Well now, isn’t that a relief. The infamous “pregnancy pact” at
Gloucester High School turns out to be an urban legend. The media mobs
that descended on the fishing town may now pack up their cameras and
their moral outrage.
It’s all over, folks. Except for the 17 Gloucester girls in the late
stages of pregnancy or early stages of motherhood. And except, of
course, for the 140,000 other American girls between 15 and 17 who’ll
be having their own babies this year.
Let us review the feeding frenzy that seemed to please so many palates.
The natives of this Massachusetts town already knew there had been a
bump in the number of baby bumps. High school pregnancies had
quadrupled in one year. But this didn’t get much outside notice until
the high school principal told a Time magazine reporter that nearly
half the girls “made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies
together.”
Pregnancy Pact! “Sisterhood of the Maternity Pants!” “Jailbait Girls in
Tot Pact!” Quick, ride your favorite hobbyhorse over to the nearest
cable station, network or blog.
The tale of the pregnancy pact led all the usual suspects to cast all
the usual blame. It was because the state rejected abstinence-only
funds.
No, it was because the school couldn’t dispense condoms. It was because
the celebrity culture bred Jamie Lynn Spears wannabes. No, it was
because the town was in the economic dumps. It was because the school
had day care. No, it was because of an “absolute moral collapse.”
Just when the dudgeon rose high over the outrage levee, along came the
beleaguered mayor of her struggling city to tell a packed news
conference that there was no evidence of a “blood oath” and that the
high school principal had gotten a bit “foggy in his memory.” Next,
some of the pregnant girls spoke up and the pact fell apart at the
seams. Maybe some got pregnant intentionally, maybe some bonded before
or after the pregnancy test, but there was no mass plunge into
motherhood. Phew.
Uh, phew? Before we comfortably return to ignoring reality, may I
remind you that the “Girls Gone Wild in Gloucester” merely raised this
school’s pregnancy rate up to 3 percent, or just under the national
average for teens from 15 to 17. Are there no cameras on, say, Holyoke,
Mass., where the pregnancy rate is 9 percent?
The Gloucester 17 have real troubles, but some 4,000 teens gave birth
in Massachusetts (in 2006), and we’re near the bottom of the chart,
with a 2 percent teen birth rate. If you want real numbers, go west
young media, to Texas, top of the teen birth heap at 6 percent. And if
the gee-whiz factor was that some girls got pregnant intentionally,
guess what? About 15 percent of all teen pregnancies are intentional —
not counting those in that gray zone between intention and accident.
So why does it take the myth of the mommy pact to get attention?
Patricia Quinn, head of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy,
figures that the story touched some deep fear. “We are terrified that
we don’t actually decide for our kids when they have sex. We don’t
decide when they become parents,” she says. The notion that a group of
girls made that decision together and without us caused a freak-out.
Indeed, the pregnant girls of Gloucester were described by one social
worker as “socially isolated.” How many teens are in fact isolated,
particularly from the adult world?
“In our fear, we fail to do what we can do. Parents need to
aggressively articulate their values,” says Quinn. They need to say,
she adds, “I know this is in your own hands, but here are my values,
here are my expectations, here’s what I hope.” About two-thirds of our
children have had sex before they graduate high school. Have they heard
what we believe about sexuality, about relationships, about pleasure
and responsibility?
If this is still a “teachable moment” — a phrase used to make us feel
better when we’ve been gobsmacked by reality — what’s the lesson from
this media frenzy? That we’re spending way too much time arguing with
each other in public about sex education, abstinence, condoms and
shame. We’re spending way too little time talking to kids over the
kitchen table about sexuality and sexual values.
Anyone ready to make a new pact?
Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
