In an article that appeared in the Sept. 4, 2008, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, history and education professor Jonathan Zimmerman wrote that fears of teen moms being condemned to poverty are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between being pregnant and being poor:
Bearing a child as a teenager doesn't hurt a woman's prospects for education, job advancement or marriage. Ditto for her kids, who don't suffer any measurable consequences from having a teenage mother.Though he admits that "nobody knows why" impoverished girls are more likely to become young mothers, Zimmerman offers two possible causes: that girls in poverty lack the confidence and self-esteem to insist upon contraception, and that financial and cultural pressures make it less likely that poor girls will abort their pregnancies.
Instead, they suffer for a much more basic reason: They're poor. About two-thirds of teenage mothers live at or below the poverty line at the time they give birth. The less income and opportunity that you have, the more likely you are to become a teenage parent.
So Americans have it exactly backward. Teen pregnancy doesn't deprive our kids of life chances; instead, kids who lack those chances are the ones who get pregnant.
"All things being equal, of course, it's still best for our teenagers - and for their offspring - to delay parenthood," Zimmerman wrote. "But all things are not equal, and that's the whole point here. The hype over teen pregnancy diverts us from the truly serious problem in American society, which is the growing poverty of teenagers themselves."
Labels: pregnancy, sex, poverty
Posted By: Aspen Education Group
