Teen pregnancy
-
- December
- 5
According to the CDC, the teen birth rate has risen for the first time in 14 years.
As reported in this “AP story”:http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TEEN_BIRTHS?SITE=NYWHI&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT, girls between 15 and 19 are having babies at an ever-higher rate.
Interesting timing for this study. There’s a new movie opening this week (“Juno”:http://www.foxsearchlight.com/juno/) about a young girl who struggles with life as a pregnant high school student  and the decisions she must face as the birth grows near.
I’m looking forward to seeing the movie.
But I also wonder how real-life parents of pregnant teens deal with the situation these days, epecially if a daughter insists on having the baby and staying in school.
Is there more of a spirit of cooperation among families? Do pregnant girls still get ostracized at school?
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 4:11 pm by Linda Lombroso.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
Baby boomer Linda Lombroso was born in Queens and grew up in Port Washington. She began her journalism career at New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, and came back to the field after spending 10 years as a stay-at-home mother. Linda joined The Journal News in 1997 and has been a Life & Style writer since 2000. She has three children.
I was surprised when my kids told me in recent years that there have been pregnant girls at school. You never saw that in my day, 30 years ago. Perhaps it’s more accepted, now. I don’t know whether their families are supportive…but if not, there are more resources available to the girls now. One beautiful example is the Pregnancy Care Center in New Rochelle which has the Elinor Martin Residence for young women in crisis pregnancies. PCC helps them stay in school, find work, develop life skills, etc. It’s really wonderful what they do to create a family style support system where one might not otherwise exist.
I myself am a pregnant teen who plans to keep my baby and stay in school. Yes, I do get stared at and whispered about in school (by both students and teachers). And yes, some of the kids there have been downright cruel to me regarding my pregnancy.
It’s hard in many ways, being pregnant at this stage in my life, and it’s certainly not something I planed on, but I’m making the best of it & yes, I am happy.
Lucky for me my family is wonderful & has chosen to support me & the father of my baby in any way that they can. However, they wern’t always so supportive in the begining(not that I can blame them)! My mother even disowned me for a time because I refused to get an abortion (though in the past few weeks she seems to have come around) and my boyfriend’s mother actually kicked him out of the house when he told her that we planed to keep the baby & want to get married sometime this summer.
Leah—I really wish you the best with the baby and your upcoming marriage! Your online diary is really wonderful. You have a great attitude! Good luck!
hello all
nice to meeet all You in one place
greetings for all
1]
newsolos
tunaparty
I’ve been looking around for articles similar to this but never found one that actually was valuable such as this. Glad I found this place!