all went as a group. If one person had to pee, we all went. After all, we were Girl Scouts; we had to stick together. The other five girls in my tent agreed; we made a pact for group bathroom trips in the middle of the night.
The first night of the pact, a fellow Cadette had to go to the bathroom. The entire tent was up and ready to escort her - except me. Like I said, no one, particularly me, wanted to go to the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning. Sure, I was ostracized for a few days, but it was pitch black, the bathroom was a quarter-mile away and I didn’t have to go.
All this is to say, I don’t quite understand pacts by teenage girls, and in my own experience, they tend not to be kept. But apparently teenage girls these days are still making pacts around bathroom trips. Only now, there are also EPT tests involved.
The recent headlines out of Gloucester, Mass. indicate 17 teenagers agreed to get pregnant together. Whether there was an actual pact or an administrator misheard something, it’s ridiculous the media are focusing on the issue of a pact and not the bigger picture: this isn’t even news.
According to Planned Parenthood, one million teenagers become pregnant every year. But this time, because it involves well-off, suburbia-type white kids, the media pays attention. (Yes, I checked; the town’s population is 92% white and the median income is more than $47,000.) The issue here isn’t a pact or its absence; it’s the over-frenzied nature of the media and the emphasis on irrelevant matters, such as an alleged pregnancy pact.
Britney Spears’ kid sister, Jamie-Lynn, just had a child at 17, so perhaps the media are getting a head start in preparation of the next senator’s wife’s crusade against pop culture. (Sorry, Tipper!) Instead of focusing on effective yet poorly-funded sex-ed programs or the policy pushers who ensure a generation is ill-informed, the media and politicians will draw attention to those who lead by example: celebrity teenage mothers.
It’s not the girls and their baby daddies who are to blame; it’s the fault of Jamie-Lynn, Solange Knowles and Keisha Castle-Hughes. These teenage celebrities go out and have babies at age 17 and the country’s teenage population follows their example - just like my generation followed Madonna to jail in a bustier while singing about Pepsi and God; ran down streets with Captain Lou Albano singing about just wanting to have fun; and carried snakes around our shoulders while wearing an entire tube of mascara and blasting “School’s Out.”
It’s not the media or pop culture’s fault these girls are pregnant teenagers. It’s their own fault (with a little bit of blame going to the abstinence-only curriculum).
Don’t tell any of this to Inside Edition, though. They secured an exclusive interview with one of the 20-year-old baby daddies. Exclusive rights on that type of “entertainment news” show typically include a fee. So, these kids are being paid for their story – their story of being 17 and pregnant. That’s a great message to send the kids. “You and your friends get pregnant all around the same time; we’ll pay you for your story.”
The traditional media has been spiraling into irresponsibility for years. Rather than focus on important issues – wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, an ineffective and reactive (rather than proactive) Congress, national recession – broadcast media’s mouthpieces have oh-so-critical debates over Cindy McCain’s recipes, Michelle Obama’s verbal gaffes and funny wedding receptions on YouTube. (Sure, a bride and groom’s wedding dance cutting to a choreographed bit set to “Baby Got Back” is funny, but I don’t need to see it on “Today” and certainly not before the 7:30 break.)
Media outlets reward these kids with exclusive interviews, publicity and glorification through attention rather than focusing on the hundreds of children left without a parent because s/he has been killed in combat, or how teenage girls throughout the world are forced into sex trafficking, arranged marriages or having their genitals mutilated simply because they are teenage girls.
The news media need to examine their own behaviors, actions and unspoken pacts between competitors. They need to take their own pregnant pause. Maybe their’s will last longer than nine months.
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(6)
June 26th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Mostly, it’s Mommy and Daddy’s fault. The next in line is the kids who knocked and got knocked up and then we can blame the media.
As far as abstinence goes, ain’t nothing wrong with telling the truth. Teenagers have no business having sex and making babies. Yes they’ll do it anyway, but calling a spade a spade is never wrong. Telling children, yes teenagers are simply overgrown children, not to do something that’s wrong is the right thing to do.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Jon Stewart on crossfire was a classic description of how bad media does nothing for america.
But it’s a chicken and egg situation - the media has to change, but the public has to stop eating it up, and neither will make the first move. Everyone wants the “inside” look…