AIUI the Gloucester fishing fleet is mostly focused on fishing off the George’s Bank fisheries. And for a number of reasons that fishery is in collapse and has been for almost two decades, now. Also the Gloucester fishing fleet is mostly smaller craft, vice the larger more efficient factory ships that are the modern norm.
Those two facts have devastated the Gloucester fishing fleet. And in a one-industry town, if the fishing fleet is devastated, so are the ancillary industries, caring for the catch and the fleet.
I, too, have worked with teenagers and don’t find this unbelievable at all.
While I would never say that all teen mothers are bad mothers, I do think these girls have confused having a baby with raising a child. Just like people who lose interest after their cute, little kitten grows into a cat, I have met mother who become disenchanted the older a child gets. I doubt that many of these girls have the long-range thinking to realize that their babies will grow up into children, then teenagers, etc.
It was more the wording that confused me. I understand the industry being in bad shape (is there anywhere it isn’t?), I was just confused as to how they could lose jobs to other countries.
Well, if the canning plant in town closes, and the company opens another somewhere else (most likely in close proximity to an overseas fishing bank), the way things will be reported is that the jobs were moved overseas.
There were most definitely teens in my high school 10 or 15 years ago who were getting pregnant on purpose. It was often because they had a friend who got pregnant or already had a baby and thought it would be fun to do together, or as mentioned, the unconditional love thing. I knew several girls who actually did drugstore fertility tests to determine their most fertile time, and was with two when they saw their positive results on the pee-stick in the school washroom and were ecstatic.
Personally, I did (almost) everything under the sun to make sure I didn’t get pregnant in my teens and would have been devastated if I had, but even future-minded, sensible, responsible me had certain longings. I would never have admitted it at the time, but I (like tons of teen girls) loved babies and longed to be grown up, and although I logically knew that the romance of pregnancy and child-rearing wasn’t the whole picture, I definitely had a case of that ache I, now in my 30s and actively trying to get pregnant, think of as baby fever.
It is morally wrong and extremely irresponsible and selfish to bring a life into the world that you are not prepared (emotionally and financially) to take care of.
The difference between a baby and a business is that a baby is a live human being that needs to be taken care of for at least 18 years, whereas a business is not. If you fail at parenthood, the consequences are huge; if your little business fails, it’s not that big of a deal - an innocent person’s life isn’t affected.
Also this creates a burden on an already troubled community; children having children they cannot support means the rest of society has to step in to help (willingly or not, i.e. our taxes paying for your welfare). Society already has enough problems to deal with - these girls adding to this is so incredibly irresponsible.
They still have Tourism, although not as much as Rockport or other nearby towns. And tourism won’t support those fish factories of Gorton’s and Mrs. Paul’s.
It’s not that much different than call centers. The callers are still in America, the products/services they are calling about are still in America, and we’re not having a phone-shortage. But if labor is dirt-cheap, if local labor laws and moderation of methods/limits/safety regs are much more permissive, etc. to offset the extra cost of exporting them- then it makes sense that these jobs too would wander overseas. China alone accounts for about 1/3 of the world’s commercial fishing, and the US is barely (if still) in the top 5 producing countries (by tonnage).
Peru, with 1/10th of our (USA) population, produces twice as much.
I’d say it’s more like the jobs were ‘replaced’ rather than moved. Fishermen (at least, the ones I know) don’t work under anyone besides the captain of the boat–they’re pretty much self-employed. It’s not so much that the jobs are gone I’d say, but that competition plus the sad state of the fishery has made it much less lucrative. Nothing was outsourced, just out-competed and over-fished.
It was the wording that bothered me. Sure, the industry has been in trouble and there isn’t as much work anymore, but it’s not like someone said “sorry guys, we’re firing you and hiring 100 guys from India”.
I have no idea whether or not the story is true (which is also true of most news that you don’t witness yourself, mind). But it’s certainly completely plausible.
As noted by others, every school has at least a couple of girls who want to have an adorable baby to fill their worlds with love, and completely fail to fully grasp the realities of the situation. And a gaggle of girls all getting together one night to coo over one girl’s baby, and talk turns to how great it would be, and what if they ALL had one and they could all raise them together and their daughters would be the best of friends together? The idea is only strange to someone who has never been a teenage girl.
I don’t know if the story happened as told by Time, but I had a friend in university that did just that. She had a pact with a friend to have a child before they left school so they could have something to remember each other. She went ahead and got pregnant at 14 by her 15 yo friend.
Teenagers are not exactly known for their good judgment and foresight.
10% of the girls in my high school graduating class were expecting or already mothers on graduation day - broken down, unsurprisingly, on socio-economic lines. Girls with no plans for after high school saw no reason not to get started on the plans they had - have children.
That’s an entirely different beast and you know it.
Here on the Smartest Board on the Interwebs? You’re shitting me. That said:
Agreed. Nevermind the whole marriage thing–the point is that these babies are probably in a worse position than if they had been born to a stable, established family. It’s awful to declare them human trash before they’re even born, and I can’t abide by that–everyone has a chance to be a good and/or successful person–but I don’t think it’s unreasonable that these kids might have to climb a steeper hill to get to the same place.
You have a serious problem, and need help. Pot, kettle, etc., I know, but you seem to see misandrony behind every tree these days. I wouldn’t call admitted “completely groundless speculation” as an attempt to demonstrate anything.
