i skimmed this from the washington posts outlook section. apparently some european country found that if teens that drop out have a slightly higher chance of getting pregnant. so lets keep them in school regardless of any other situation. they say young women in school are too busy studying and school minded to think about raising a child.
first. the correlation between teen pregnancy and drop out rates seem to run the other way. teens will drop out because of pregnancy. AND it totally ignores that teens have sex regardless of whether they are top students or "drop outs." can we please stop ignoring that and just hand out free and non-biased information about contraception and protection?
ill try to find the article online. i think im going to write a letter.
By the time I got pregnant with my daughter I was a 16 year old drop out. But I dropped out when I was 15 and I'd been having sex since 13. If they had been able to keep me in school, I don't think it would have changed anything.
i was in scholl when i got pregnant. I dropped out to be homeschooled after i found out i was prego...
I was in school when I got pregnant botht imes..and Im still in school. I dont think being out of school and getting pregnant has anything to do with one another. IMO.
"the correlation between teen pregnancy and drop out rates seem to run the other way. teens will drop out because of pregnancy. AND it totally ignores that teens have sex regardless of whether they are top students or "drop outs." can we please stop ignoring that and just hand out free and non-biased information about contraception and protection?"
right. but doing that would encourage teen sex, don't you know? :roll:
what that program is relying on is the idea that teenagers who drop out are dumb and don't care about their future, and that teenagers who get pregnant are dumb and don't care about their future. which we all know is totally untrue.
i wish people would just recognize that teenagers have sex, and sex leading to pregnancy is a normal, natural thing. it can be positive for some people, regardless of age, and negative for some people, again regardless of age. it becomes a problem when those people don't want to be pregnant. so what we need to do is stop pathologizing and theorizing about unplanned pregnancy and just say, "hey guys, sex can make you pregnant, here's how that happens, here's what you can do about it! have a condom!"
people MAY get pregnant directly as a result of dropping out of school (well not directly a result of that, but you know what i mean), but it really doesn't take a genius scholar to say "oh, maybe people get pregnant because the sex ed in schools just tells them to wait until they get married, but their infinitely more powerful hormones and social situations tell them NOT to wait, so perhaps we should match our education with their experiences, rather than acting as though teens and sex exist in a bubble that we can manipulate."
iam a teen mom i got pergent when i was 17 and i was in the 11th grade i was not going to go back to school my 12th gared year but i was forced by the school district. at that time my mom and dad found a teen mom high school and i went there i did graduate and i was alode to take samantha to school with me it was very hard thou.
love stacy and samantha
i dropped out of school before i got pregnant. but those two things didnt go hand in hand. and the remark about thinking about raising kids. wtf. i dont think the problem is that girls are not busy enough and sex is just a filler of free time. and since when isnt raising kids a time consuming concept? i know grown ass women who are in college, starting careers and are " too busy " for kids and yet they can have them? i wanna say about 95 percent of my student body werent virgins, that means 95 percent could have been teen parents. thats real. so why focus on the few that result in pregnancy? why not offer them the most help. altho i do think that schools dont try hard enough to keep kids in school. such as not offering to bend for special needs students. so some mamas have to drop out because of insensetive teachers and school systems. even tho you are gurenteed that you can remain in school i think alot of teachers fuck with teen parents ( ive seen teachers be harsher on the girls with kids in my clase, vs. say the jocks who couldnt turn in homework cause of a game or some shit) i think instead if trying to keep kids in school to avoid teen pregnancy, we should just try to accomedate all students so its a real option to stay in school. i always said, "i could go to school, that is if your bus will pick me up infront of my cardboard box on the side of the road" for some the inflexablity of school and the whole system just cant go with being a teen parent. i was homeless thats why i couldnt stay in school. should i have been forced to stay? no! not unless they want to house feed and clothe me. ya know.
melissa
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34110-2004Dec3.html
you may have to sign-up, but its free.
heres a part of it
the article mentions sex but it appears the writers of the report totally disregard the fact that pregnancy is caused by SEX not free time. great abstinence-only mindset :roll:
Wow, that's crazy. I got pregnant after I left school. But that was just pure chance, because I was having more sex when I was in school.
This just reminded me. I've never really heard this before. I usally get "You left school, because you were pregnant, right?" not; "You left school, to get pregnant , right?"
I think its ridiculas, they put all young mums n dads in shitty light, they stereotype us, but on the other hand they expect so much from us. Whats the deal? This kinda stuff gets me really annoyed, i am 17, yeah ok i broke the law and had sex when i was 14, but they dnt know that? For all they know i may have got pregnant from my first time? I think that alot of people that are "higher" than us, in a policital way, need to get their heads from their arses and come say ello to the real world!
And, to top it all off, I just heard yesterday, on NPR, about how abstanance only programs, that are FUNDED BY THE GOVERNMENT are teaching things like:
1. HIV/AIDS can be spread through sweat and tears.
2. That babies are made through ANY contact with gentitalia.
and other things I can't remember. Here's the story if anyone wants to liston to it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4204079
this is my letter to the editor (it will probably be shortened by the paper but i wanted to get all my points in). any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
I was very disappointed with the Stay in School (And Out of the Maternity Ward) (December 4th Outlook) article in the Sunday Post. First, I believe the economists of the study simply looked at statistical data without looking at the culture context of the times. Could the drop in pregnancy rate have more to do with better access to birth control and reproductive choice? I don't have the full study but it seems there are many more variables that they did not consider.
Secondly, pregnancy and drop-out rate often runs the other way. Teachers and the student body harass and discriminate against pregnant and parenting students making the school environment too hostile to continue. Pregnant and parenting students may have to work to pay for daycare and other expenses. They may be kicked out of their homes by unsupportive parents. Schools should do everything in their power to support pregnant and parenting students so that they do not feel they have to drop out.
Thirdly, the study remarks that they âthey found no evidence of such an incarceration effect, either in the United States or in Norway.â Then what is the point of this article and study? They later state, staying in school may make students ââsmarterâ and⦠postpone childbearing.â That complete denigrates pregnant and parenting students and leads to my final point.
Teens have sex regardless of whether they are top students or drop-outs. Young women who do continue their pregnancies are not any less smarter because of it. If schools and citizens are truly concerned about teen pregnancy and the state of teen parents, they will push for comprehensive sex-ed, access to contraceptives and un-biased information on protection. Sex causes pregnancy, not free time. Ignorance of that fact only enables it.
That is a little rediculoua that they think that you have a higher chance to get pregnant if you drop out of school.
When you have sex you take a risk of getting pregnant and when you do not use a condom that puts you at a higher risk.
I dropped out of school like a year before I got pregnant. Right before I found out I was pregnant I went back to school. Then through the pregnancy I had to drop out again.
I read about something similar in the Oregonian. I'll try to type out the article and post it when i get time. The guy who write it was a doctor and was challenging the things the abstinence only programs said, and said that they had a lot of misinformation. Its about time someone stood up to them!