We received many comments on our Web site and several angry phone calls yesterday concerning our front-page story Sunday, the first installment of our "Teens Today" series.
The article was about the spike in teen pregnancies recently in Washington and Greene counties and was accompanied by a photo of two pregnant teenagers who are sisters.
One caller, saying that she represented "20 people here at the hospital," said she was appalled that we would write such an article "endorsing" teen pregnancy. She said she was afraid young girls would see this article and assume that it was perfectly all right to run out and have babies. She said that instead of promoting teen pregnancy, we should be writing about how to prevent it.
I pointed out that we do that on a regular basis – weekly, in fact – with Mary Jo Podgurski's column. Podgurski has for many years taught sex education here and runs Teen Outreach. "That hasn't worked," the caller insisted.
Sorry, lady, but it has. Podgurski is responsible for the dramatic decline in teen pregnancy (about 60 percent) from 1990 until just recently, when the numbers began to inch up again. The reason for that rise, Podgurski said in the article, is complicated by shifting social attitudes and economic conditions.
We hardly "endorse" teen pregnancy. I, and everyone I know and work with, is appalled by the idea of girls in middle and high school having babies. This is a problem, and it's our obligation to bring that problem to our readers' attention. Problems are never solved by ignoring them and pretending they don't exist, or by quietly tucking them on a back page of the newspaper, without photos, without thought- and anger-provoking quotations, where the information can be overlooked, particularly by those teenage girls so ready to throw their lives away at the direction of their hometown newspaper.
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9 comments:
Young people have no moral teachings at home to know that getting pregnant is not a wise choice. If parents would talk to their children about birth control and ways to prevent pregnancy the numbers wouldn't be so high. It wouldn't hurt for people to have some religious teachings about it being wrong too. Also when celebrities are sensationalized for having out of wedlock babies it makes it look as if it is acceptible. When the newspapers published the births notice the number of unmarried couples, no matter what age they are this should not happen. If you aren't mature enough to commit to the person you are with then you shouldn't be having a baby with them. Society has allowed the old stimga that was attached to unwed mothers to be removed by glorifing pregnancy amoung the celebs, most of whom are not married. They don't show that most young people do not have the resources and money that the celebs have in order to raise the child and a lot of the teens and young mothers end up on welfare or in very low paying jobs because they haven't the time or money to get a higher education. If they get into the situation the best advice would be to give the child up to a family that desperately wants a child and that had the resources and love to give the child a good life.
Podgurski is responsible for the dramatic decline in teen pregnancy (about 60 percent) from 1990 until just recently, when the numbers began to inch up again.
That's an absurd statement. Those numbers started declining nationwide at that time.
Nationally, the pregnancy rates declined 28% from 1990 to 2002... if, in our region, the rate dropped 60%, you could, theoretically, link the overindexing (or, in this case, underindexing) of propensity to get pregnant to the person in charge of disseminating the information.
Here is a pdf summarizing teen pregnancy from 1988 to 2002:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
Certainly, Podgurski wasn't the only one responsible for the decline, but she was the only one teaching sex ed here, and the decline was dramatically above the national numbers.
First are we dealing with % of pregnancies or raw numbers. If the decline in raw numbers of teen pregnancy is the case (most likely) it has to do with a declining number of people in the age bracket and is now increasing due to an increase in those people. That is happening nationwide also. Our region is older than the norm, so that would have a great deal to do with it also.
Crime rates have decreased (and are now increasing) by similar numbers during that time.
Park, you are smart enough to know better than such poorly written propaganda. Praising someone is one thing, attributing wide ranging demographic effects is another.
Also if the shifting social attitudes and economic are effecting things, then why was that not responsible for the decline? Or has she been slipping?
This is the only logical argument given her own statements.
None of this is to say that she is not hardworking, deserving of praise or dedicated to her goal. It just means that you overstated something and it is obvious to anyone that understands humanity and demographic trends.
You make a good point. Statistics are easily manipulated to support arguments. The sharp decline in teenage pregnancy had many factors, and certainly Mary Jo Podgurski's educational efforts had a good bit to do with that, but were hardly the only contributing factors.
Anyone who is a parent should know that, no matter how much you try to teach your children what is right and sensible, they are sometimes going to do their own thing, even when they know its wrong and stupid. You can take them tio church, but they may not develop faith. You can tell them about AIDS and unwanted pregnancies, but you can't be there to slap on a condom or insert a diaphragm when the urge to copulate strikes. In short, you can try all you damn well please, but humans will always do what they want to do or what they think they want to do. Sometimes they even do what they don't want to do. That's part of the human condition, as is dealing with the consequences of stupid decisions. If I buy a lousy car because I saw it advertised in thge newspaper, I don't blame the newspaper.
Blame the messenger at work here. If I buy a lousy car because I saw it advertised in the newspaper, I don't blame the newspaper.
Anyone who is a parent should know that, no matter how much you try to teach your children what is right and sensible, they are sometimes going to do their own thing, even when they know its wrong and stupid. You can take them to church, but they may not develop faith. You can tell them about AIDS and unwanted pregnancies, but you can't be there to slap on a condom or insert a diaphragm when the urge to copulate strikes. In short, you can try all you damn well please, but humans will always do what they want to do or what they think they want to do. Sometimes they even do what they don't want to do. That's part of the human condition, as is dealing with the consequences of stupid decisions.
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