17 Massachusetts girls may have made pact to get pregnant

Saturday 21st June, 07:18 AM JST

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Betzee at 11:34 PM JST - 21st June

Tending to the needs of a newborn 24/7 is mentally and physically draining, even when you're emotionally mature and have a partner to support you.

Indeed. All those perfectly coiffed celebrity Moms are in a position to hire household help (whether they have partners or not). The amount of coverage devoted to celebrity Moms is staggering (and the help is never shown). It all presents an escapist fantasy into a world of luxury which most of us will never experience personally.
SezWho2 at 11:57 PM JST - 21st June

Betzee,

I don't see any attempt to make either side responsible. I couldn't tell what SuperLib was talking about.

Teenage pregnancy is a social problem. It is true that women will bear the direct burden of the pregnancy, in carrying the baby, in birthing it, and in terms of responsibility--whether shirked, shouldered, or delegated--for its upbringing. But I don't see how that makes it less of a political issue.
Betzee at 12:30 AM JST - 22nd June

"young libs are propagating their kind"

That's more like Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village than the movie Juno.

These were countered with suggestions Reagan and GWB were more responsible as jobs requiring few skills which paid a decent living disappeared under their watch.

In sum, there was an attempt to make it into a partisan issue and that's what SuperLib appeared to be taking issue with.

Remember back in 1992 when Dan Quayle complained "Murphy Brown [a 40-something TV character who becomes a single mother] had become a lifestyle choice"? It's unclear what he was objecting to; the prospect that men had become irrelevant to women and children, the absence of fathers from children's lives, or something else. At that same time, he declared his then teenage daughter would never have an abortion leaving one to wonder what solution, and how much say she would have in it, he saw to such a predicament.

The breakdown of the nuclear family is due to a number of causes which are difficult to locate as the fault of one side or the other. The prospect of a welfare check, back in the days when welfare was open-ended, but also social acceptance of unwed motherhood. The rate of out of wedlock pregnancy in the 1950s usually shocks people because girls in such a situation were hustled off to give birth in a place that would not bring shame to their families. Present-day Gloucester, by contrast, seems set up for it, providing childcare facilities for student mothers.
TPOJ at 01:17 AM JST - 22nd June

Are we really trying to make some sort of value judgment of society based on a group of dumbass girls in a fishing village?

People have always done stupid stuff. This is not a frightening sign of the new direction that society has taken in modern times. It IS a sign that people are dumb, and that sometimes, they're dumb in groups. Why this merits more than a shrug of the shoulders genuinely perplexes me.

When I was a kid, a neighbor broke into my house while my family was away. The cops caught them. Apparently, one guy kept saying "this ain't for me," then tried to walk out on the guy questioning him. He genuinely seemed to think they would let him go simply because he wasn't enjoying himself.

Was this a sign of how severely society had declined...in 1975? Or was this guy just a dumbass?
Betzee at 01:42 AM JST - 22nd June

Teen pregnancy, and ways to discourage it, have been an ongoing concern for a while. One theory is to preach abstinance, the other is to make kids aware of contraception options. But in the case of girls who want to become pregnant none of that would have any effect.
RedMeatKoolAid at 01:51 AM JST - 22nd June

The answer? No one will ever be allowed to hear directly from these girls why they made the choices they did. It will be "society's fault." The last thing that "liberals" want is for those whom they designate as "victims" to explain or even examine cause and effect in their lives. Notice how many 'spokespersons' the seventeen girls have out there explaining their behavior...
Betzee at 01:57 AM JST - 22nd June

Notice how many 'spokespersons' the seventeen girls have out there explaining their behavior...

Yeah, and you were one of 'em. Whereas I simply backed up the chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

In fact they might well follow the Republican example of blaming someone else. After all, to admit error is a sign of weakness and that trumps "personal responsibility" every time.
SezWho2 at 08:30 AM JST - 22nd June

Betzee,

I see the quotes. I think I understand what you are saying. I just disagree that the discussion was about red and blue. In fact, I'm not even sure what red and blue positions on this issue would be.

Message boards are populated with many who bring their attitude kit to social issues without having anything substantive to say about those issues. We might as well expect teenage girls to stop becoming pregnant as to expect partisan comments to cease. I don't see the point in complaining about failure to speak to the issue unless one is willing to speak to the issue oneself.

Personally, I don't think there is much to be said about this. These girls would seem to have chosen a hard route for themselves--and for their parents and children too. However, the girls who made the pregnancy pact may be on to something. Certainly, free market advocates advance the notion that we make intelligent choices based on the information known to us.

In many respects, the reference to "It Takes A Village" is perfectly apt. One can speculate, for example, on whether Gloucester is a village which is working or not. We can ask, if it is not working, why isn't it working? And we can zoom in and out on our definition of "a village". But all social questions, barring mass collective epiphany, will have their solutions in the political realm.
Betzee at 01:48 PM JST - 22nd June

SezWho,

I never understood the conservative outrage over It Takes a Village. While I never read it myself, I suspect neither did many of the critics. Rather it was the author which doomed the book.

The conservative position seems to be that decisions regarding child rearing should be left to the family. But what happens to kids from families that have ceased to provide a nurturing environment where children can learn from parental example? Such households are disproportionately found in declining communities which can also be socially conservative (like Gloucester) owing to tradition.

Men who are not stable income earners are poor marital prospects (everything else held constant). It seems these girls were out to create a stable group in which to raise their children since the traditional family appears to have failed them.
RedMeatKoolAid at 02:23 PM JST - 22nd June

Which party crafts legislation readers would characterize as promoting strong independent families able to raise strong independent children?

I have to go with the Republicans by and large.

Which party's values does Hollywood reflect? Is it any mystery you almost never see strong, positive male role models? How odd, how unbelievable a character like Atticus Finch would appear to these Gloucester girls.
SezWho2 at 03:35 PM JST - 22nd June

RedMeatKoolAid,

Which party crafts legislation readers would characterize as promoting strong independent families able to raise strong independent children?

I think that depends on the readers.

I'd say that the Republicans craft legislation they characterize as promoting strong independent families, etc. I'd say that the results are far from conclusive as to whether or not this legislation has had--or even could have had--that effect.

I'd say that it was more accurate to say that Republicans craft legislation for the benefit of families with the hope that benefiting families will make them strong and politically dependent. Along the way, they seem not to have noticed that "traditional" families are a minority in America and have been for a long time.
Betzee at 10:13 PM JST - 22nd June

As Mike Huckabee bravely pointed out, the divorce rate is higher in red states such as his than in many blue states. He understood the impact of divorce on a child's economic welfare can be devastating and wanted an open discussion of it. This is quite different spouting platitudes about "family values."
rajakumar at 04:56 AM JST - 23rd June

USA populations definitely going up above 304 million with pregnancy pacts. USA will jump from 4.6 percent to 5 percent of world population in fast time, more young people making babies young.
Betzee at 05:59 AM JST - 23rd June

In fact US population growth can largely be explained by immigration.

Which party crafts legislation readers would characterize as promoting strong independent families able to raise strong independent children?

What legislation were you referring to? Newt Gingrich's short-lived idea to resurrect orphanages as part of his "Contract with America"?

Communities with vibrant economies tend to also have, wonders never cease, stable families. Good things go together.
Betzee at 06:30 AM JST - 23rd June

In fact the problem for the Republican Party is that it is of two minds on how to deal with the poor. Fiscal Republicans, who tend to be among the better the off, want poor women to have access to the full range of family planning services, including abortion paid for by the taxpayers. Though they would never quite put this way, economic logic dictates a dead baby is cheaper than a live one born to a mother who doesn't have the means to support a child on her own.

By contrast the dominant wing of the party, religious conservatives, want to outlaw abortion. And they have, more or less, in some states such as South Dakota. What about the prospects for children born to indigent mothers? It seems their response is "not our problem." For those who believe life begins at the moment of conception, their concern seems for the child's welfare seems to end at the moment after birth.