Several years ago when I was a Girl Scout leader, I learned of another troop in a neighboring district that did a thing for poor teenage moms for their big service project - they took donations of baby stuff and then threw them a party with decorations and crowns and things like that.
Now, for me, the donation thing is great, and exactly the kind of thing Girl Scouts should do. The party, OTOH…not so much. I’m very uncomfortable with having a big celebration of teenagers getting knocked up, and certainly am uncomfortable with showing 3rd and 4th graders that if you get pregnant at 16, it would be so great that random strangers threw a party for it.
Look, that discussion will happen most likely in private, therefore, only the two women involved would know the details. You, the outsider, wouldn’t know. Nobody else would. The polite thing, again and again, is in public. Unless you’re spying people in their own rooms while they’re having this type of discussion, the only reactions you’ll see to pregnancy are in public, where it is considered rude to berate the other person, and where positive comments and support are more common than negative comments.
If my daughter came to me at the beginning of college and said, “Mom, I’m pregnant”, I hope I would say, “Babies are good, and this will be hard. How can I help?”, but since my daughters are not even old enough to crawl, I’ll have to get back to you in eighteen years.
I’m not really sure what you want people to say, instead of congrats/supportive babble, really. What could you or I possibly say that would be more ‘in the interests of the Mom and the impeding baby?’ Berating? Talk about how hard it is and about the possible crumminess of the baby’s life? If I personally know someone who tells me she’s pregnant, I say, “That’s great! You’ve given up sleeping!”, or something similar, because I know babies are good, but hard work, and I know that pregnancy and childbirth are terrifying, and being sent home with a tiny vulnerable person is… scary isn’t a strong enough word.
So I’m supportive, because boy, are they in for a ride.
In public I am cheerful and congratulatory, and will offer fun scary pregnancy and childrearing stories. In private, if I know the woman well, I’ll talk about all the hard parts, if she wants me to. If she asks about options aside from keeping the baby I’ll talk to her about them, but it would have to be her initiative, not mine.
If my daughter had announced she was pregnant at 18, I would have strongly advised her to have an abortion. I would have offered total support, financial and otherwise to encourage her in that direction.
However, if she had chosen to continue the pregnancy, I would also have offered her my total support. Ultimately the decision would have been hers, and whilst I might have had many reservations about that decision she is still my daughter and loved unconditionally. Expressing those reservations to her after her decision had been made would be fruitless and downright cruel: everybody has the right to look forward to having a child with optimism. Having nagging relatives and/or friends continually berating your choice is just plain wrong.
And it’s because once you’ve heard about it, it’s a fait accompli, and it’s “just as if she were able to take proper care of a baby.” That’s all. There is nothing to be gained by doing anything else, but acting as if the woman were having a baby at the best possible time in her life to do so. She is already having a baby and doesn’t need her confidence undermined more than it is. Because, if you’re aware of it, she’s going to have that baby. What the fuck else would you suggest?
Here are the two most salient points, which have been made over and over and over again:
a) most of us haven’t seen this uniformly crazy thrilled reaction to all pregnant ladies.
b) most of the time when you witness a reaction to pregnancy, it’s a public or semi-public situation in which it would be inappropriate for anyone present to air all their dirty laundry/private thoughts.
And yet you cannot accept those things as true. I don’t see how either one is a flight of fancy - how do those things not address your OP? You yourself have admitted that you a) hate children and b) are not close to any of the people involved, so why is it so hard to believe that you’re not privy to the private doubts of other women or their families? Or that you’re only hearing about pregnancies that people are happy about, because you’re blissfully unaware of the ones that get ‘taken care of’ without announcement?
I sure hope that’s not true. It certainly isn’t here - only a pregnant woman can make medical decisions regarding her own pregnancy no matter what her age, and even a minor cannot be compelled to undergo non-lifesaving medical procedures without their own consent. Of course the parents can refuse to financially support the new baby, but they’re not the ones making the ultimate decision. I’m sure kids get pressured all the time though.
Oh, I missed that claim. No, it doesn’t work that way here. When she’s pregnant, a girl is emancipated for the purposes of medical care (with the exception of some states which require her parents’ consent for an abortion).
Interestingly, at least in some states, the second her baby is born, she’s no longer emancipated and needs her parent to consent for further treatment, including whatever may be needed to patch her up and care for her after labor and delivery. But she retains the right/responsibility to sign for medical care for her infant, unless and until it is adopted by someone else. And only she has the right to sign away her parental rights to allow for adoptive parents (or a judge via a court order, of course.) Her parents can not legally force her to put her child up for adoption.
You know, though, one of the reasons why it is so ruinous when teens get pregnant and keep their babies is because everyone treats it as something ruinous, and treat them as something ruined.
Imagine if, instead of condemnation, we responded to a pregnant 16 year old the same way we do a pregnant single 26 year old: helped her transition into a new phase of life instead of assuming her incompetence before she ever has an opportunity to prove herself?
Imagine if we helped her connect to needed resources, only offered childcare if we’re actually willing instead of doing it begrudgingly and letting her know how much a burden it is every single time, recognized that occasionally she’ll need time to be her own person, and stopped trying to* make* her circumstances even more miserable to teach her a lesson?
We set young mothers up to fail altogether too often. Being a poor, single parent is hard enough, being treated like her life – and by extension, her child’s – is irredeemably fucked up through the whole process is just unnecessarily punitive. But we do it all the time.
What those Girl Scouts learned, hopefully, is that getting pregnant at a young age, doesn’t have to mean that people will give up on them, or treat them like they should be wearing a scarlet A for the rest of their lives, or like they’re embarrassments.
It’s a shame that the adults around them likely didn’t learn that lesson.
There’s a big difference between offering support and having a celebration. I don’t agree that these girls should be pariahs, but I also don’t agree that these girls should be congratulated.
But I will say that I think those pregnant girls should be a little ashamed. I know I was when I turned up pregnant at 18, and it certainly taught me not to get knocked up again. Tacit social disapproval can be a good tool when used properly.
They should be a little ashamed because… because they’ve made their own lives harder? Because they’ve created a mountain of work for themselves that wouldn’t otherwise exist? Because they’ve turned themselves into the punchline of myriad jokes and the whipping girls for everyone from social conservatives to “concerned bystanders” to cranks like curlcoat who in this very thread said that they should* forcibly have their children taken away from them *for no reason other than their age?
Maybe you should work on your own emotions and think hard about why it’s so important to you to shame other people because you think you’re a better judge of their circumstances and abilities than they are.
And really, if it was other people giving you shit, and not the work you had to do, that kept you from having another baby after your first, I don’t even know what to say about that other than you might want to consider why you’re so susceptible to outside influences over important life decisions. Because that? Isn’t normal or okay.
I think I overdid the happiness when a couple of my acquaintance had twins. He was an immature 20 year old, had recently lost his licence for drink driving, was unemployed, they were living with her parents, siblings and older sister’s child and had only been together six weeks when the twins were conceived. I didn’t feel I was close enough to them to say what I was really thinking, so I tried to just be supportive and put on a happy face for them… but I think I overcompensated out of sheer embarrassment and accidentally put on an ecstatic face. Oops.
That was a few years ago and they seem to be doing ok. They’re still together, the twins are bright, happy kids, the father has grown up a bit and is working, they’ve got their own home. The mother in particular is just a natural; she’s a really good mum. What good would I have achieved if I’d shot them down before the kids were even born? I hope that hearing “You’ll be a really good parent” from people has helped them feel like they do have that potential, and I can’t see how saying the opposite could have any positive outcome.
Because it’s stupid to get pregnant if you can’t support another human, financially or emotionally.
It has nothing to do with circumstances and abilities. It’s about not having a baby if you can’t take care of it. It’s not about the mother anymore, not really at all once that kid shows up.
I don’t recall any one specifically judging me - it’s that I felt stupid. And I was.
And this is not something that most other people, particularly social acquaintances, are capable of judging for you on your behalf.
Parenting has nothing to do with circumstances or abilities? Really? So anybody in any circumstance or with any level of ability can do it? Didn’t we just establish in the last sentence that this is the exact opposite of the truth?
That sort of thinking, that the entire being of a mother must be subsumed to their child, is really preposterously offensive. And downright dangerous. It’s a setup for failure, resentment and a heaping helping of post-partum depression, for new mothers. I pray that you’re not teaching your daughter this claptrap.
And yet you specifically posited that shaming was not only a good idea, but necessary and beneficial.
I would feel comfortable passing a personal judgment on someone who is pregnant, based on obvious deficits - like being 14, or being a drug addict or any number of very real circumstances in pregnancies I do not “celebrate”.
I’m missing your point here, or we’re talking past each other. I’m saying that women in bad situations who get knocked up should feel ashamed because it’s unbelievably easy to not get pregnant. So if you do, you’re pretty dumb. I include myself in this sentiment, BTW. It was fucking stupid for me to get pregnant at 18.
I’m about the furthest you can get from a helicopter parent. What I’m saying is that I don’t believe most “bad situation moms” are able and/or willing to understand that having a child changes everything about your life. You see thousands of new grandparents get saddled with taking care of a new baby, because the mother is 15 and wants to go out, or an addict and wants to shoot up, or a drunk who drives around their kid. They seem fundamentally unable to process the idea that their life as they knew is OVER. You can still pursue the things you like to do and have a great life, but the deal is that you don’t get to do it in the same way. I’m talking about things like parents who take their kids to rock concerts and lock their kids in the trunk, parents who won’t understand that when you’re broke, the kids get the money for school lunches, and the parents don’t get the money for vanity plates, and that you can’t have hoards of potheads wandering around your house everyday.
It’s about providing stability for a child. It’s not about the mother’s lifestyle anymore in most ways, and it often has nothing to do with money. To do otherwise is neglectful and abusive, and I will not celebrate anyone who gets knocked up and refuses to recognize that.
I said “tacit” shaming, which is not wagging your finger at them in public. It’s like having the Girl Scouts organize a donation drive, but skipping the party.
Why am I frightening and ugly? Because I’m not blowing smoke up a bunch of people’s asses about how every baby is a blessing? Guess what? It’s not always a blessing. Women in bad situations move often than not are ill-equipped to deal with just the basic emotional cost of having a child, let alone the practical costs in time and money. So many kids are born into absolute total shitty lives, with absent or deficient parents, and they have an almost insurmountable obstacle into their own adulthoods. Then, unfortunately, they get pregnant themselves, and it starts all over again, because everyone is celebrating and no one is saying to stop and think about it.
And i know plenty of parents who can’t process that having a child means that they will need to cut back on the late nights at the office, the networking happy hours, and the gala season. They don’t understand that it’s not cool to pawn your child off to nannies or leave them at boarding school over the holidays because they don’t fit in to your busy schedule. Or that it’s also not cool to warehouse them in a “school for troubled teens” or tranq them into zombiehood when they kids have their rough times.
They don’t get that it’s not cool to lavish most of your attention on your new trophy wife or to leave your family to go “find yourself” by banging hot young Romeos at a “yoga retreat.” They don’t understand that your child is not a status symbol, to be taken out and put away at a whim, and that money is not a substitute for love.
I have known plenty of people who were raised by nannies and boarding school and maybe saw their parents once a year. Come to think of it as a child I envied them for all the advantages and opportunties they had. All of these people have become responsible, successful adults. Their parents were not “shitty”, they should be commended for doing the right thing for their children. Love is not a substiute for money.
