Baby Bling

I read an article a while back about wealthy suburban couples competing with their wealthy suburban friends through a new wildly popular status symbol. Not huge cars, not elaborate vacations. Babies. Lots and lots of babies. Apparently (and one need not look further than the latest Pitt-Jolie headline in the checkout line mags) babies are the new bling.

Needless to say, this is distressing on several levels. Firstly, even to a heartless wench like me, using children to prove to one's friends (or the media) that one is a superstar with immense wealth seems an unjust use of children. Secondly, and more distressing, it's hard not to think of the wee little planet on which we pile all these grubby little water drinking plastic dependent cherubs. Do we really want to make it "cool" to have gigantic families?

I can say this: it's cool in school. There hasn't been a single month, in the entire time that I have been teaching, that hasn't brought news of at least one more pregnant student. Many of them have children already. And the news is always greeted with "awwws" from the other students, who rush over to the latest big belly and rub it, give the mom to be lots of attention, and totally freak me the fuck out.

How do we compete with cool?!

Our school has counselors on staff, and we all sit down once a week to chat about the students' states of mind, hash out strategies to deal with difficult situations, and, inevitably, lament the list of newly pregnant teenagers.

These girls, for all their lives, have been under mountains of shit beyond my ability to imagine. Abuse, homelessness, crumbling, segregated, violent schools, gang violence, hunger, lack of health care...not exactly the recipe for self-love and self-respect. So when they get the chance to be loved and needed, they take it. When they get the chance to be in control of something, they take it. And in so doing, they become part of a rapidly expanding group of their peers, and are accepted. This is just as damaging to young girls' futures as gangs are to boys' - and both behaviors are unfortunate responses to the same set of shitty realities.

I recognize that the lack of mandated, funded, comprehensive sex education in public schools is partly at fault for the rising number of teen parents. But this isn't just a sex education crisis. It's a self-esteem crisis. Hopelessness crisis.

I assure you, the last possible thing we need is for this to become cooler than it already is.

...I've sat here staring at a blinking cursor for quite a while now. I have no answers. I have no clue what to do. I'm throwing my hands up in the air, in the middle of a crisis, and saying: "What. The. Fuck."