About now, I’ve got “fatherlessness” on the brain [‘so to speak!’] I started a MOVEMENT! Please join me in it. Be honest. Who’s responsible for many teenage pregnancies? Young people sometimes get pregnant because they’re trying to fill a void in their lives. Through discovery they find they don’t really want a child. There are other young mothers who are patient, long suffering and keep their child and do a remarkable job of raising wonderful children. I think there is something inherent within some young females that if they get pregnant, the guy is going to miraculously become a man, live up to family lifestyle, stay, help raise the children. Nope. Maybe it should be that way, but it’s not that way. It’s a known fact that not everyone who has a child wants a child nor do they need a child. Children are a lot of work for a long time. I do not call any mother a “bad mother or bad person,” regardless of behavior. It’s best to nurture and encourage them. Sometimes parents jump to the conclusion that you might be saying, “You’re a bad parent,” which is not the case. There can be so many things going on in their lives that it’s very difficult to juggle stuff and keep up. Many, many years ago, if a girl got pregnant in high school, she could not march with the class. I heard about a girl like that. And I remember there was one girl I knew and she was pregnant because she was “showing” and then she came back to school after a few days and she wasn’t pregnant anymore. I didn’t know what happened! I was told what happened. It’s different now. We encourage continuing education. I never heard a word about the boys who got the girls pregnant. It’s like the boys and men just plant their sperm and there it is and leaves fancy free. According to “The Truth About Teenage ‘Baby Mamas’ Is Quite Revealing,” When it comes to teenage mothers, society can be pretty judgmental. Fathers are not held accountable. TeenMomNYC [Gloria Malone] says, “Our society stigmatizes teen mothers while failing to address numbers of older men contributing to the teenage pregnancies. It’s past time that all men who contribute to any pregnancy, especially an unintended teenage pregnancy, are held accountable, too,” Malone said. Women are often the focus of campaigns educating women about unintended pregnancy. “Several of the ‘prevention ads’ target young women and tell them to not get pregnant and how terrible our lives will be if we do,” she said. “Yet there are virtually no ads that address the grown men who are contributing to the rates of unintended pregnancies, oftentimes under conditions that are legally classified as statutory rape.” Teach the children. Jeanette Grattan Parker, Ph.D., Superintendent Today’s Fresh Start Charter School; speaker, marriage expert after 50+ years. All writings are copyright: Will You Marry Me; Inquiring Minds Want to Know. [email protected]; www.todaysfreshstart.org; [email protected]
