Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High
“By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, ‘some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,’ Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. ‘We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,’ the principal says, shaking his head.’”
The only thing surprising about this story is that anyone is acting surprised by it. Everywhere these girls turn, people are fawning over young mothers. The media are obsessed with splashing the slightest hint of “baby bumps” (gack) on the front cover of every celebrity rag. (I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised to find out that Halle Berry got pregnant at age 41 after her people gently suggested that photographs of her in a maternity Valentino might be a pretty good way to revive interest in her flagging career.) Hell, we were hearing speculation about Jennifer Lopez’s possible pregnancy for about six years, it seemed, before she even got pregnant. Same with Jennifer Anniston, and the tone of the stories on her turned distinctly chilly when people began to suspect that she might not have a baby with Brad Pitt after all. In what other realm of public life are women so admired as when they become mothers, and who’s showing these girls that there’s any other way for them to accomplish anything meaningful? (Thanks to datn for the pointer to the article)
