PTA: Parent, Teacher, Asshole

Another Perfect Storm?

You've heard about the Gaggle of Gloucester Girls, right? Gloucester, Massachusetts? School nurses notices that many girls were coming in for pregnancy tests. Maybe not a big deal, but many girls were repeat testers. Suggesting, of course, that they knew they were doing the thing which causes a pregnancy, they were doing it repeatedly, and didn't seem to care if they got pregnant...or did they? School nurses in the fishing town known from the book and movie The Perfect Storm, reported that upon learning of a pregnancy, the girls high-fived, celebrated, and revelled like Chad Johnson of the Cincinatti Bengals doing the Go Daddy Dance after making a touchdown.



So the number of girls, triple the norm, who have become pregnant, and their Go Mommy "dances" have some suspecting a pregnancy pact among the girls. I'll admit it sounds like a pact.

The mayor of Gloucester says there's no proof, but they're investigating.



I like how she basically says, "Don't look at me..." calling out the school board and the Federal Government.

Naturally, when something like this, what has been called a "blip", happens, people ask...why? Why did we jump to three times the normal pregnancy rate? Hollywood!

Juno, a movie about a 16-year-old pregnant girl and Jamie Lynn Spears, 17-year-old unmarried sister of Britney Spears, not to mention her own pregnancy, although she was married at the time.

Some scoff at the media influence, and I certainly tend to when it involves people committing violent crimes because of movies and video games, but I can't entirely disregard the possibility here. Why? Society is more accepting of teen pregnancy than murder, and it takes a warped view of life to take it from another person. That's a mental illness. Intentionally getting pregnant is just a misguided call for attention and/or value.

So it's not JUST media, it's society. The Mayor talks about the school policy to teach abstinence and not have contraceptives available. Again, that's a problem. If you know teens, telling them not to do something does not convince them not to do it. And if they made a pact to get pregnant, then the opportunity to grab a condom or sponge or whatever won't make them pick one up on the way. They'll just...not get it.

Maybe it's the school daycare for employees and students. So, you get pregnant, you have a child, you can leave the child in the daycare at the school. If you tolerate it, you teach it. I'm not saying that it has to be a horrible, Scarlet Letter, banishing kind of scandal, but let's allow the pregnancy and new child to be a little more invasive. Not abandoned teenage mothers, but let them know they won't be coddled.

And while we can put some blame on not having enough health teachers and classes, and not teaching about contraceptives and providing them in the schools, what about the parents of the 17 girls? Are they not responsible more so than the government that the girls did not have an adequate sexual education? But again, who says they didn't know about contraceptives, how to use them, and where to get them?

And what about the 17 men not in high school? Apparently all 17 were not in high school. One was, apparently, a 24 year old homeless man. Where are they?

Media, school, family, society, and 17 misguided girls and men...a perfect storm that led to 17 pregnancies. Can it happen again? Sure. Can we prevent it?

I don't know. We'll have to ask ourselves some hard questions, though. Stop the finger pointing and look at how we accept teen pregnancy as just another step in growing up.

Information for this blog came from:

Mass. Girls May Have Made Pact to Get Pregnant

and this News Report from CBS...

posted by Bodog @ 10:13 AM