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High school girls make pregnancy pact
Filed under: Teens, In The News, Single Parenting, Sex
Earlier this year, when an unusually high number of girls began showing up in the Gloucester High School clinic asking for pregnancy tests, school officials began to wonder what was going on. Was it a fluke? Was it the influence of movies like Juno and Knocked Up? No, it was actually something much more disturbing : a group of girls at the Massachusetts high school had made a pact that they would all get pregnant and raise their babies together. By the time school was out for the summer, seventeen of them had succeeded in getting knocked up. On purpose.
What on earth would possess a group of high school girls to do this? Former student Amanda Ireland thinks she knows. She gave birth during her freshman year at Gloucester and says the reaction from her fellow students was not what you would expect. She wasn't shunned or pitied. She says she was envied by girls who wanted what they thought she was getting from her child: love. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."
Ireland was able to complete her education at Gloucester because the school goes to great lengths to support teen mothers. There is an on-site daycare and babies at school are a common site. But after administering some 150 pregnancy tests by May, the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, and the school nurse, Kim Daly, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives without parental consent. That idea was promptly shot down and both have since resigned in protest. "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children," says Mayor Carolyn Kirk.
It is a shame those two lost their jobs over it, but a lack of easily available contraceptives is clearly not what got these girls where they are. They didn't want birth control pills, they wanted babies. But why? School superintendent Christopher Farmer blames the economy. The blue-collar fishing town has seen an economic downturn over the past decade and many jobs have disappeared overseas. "Families are broken," he says. "Many of our young people are growing up directionless."
There may be something to that theory, but I suspect it is much more complicated than that. Back in my day, there was a certain stigma attached to teen mothers. Pregnant girls did not attend regular classes and they certainly didn't bring their kids to school with them. Is it possible that this school, and others like it, encourage teens to have children by lessening the consequences? Or is this just an extreme case of group-think in girls too young to know better?
What on earth would possess a group of high school girls to do this? Former student Amanda Ireland thinks she knows. She gave birth during her freshman year at Gloucester and says the reaction from her fellow students was not what you would expect. She wasn't shunned or pitied. She says she was envied by girls who wanted what they thought she was getting from her child: love. "They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Ireland says. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."
Ireland was able to complete her education at Gloucester because the school goes to great lengths to support teen mothers. There is an on-site daycare and babies at school are a common site. But after administering some 150 pregnancy tests by May, the clinic's medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, and the school nurse, Kim Daly, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives without parental consent. That idea was promptly shot down and both have since resigned in protest. "Dr. Orr and Ms. Daly have no right to decide this for our children," says Mayor Carolyn Kirk.
It is a shame those two lost their jobs over it, but a lack of easily available contraceptives is clearly not what got these girls where they are. They didn't want birth control pills, they wanted babies. But why? School superintendent Christopher Farmer blames the economy. The blue-collar fishing town has seen an economic downturn over the past decade and many jobs have disappeared overseas. "Families are broken," he says. "Many of our young people are growing up directionless."
There may be something to that theory, but I suspect it is much more complicated than that. Back in my day, there was a certain stigma attached to teen mothers. Pregnant girls did not attend regular classes and they certainly didn't bring their kids to school with them. Is it possible that this school, and others like it, encourage teens to have children by lessening the consequences? Or is this just an extreme case of group-think in girls too young to know better?
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ReaderComments (Page 2 of 7)
6-21-2008 @ 10:02PM
paulette Lavender said..."Duh Idjots" That was so classic! Thanks for the good laugh!
6-20-2008 @ 5:23PM
Sara said...I feel these 2 HS officials made a rushed and panicked decision and it's unfortunate how it turned out for them. I agree no one has the right to give minor children prescriptions without parental consent. But, I feel that these kids need access to much much absolutely mucho grande more sex education, mentors, counselors and easier access to free, confidential healthcare. It's so sad but schools these days have to turn away from the focus of academics in order to do the job that should be done by parents, and that's the education of 'common sense'.
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6-20-2008 @ 8:25PM
Sandyone said...'Rushed and panicked' decision? Perhaps the initial, "Man, we'd better get these kids some birth control, even if their parents don't want them to have it" was rushed and panicked, but these people resigned *in protest*. That means that their feelings are so deeply held that they're willing to quit their jobs over it. I don't know if they're stupid, immoral or both. Their solution has nothing to do with the problem and everything to do with usurping parental authority. Good bye and good riddance to them.
6-20-2008 @ 9:10PM
Sherry said...Sheesh! I think a couple of people who were advocating giving kids birth control without their parent's permission is the LEAST of the problems these parents have with their kids!!
Funny how so many of the comments are outraged at their nerve and focusing on that small point when those two birth control promoting people have nothing to do with the bigger picture - whatever is really going on with these kids and within these families that has them going out and getting pregnant on purpose.
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6-20-2008 @ 10:23PM
Sandyone said...Sherry, you're exactly right, but nothing that I say here is going to help those families. These school officials were using this incredibly sad situation (where girls aren't feeling loved) to usurp the parental authority of everyone in the school. Sounds like they had an agenda and jumped at the first chance to slide it through.
What I can do is remind people that circumventing parents isn't a reasonable or acceptable course of action. Parents have authority over their children and when I see our schools increasingly chipping away at that authority, I try to pull the curtain of emotion aside and reveal the attack for what it is. (Same thing for the non-thinking folks who supported the teen boy's mother who forged the signature for an abortion. People need to be reminded...make judgments based on facts, not feelings)
Whatever it is that we're doing to our girls to make them this needy needs to be changed. I'm sure that these girls aren't the only ones who are feeling this way. It's happened throughout time...on a small or individual scale, but this instance is really scary and sadly pathetic. I can't believe that it's just an isolated case and I'm sure we'll hear about more such pacts.
6-21-2008 @ 4:13PM
Michelle said...Amen to that!
Peer and cultural pressure plays a big part.
Maybe these girls came from family/cultures where getting pregnant is something that girls can expect to happen. I read that among some groups there is a lot of pressure on girls to get pregnant (and married). Sometimes things are an expectation because they happened to their mothers and aunts and grandmothers.
A girl who wants different made be made to feel like “she thinks she is all that” and “too good for the rest of us”. To me this is similar to minority kids who show their smarts in school and get put down for acting “white.”
I think we should be supportive of teenage mothers because if the mother is ostricized than the child will be as well.
Also, there is a lot of talk about the girls here...where is the shame on the teenage fathers? Where is that talk about their responsibilities as (young) men?
6-22-2008 @ 3:50AM
John said...AMEN!!! When did this story become about anything other than WHY THESE GIRLS ARE GETTING PREGNANT? I applaud your intelligence to see the real issue.
6-21-2008 @ 12:03AM
ts2 said...okay first of all i go to this school so this is getting a little bit out of hand. And if these two people didnt quit on us then our business wouldnt be out in the open right now. These girls are very nice girls and knowing them personally i know that they will do fine with raising their babies. This has gotten ridiculous and people need to leave our city along, yes i do agree with the doctors that we need birth control at our school, but if these kids wanted to become pregnant then birth control at our school wouldnt of stopped them. I mean obviously i dont agree with it, but these people are my schoolmates, and this is my school. Instead of sitting here on this website dissing the town why dont you do something to help it.
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6-21-2008 @ 3:09PM
kelly said...Sweetie, if this is your school, and you know these girls, why aren't YOU doing something about it? You say you don't condone this, but to me it sounds like you are just mad because people are saying negative thing about your school. And I don't mean to sound rude here, but by your spelling, I have to wonder how much of any kind of education, moral OR scholastic, you kids are getting from this school. You want the country to stay out of your school's business, don't you think it's important that parents across the country know things like this are happening so they can talk to their children and prevent this type of thing? You did say you didn't agree with it, right? Nobody is "dissing" your town, we are all trying to figure out why these girls are doing this, and how to prevent it. Maybe if your friend's parents gave them the affection they needed, they wouldn't have felt they had to resort to this. Maybe if YOU, being their schoolmate, had spoken up and said it was a bad idea, they wouldn't be children having children. They have no idea of what they are going to miss out on, having to stay home and watch their babies while you and their other friends are out enjoying themselves. I'm not trying to be harsh here, but you should know, I live in Mass, too, and I have two younger sisters that are in high school, and while our family is not loving or close, my sisters have the common sense to know better than to do something like that. This article is NOT a personal attack against you or your friends, or your town, it's something parents across the country need to know, before this type of thing spreads and we suddenly have thousands of kids having babies because they think it will be "fun".
6-21-2008 @ 3:22PM
Nancy said...It's not 2 employees leaving that makes this story newsworthy, it's the idea of a pregnancy pact among children. This story would have been in the news whether or not they'd quit. This story has nothing whatsoever to do with the availablity of birth control at a high school.
Incidently, I find it interesting that young teens can't get their ears pierced without parental consent, yet they can get contraeption and abortions. Something is seriously wrong with our society.
6-22-2008 @ 12:31PM
kc said...i agree with you. these people aren't helping anything sitting on their computers and blaming everybody they can think of. none of their suggestions would ever work. I am going to be a senior next year at a different school in mass and i know for a fact that if you stood up and said something to those girls, you would be outcasted and made fun of and even if you weren't theres no way it would end just because one person said something. i understand why you would be upset with the way people are talking about your school and your friends.
6-21-2008 @ 4:46PM
Heather said...I am not surprised. When I was a teen mom 16 yrs ago there were a couple girls who gpt pregnant because thier friends did and they wanted babies together. A couple even got pregnant by the same guy so the babies would be sisters.
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6-21-2008 @ 2:30PM
jacque said...Wait until reality kicks in. I know personally of a young lady who keeps having kids and now she says she is sorry she did. No freedom. No education. No money. No life. Now she is on the welfare rolls living better than I am and gettign food stamps. Yet she is sorry she did it ----- Yeah! Right!..The real world willlone day take a nice healthy chunk out of their *&^% when they realize that they made a huge misstake byhaving kids young and expecting the rest of the world to take of them. When the real world stops making mistakes for them and helping them by taking care of them maybe they will learn.
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6-21-2008 @ 2:29PM
suziern03 said...The bottom line is that these children were missing something from the get go. What were they being taught at home? The fact that the school makes it easy for teen mothers to attend school would not compel 17 young women to go out and get themselves pregnant. Maybe if we were able to teach these children all of their options early on ie...abstinence AND contraception some of these issues would not arrise. The AIDS epidemic is still out there and on the rise amongst teens again...do you know why? Because teens think that it's ok to do everything but intercourse. They don't understand that the exchange of body fluids can also be the exchange of disease. PLEASE EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN.
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6-22-2008 @ 10:56PM
Grandpa said...Just what society needs. More kids having kids. Anyone ever read the book "Death of the Grownup"? Are there no adults left in that community who provide their children with a decent Christian moral framework? I don't blame the pregnant children as much as I condemn their parents and everyone else who condone, support, and encourage teens getting pregnant. By the way, speaking of economic considerations, I suppose that these misguided children expect their own parents or society to support them and their babies.
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6-21-2008 @ 7:59PM
suziern03 said...oh and btw-in about 9 mos. the children will no longer need their parents permission for anything, they've just become emancipated from their parents...they can get whatever contraceptives or drugs they want without any guidance from their parents. If only they had had open communication to begin with.
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6-21-2008 @ 2:44PM
kelly said...I think it's sad when families are so broken, teens feel they need to have a child of their own to have someone to love. I don't blame the schools, I blame the parents. I work in a support group for people who have all kind of mental and health problems, and I see these kids having kids, and they think it's going to be the most wonderful thing, like playing with real life dolls. They don't realize you can't just shove a kid in a closet when they get boring or start crying. Maybe if these girls got some guidance and love and affection at home, they wouldn't be resorting to this kind of behavior. I graduated high school 11 years ago, and this kind of thing would have never happened at my high school, those girls would have been ridiculed, and dropped out like the few girls who did get pregnant had to. I like the fact that the girls do NOT have to drop out, and have day-care for their children provided by the school, they can finish their education that way, but I don't think these facilities are doing anything to ENCOURAGE these girls, either. Look to the parents, folks. My mother was 16 when I was born, I'm 29, and I have no children, and don't plan on it.
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6-21-2008 @ 2:47PM
rjnlj said...What I want to know is who supports these babies. Welfare, In other words you and me?
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6-21-2008 @ 4:04PM
BTRFLYHAS84 said...i had two children by the age of 19. and I have never used a dime of your money. we pay cash for our groceries. we have new vehicles and a nice home, on our own. nothing was easy, but we totally love our lives and are completly blessed.
6-21-2008 @ 3:12PM
Bella said...Perhaps the audience for the offer contraceptives wasn't the girls as much as the boys.
All of the focus has been on the girls who made this decision for themselves. These girls made a pact with each other, not with their sexual partners.
What of the young men who now find themselves in the role of fathers to these babies? I suspect none of them were informed that their participation in sex was the means to an end.
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