The Travails of Teen Pregnancy
Jul 25th, 2008 by Sam
A few weeks ago, I heard a story on the news that two young boys found a newborn baby next to railroad tracks. They went in to their their parents. After calling 911, the baby was brought to a hospital and treated for any injuries. The mother was later found and arrested, a young woman who had falsely believed that abandoning the child would be the best thing for the baby.
The problem with youth having children is their inability to understand the gravity of the responsibility of raising a child. The idea is so far beyond the vast majority of kids, that when things got tough, and they will, they would simply wither in the midst of such pressure. And yet, today’s culture is continuing to embrace and possibly even encourage teen pregnancy. Of course, such pregnancy is rarely in the confines of marriage. Al Mohler comments on Jamie Lynn Spears, Brittany Spears’ sister, recent delivery of her daughter Maddy:
Beyond that, “commitment” is the word one uses to avoid using “marriage.” Waiting until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse is, for Hollywood, an unthinkable presumption. Teens are encouraged to establish “committed relationships” before sex. We can only wonder what kind of commitment would please Hollywood and its critics.
As for consequences, Hollywood generally abandons reality when it claims to present “reality” programming. The celebrity cult is even worse. The OK! magazine cover makes teen motherhood look positively glamorous. But, as one young woman responded to the OK! coverage, “I had a baby at 16, it was NOT easy, I did NOT look radiant and beautiful.”
Then again, that kind of honesty probably wouldn’t sell many magazines. Hollywood and the entertainment industry are selling their version of normal teenage expectation. Teen moms are, as Newsweek explained, “a hot plot device.” Parents, you have been warned.
When you look at this cover, how splendid teen pregnancy can appear. But what about the behind the scenes looks at a baby crying at 2am and then at 4am? What about the pains of nursing? What about when the first signs of a stuffy nose or fever or colic appears and the baby wails uncontrollably? What about the poopy diapers that explode all over? What about the dead weariness that ever new mother feels after having a child? Can a teen who can barely be responsible for herself be able to care for such a child?
I agree with Dr. Mohler. I hope such an article would not lead girls to falsely believe that getting pregnant could actually be ‘cool’ or ‘glamorous,’ attempting to catch up to their teen stars. Such an idea would not only be false, but foolhardy.
- A Woman’s Right to Choose a Boy Instead of a Girl
- Kids and Teen Text Message and IM Slang
- When Mothers Kill Their Children
- Christian Girls and the Allure of Sexuality
- To Online Date or Not to Online Date, That Is the Question
I wonder how many people she has “helping” her raise her new baby. My wife originally planned to return to work after our son was born. It was a dream situation. She would return to work with her mom, at her mom’s house, and bring our son with her. Simply taking a few moments throughout the day to tend to his needs and then back to her tasks.
Thankfully, God had a better idea as the economy kept my wife from returning to work. Turns out, that even a child as pleasant and easy going as Corbin still needs hours of attention throughout the day - and then there’s the night.
I’m not so sure teen pregnancy itself is so bad…it wasnt that long ago that teens were getting married and having children. I am the product of a teen pregnancy - my parents were married at 18. I fathered a child when I was 19 — but we were married and I’m glad we had kids young. there is nothing biological or spiritual that calls for later pregancies (i always wince when I see a 45 year old couple suddenly decide to pursue the call of the womb after a lifetime of selfish, childless living.)
Its the out of wedlock babies that are bad for society. Almost certainly bound for the welfare roles, these situations are a direct result of a society with no boundaries.
David
http://www.redletterbelievers.blogspot.com
David, I think the greater concern here (versus the past) is the lack of a family support system. Nowadays, families are so disjointed and disconnected from each other that a pregnant teen is likely to have little to no help dealing with the dramatic changes a new child brings.
Teen pregnancy isn’t so much the problem except that the media is making it so glamorous without the appropriate balance of reality. I’m glad to hear your experiences have gone well but we’re also talking about girls like Jamie Lynn Spears is only now 17 years old sending an unbalanced message to other 15 and 16 year old girls.
Got to disagree w/you pastor.
The problem is we do not expect nor train our children to be mentally mature when they become physically mature (i.e., adult).
IIRC, Mary is thought to have been 13 or 14 (”bethula”) when she was *engaged to be married* to Joseph and conceived Jesus.
Girls become “boy crazy” around that same age, the age when they experience menarche. Rhetorical: Could this be God’s way to letting them (and their parents and society) know that it is time for them to get married? (Applying this to guys and when they become “girl crazy” is a related, but separate, topic.)
Delayed childbearing (i.e., delayed years after menarche), is implicated in reduced fertility among her daughters, shorter life expectancy for the children, and, I speculate here, altered neuroanatomy and physiology (women literally alter the way their brains develop by not having a baby soon after menarche). A woman’s hips fuse around age 25, thus if she hasn’t had her first baby by then, her hips will not open as widely to deliver the baby and this has caused our increased rates of C-sections.
The longer a woman waits to have her first full-term pregnancy, the greater the exposure of her not fully differentiated breast tissues to monthly estrogen, the greater her risk of breast cancer. Women have a 2-5 fold increase in breast CA risk w/first pregnancy after 30 when compared to *before* 18 or 19 (acc to U. Penn. Cancer Center). As Mary Claire-King, PhD, one of the top breast CA researchers wrote: “Early menstruation and delayed childbearing are probably primarily responsible for the increase in breast cancer rates over the past 50 or 60 years . . . . Unfortunately, the increased risk of breast cancer in modern women is very much a consequence of being modern women” (i.e., complete HS, complete college, have a career, and then have a baby). This is all part of the belief that women can act like men, that they can choose to be whatever they want to be w/o consequences. The Church has bought into this and has whole-heartedly embraced what was “radical feminism” in the 1960s. The “best and the brightest” of our Christian sisters are doing the worst for their and their children’s health. How ironic.
Thanks for your comments. I guess when I am considering teen pregnancy, I am considering it in today’s modern context, where so many teens are raised with a non-biblical worldview (see Voddie Bauckham’s book, Family Driven Life). With such a worldview, teens cannot grasp the stark reality of rearing children, let alone rearing them in the Lord. I am not saying there aren’t exceptions out there, because I believe there are. And John, I agree that physiologically, it probably is better for women to bear children younger. However, teens of yesteryear were raising children without the media harping on them to be sex objects. We truly are, as Mohler notes in his book Culture Shift, raising a nation of wimps. And as such, we need to consider that unless this worldview is changed, and unless more mature teens are produced, teen pregnancy should be the exception and not the norm.