Parents were outraged after an Arizona high school featured a two-page spread in their yearbook showing images of teen students who were either pregnant or had babies. The concerned parents and grandparents complained that the high school was wrongfully glamourizing teen pregnancy. […]
Students were also shocked and unhappy to find these photos in their yearbook. Fellow student Gregory Gomez explained, “There are other kids who have worked harder for better accomplishments. And (the young parents) have a whole page for their kids.”
Teen pregnancy is obviously no easy thing. Teens choosing to carry their children to term and raise them or place them with loving families face tough decisions and sacrifice. I hope their families, schools, churches and communities provide them with the support they need.
They are growing up in a culture that glamourizes teen sex through every medium. Teens are viewing and becoming addicted to porn at alarming rates. It is becoming more graphic and more accessible than ever before.
So we can’t act surprised that teens are having sex and getting pregnant.
And these teen parents are part of the school body. They are also students. They participate in the school community and culture. It doesn’t sound like the two page spread glamourized teen sex and parenting. In fact, the teens are quoted on the challenges they face.
So does this spread ‘glamourize’ teen sex and pregnancy? Or is it just reflecting a reality?
Should we be outraged at the pictures? Or the mess of a culture that they’re having to navigate?
As Andrea says, bring on the prude revolution.
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Off the top of my head, this seems like a good thing. We wouldn’t want to encourage teen sex, but our culture already treats that as normal–so it would seem to be the lesser of two evils to celebrate (or if that’s too strong a word, to affirm) the motherhood of teens who carry their children to term (as opposed to denigrating them and thereby encouraging abortions). A healthy culture probably does need to stigmatize out-of-wedlock births, but it would have to stigmatize abortion too. Since our society so avidly defends the latter, it would seem dangerous to stigmatize the former.
Also, in contrast to the fantasy world of porn, recognition of teen moms puts sex back in the concrete context where it belongs. And kids are blessings, and parenthood is a good thing–if anything, our culture errs on the side of underestimating the value of both. So this feature in the yearbook seems like it would be a helpful message that would nudge students toward a healthier perspective on the matter, no?
This extended adolescence thing isn’t working out very well. And from my perspective, the problem is that we encourage sex outside of marriage, and dating as teens has, generally, nothing to do with commitment. Lo and behold, people make short term decisions, aka they have sex with someone that don’t know they could settle down with and kid result. I think we could easily have the expectation that dating in high school has one purpose only, and that’s marriage and family… and it might shift who people just hang around with. Or not. these are complex things these days, since there is no shared understanding of how to do family. I do think heartache is the result.