Age of the Understatement: a social criticism about sex, love and teen pregnancy

What saddened me greatly about the so called Pregnancy Pact of Gloucester was the comment a young girl made about how these girls just wanted someone to love them unconditionally. My Love Theory centers itself on dissecting the unconditional and conditional aspects of love and synthesizing the reality with the fantasy. I think the girls from Gloucester simply came into confusion between sex and love as a means towards pleasure, be it physical or psychological as attainment of filling a lack in their lives. They misunderstood that unconditional has the highest price of all the kinds of loves out there. But how could they have known such a fact when they were 1) just entering the love/sex domain and 2) were misguided by society in terms of helping them to define such topics especially when making choices to have sex or attain a level of love they might have been missing?

Having a child is a huge responsibility so I often wonder why its weight is overshadowed by the romanticism of Huggies commercials, Parenting magazine's "super soccer moms", The Pottery Barn Kid's Collection catalogues and "sexy celeb" mothers, teen or otherwise. The American culture affected even me the night before I faced the decision to have my first child or not. After being bombarded by my immediate family to alter my abortion decision I wondered if perhaps I was actually ready to have a kid but just too scared to take responsibility for what turned out to be an accident. I was 26 and married. It was firmly expressed to me that I had no excuse to terminate a pregnancy under my situation. I don't regret my decision because I have learned more about the value of love through my daughter than anyone else but that decision was not made on my own. It was "forced" upon me and that is something I deeply resented up until I made a conscious choice to have another child at 35. It was the first time in my life I felt mature enough to take on the responsibility willingly, with my own free will. It also took me that long to understand the value of motherhood, something society glamorizes but rarely supports when push comes to shove.

A core problem I see is that these girls, pact or not, simply have become confused between the reality and romanticism of sex and love within their generational culture. What's really sad is that it's my generation who's selling them the false ideas of love, sex and motherhood, relationships, respect and the value of the other. My generation seems to be devaluing, cheapening sexuality's beauty through an unusual mix of false glamourization of it while best friending it with pornography. I'm quite embarrassed to have finally realized that those to blame if we wish to blame, are the late Baby Boomers but primarily the Gen Xers. These are my peers!

You know, I never fit into any crowd. I was always the strange foreigner growing up in Florida. The white American girls had their cheerleader clicks. The Cubans had their extreme form of gender stereotypes to fill and the blacks basically dominated a wide range of areas. I wasn't only a white girl growing up in Miami; I was a white Czech girl growing up in "Little Havana", surrounded by the infusion of Latin-American culture. I didn't know where the fuck I belonged. And so feminism is all I had to hold on to in order that I define myself as an individual in a sea I didn't understand.

I despise Florida and I've realized it's because it's a confusing place. Nobody belongs. It's too transient for people to get to know each other. The places that hold the reality of "family values" are places where people group together. Such places become not only a community but also a family, as Mr. Randazza expressed when painting a picture of his life growing up in Gloucester. I've seen this "family" community living in a small German town. It's a tad bit too close for comfort after five years but what it's done is given my daughter a home. Everyone knows her. They know that she suffers from severe atopic dermatitis and don't judge her. They know that her mother came to Germany after a divorce and found love, got married and had a child. This town that I live in has seen me grow into a woman. It's almost sad that they didn't take the time to get to know me as I had tried to get to know them. Once again, I am the foreigner. I still search for that place I belong and I'm about to turn 37.

So these Gloucester girls who made unwise decisions may have come from a place where their support for each other is so strong, whether the pact idea is true or theoretical, because they are, as Randazza said, "from theyah". They'll most likely never leave the town as the realities of motherhood will show themselves within 9 months. Their decisions will change their dreams as they give up who they never had the chance to become so that they can nurture a new life. This is powerful and big stuff here. The topic isn't pregnancy, an overused term, almost an understatement. The topic is the responsibility and the value of not only creating another being, but maintaining that being in an environment of goodness, with the right tools to succeed in a world they were, as Sartre said, "thrown into being". I never realized how much of our concepts are shaped by conditioning. And so it's time to recondition.

We argue too much about the rights and wrongs of abortion yet we have millions of kids unloved or cared for. The adoption process is so intense and expensive that rarely do enough people gain the benefits of such options. At the same time American culture doesn't prepare teens for the realities of life, glamorizing sexuality via media representations while like "good parents" a majority keeps abstinence in the forefront. Until society pulls away from its own hypocrisy these girls' kids don't have a great chance of success and will continue to breed dysfunctional individuals. That by default logic creates a pretty messed up society.

There's nothing wrong with teens having sex though I don't encourage it. What's really wrong is not preparing them for the consequences of such natural curiosity. It is ridiculous to try to stop a teen from being curious enough to try it especially when sex is plastered everywhere they look. But, while American culture is oversexed, American schools don't support realistic sex education but merely present a Stepford disillusion. It covers up its own mistakes, kind of like GW Bush propaganda. The focus is elsewhere because nobody wants to spill the truth because nobody wants to be blamed.

I argued the pro-teen sex point in my adolescent psych class last summer and I got booed. But I happened to have been one of those responsible 16 y/o teens who enjoyed responsible sex. I was told I was the "exception". Maybe but my mom offered some great advice: "I can't stop you from having sex with your boyfriend. Just do me a favor and wait at least a year before you do, that way you know he's out for you and not just sex." I respected she didn't try to tell me why I shouldn't but advised better conditions if I did. I waited one year, two months and a few days. :-) The importance of condom use came from my school not my mom. So I was fortunate to have good advice from my family and from my school system. Nobody kept me from doing it if I wanted to, even if I had to do it in the backseat of a car, but at least they taught me to be smart about it. That to me is intelligent application of wisdom.

The Gloucester school system supported these girls' efforts to continue an education and whether or not having a baby got popularized, the bottom line is that these girls were getting support. A solution was tried out. That kind of got lost in the debate. These girls most likely didn't feel loved or lacked something so big that they were willing to chance pregnancy by unprotected sex or by mere choice; maybe the adults just thought they could keep their curious kids from being the kind of whores their bodies wanted them to be. In this day and age, it's completely stupid to not use a condom but we can blame the "just don't do it" philosophy on the Conservatives who are ashamed of themselves in the first place because they have to hide under a mask. Aren't these the same people who romped around chanting love, sex, peace and feminist rights all while lying that they never inhaled a little weed as they were fucking like rabbits?

So the damage was done. Perhaps a solution is creating a school just for pregnant girls. Provide them with childcare and night classes, education about what they're going to need as a parent, teaching skills in childrearing, introducing them to childhood psychology and instruct them on communication and relationships. Even a 15 y/o can understand the basics of Freud and Erickson's Development Theory. Education at that point would require a focus on the needs those girls will have as they are different than the needs of other girls and incorporate that into a base math-science curriculum. The chances of these girls going on to college is slim and so what ought to be supported is their emotional liabilities so that they can still strengthen up to the point where they can find better options as they mature. A self confident girl will always find the motivation and means for success especially with the right support system at her side. This is where, if Gloucester continues in its camaraderie and standing together might just make it back into the news in several years as we see what's become of them. That's a mighty responsibility for the community and I think love, care and respect for the others within that community can help bind them even stronger.

These girls have, by choice of pregnancy, created a class of their own. And, if the proper tools are given to them, their chances of success are much higher. They need temporary segregation from their peers and judgmental morons because what they're going through is greater than what an average teen could understand. The support system these girls need now is the inclusion of preemptive strategies for the next generation (their children) which means what we've learned from this should be the focus, not the issue of unprotected sex, blame or the classification of "good girl, bad girl" (and where are the bad boys that impregnated those girls anyway?).

Women are cursed by their biology only if they choose to be. I think it's pretty cool, if true, that these girls stuck together though I no way applaud their choice to get pregnant or stupidity to engage in unprotected sex. Any Ya-Ya Sisterhood members can tell you when there's a pact, it's not one that is necessarily openly shared. It's a secret and that makes it more enduring, I suppose. Perhaps the truth struggles to keep its secrecy. They deserve that right if that's what they've chosen as a way to pull together.

What we ought to look at is why they made their choice. I'm quite sure the results of their "stupidity" lies in the reality of what they lacked in their lives or home along with the cultural influences, particularly by presenting sex and motherhood as an in vogue deal. There's nothing glamourous about being a mother and unless we factor in Andrew Blake's interpretation of porn (please don't click this link at work), porn itself is pretty unglamorous too. So what kind of trash are we feeding these kids?

Motherhood's only reward comes from the years of witnessing how one guided a new life into a successful independent being. Seems to me there's a lot to be embarrassed about with respect to the generation I'm a part of which seems to guide and promote these kids into chaos, bisexual play for attention, pregnancy, raunchy exploitation of themselves for 15 minutes of fame via reality shows or internet swaps; creating a generation of pharmaceutical profits for "teen disorders" which are particularly driven by depression and identity moratorium. Being a teen isn't a disorder and neither are the up and down roller coasters of adolescence which strictly include the curiosity of their developing sexuality. It's the way life goes but Gen Xers aren't patient. They began the "I want it now" mentality. And look what's been created?

These girls are a product of their family and social networks and maybe even the town's mentality. Well, even our best intentions sometimes backlash when we least expect it because we can never fully prepare for a perfect future and thus hindsight is created. Sticking together in support is a good thing even if the support is for something we're ashamed of, like our own failures to our children and to ourselves.

Perhaps this was a fabulous fabrication of a different truth but it brought much needed attention to the fact that society requires a re-conceptualization of love and sex and its presentation to minors by adults. The first step is to stop supporting Disney's "minor exploitation" rings and then we can knock down the glamorization of being adult. I'd rather see a glamorization of innocence. It's nice. It's sweet. It's a beautiful time that goes so quickly. Damn those people for killing these kids's ability to bask in it.

Why is my generation pulling the innocence carpet from underneath these kid's feet? Maybe because they grew up too fast themselves while their mothers were out seeking their feminist dreams. They had to figure it out all on their own and they haven't done a good job at it with respect to love and sexuality. Sex and love are mature games but maturity begins to take its steps in adolescence when childhood gives way to periods, pubic hair, erections, breasts and sexual desires. Teens can be responsible about their sexuality if adults condition them to be. They're going to have sex anyway as millions of examples exist to support that view. Unfortunately, there are a few adolescents who have enough levels of maturity to handle the love attachment and so I think the idea of casual sex has become a way for them to simply use themselves as a means to an end. Very sad.

Love and sex are so much more complex then a teenager can ever know because that simply takes trial and error in understanding. After years of research and college classes in its philosophy, I'm still developing my conceptualizations of it. Love requires experience. The introduction of sex kills the innocence of puppy love and that's what this generation has lost. Puppy love and then going steady have embracing qualities that help pave way to understanding the complexities of relationships between boy and girl and those nice moments of identity development have been lost as sex has become the means for love. But really, love has so much more value because it demands a higher level of respect for oneself and for another. Not enough information is out there on such topics which can be directed for "teen eyes". They're not allowed to learn anything about sex unless it's in the form of a clinical textbook. So what do they do? They find another way to get information about it. And then the "wise men" stop them.

I don't think adults can fully protect kids from possible mistakes as maturity also comes from the process of messing up. An adult's job is to inform the younger generation of the x,y, and z's of choices and their consequences, teach their hard earned wisdom rather than set rules to abide by which limits a developing teen's freedom and show me a teen who doesn't want to be free? They have to rebel and they have to be heard.

These girls made a choice and with that they'll serve their time, no doubt. Supporting them will give them strength because these poor girls have no idea what they've really gotten themselves into. I think any parent can attest to that. It breaks my heart but perhaps with enough support, they'll find a way to ensure their daughters will be smarter. For that to happen, sadly we need a few "guinea pigs" to show us that what we as a society are doing isn't working. That's a big sacrifice and I hope these girls will one day succeed just to shoot a bird at all of those who labeled them as stupid sluts while little was mentioned about the boys' irresponsibility for putting on a condom. Don't ever underestimate girl power just give her the right kind of power to succeed. Give her love and teach her how to put a condom on a dick if the dick himself feels he's immune from the backlash of his actions.

Namaste,
Tatiana von Tauber
www.vontauber.wordpress.com
www.vontauber.com

Related Links

Gloucester Pregnancy Pact Article:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html

Mr. Randazza's The Legal Satyricon blog on living in Gloucester and his interpretation of the pregnancy pact:

http://randazza.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/gloucester-and-its-pregnancy-pa...

Sartre, "thrown into being"; existentialist philosophy:

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sartreol.htm

Erik Erikson's Development Theory:

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/erikson.htm