Of Teen Pregnancies and Horseshit

I'm a little late getting to this story, and I suppose this isn't really in the pop culture milieu, but I have some thoughts to share about the alleged Gloucester Teen Pregnancy Pact.

I speak with no specific knowledge of anyone involved, but as soon as I heard about it, I smelled horseshit. It does not surprise me that said horseshit originated with the high school principal. School administrators need to be somewhat full of shit to do their jobs correctly. They are constantly trying to please teachers, parents, and the central office, and often these three constituencies don't have the same interests, so the principal has to be good at telling each what they want to hear. A really good high school principal will have each of the interested parties firmly believing that he or she is completely on their side, even when their interests conflict with the interests of the other two.

It's a tough job and a tough balancing act. So the Mayor of Gloucester is saying there was no pact among teenage girls to get pregnant, and the principal has backed off the pact theory, which suggests to me that he made this up out of whole cloth in order to please the reporter from Time magazine. And let's face it, it does make a better, and more titillating story than, "our city is geographically isolated and economically depressed, and our young women don't see a lot of options for themselves," which is probably a lot closer to the truth but doesn't make nearly as good of a story as "out of control, sex-crazed teens plotting to get knocked up."

In any case, 17 girls got pregnant at that high school, and everybody's got their own favorite villains: The films of Judd Apatow! The Catholic Church! The School's Day Care Center! The School's failure to provide contraception! I don't think anybody gets pregnant because they saw Knocked Up, and I don't know off the top of my head if predominantly Catholic areas have a higher rate of teen pregnancy than others, and I'm not going to be convinced till I see the data. The idea that teens, rarely adept at long-term thinking, would plan to get pregnant because the school has a daycare center is just idiotic. And yeah, I do think school health centers should provide contraception, but if you're not willing to walk into CVS and lay down ten bucks for a box of condoms, I think it's probably unlikely you'll seek them out from the school nurse either.

In the end, I think it just comes down to economics. And everybody loves a story that allows them to get on their high horse about how other people should live.