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September 5, 2005
Timken
High
School in
Canton, Ohio, has succeeded in setting a new record. Sixty-five of
the girls attending Timken are pregnant.
This record is
matched by another startling local statistic. According to the Canton
Health Department, out of 586 babies born through July at local
hospitals, 104 of the babies had mothers between the ages of 11 and
19.
Nationally, last
week, radio and television talking heads picked up this story and ran
with it. Outrageous, they shouted. Outrageous! What a dismal record
of failure!
Failure?
Really?
Think about it.
Timken girls and boys have succeeded at one thing. They have
succeeded in absorbing the messages of modern American culture and
incorporating those messages into their lives.
Reality
television validates casual sex between “consenting” guys and gals.
So Timken guys and gals consented.
Popular
entertainment idols jump in and out of bed so fast that we lose
count. So Timken teens played like they are stars of the silver
screen.
“Sexperts”
insist that teens are incapable of resisting sexual temptations. So
Timken teens didn’t.
“Sexucators” go
into classrooms and use false promises of “protection” and “safe sex”
to downplay the true failure rates of condoms. Sex is fun, not
risky. So Timken teens reach for promises of good times.
Rap and sports
heroes brag about the number of women they conquer…and leave. So
Timken males fade into the background as the girls are counted by
statisticians.
And sadly,
American culture runs away from defining marriage as an expected
standard for raising children. So Timken teens will be unmarried
parents.
If you consider
what we are teaching our children, it appears that Timken teens have
simply excelled at learning what they have been taught. They are not
alone.
Stella is a
pregnant teen who doesn’t attend Timken. She and her boyfriend were
really “serious.” So they had sex. Now he’s gone and Stella is
pregnant.
Sure, her
feelings are hurt at being dumped by her boyfriend. But Stella likes
being pregnant. She looks forward to being a mother and having a baby
to hold. And maybe, just maybe, her boyfriend will come back.
Next week,
Stella’s friends and family are throwing her a baby shower. Her aunt
has brought over a baby bed and stroller. And everyone is getting
excited, anticipating her approaching due date.
Statisticians
will count Stella as an unfortunate unwed pregnant teen. But in the
real world where Stella lives, she is making a family using the
pattern she has been given.
She had sex
because she was serious with her boyfriend. And she is having a baby
because she is pregnant. Stella has grown up in a world where babies
enter our lives as casually as new cars and prom dresses.
If you talk with
Stella and her friends…and I suspect the young girls of Timken
high…they have the same eternal dream of women going back thousands of
years. They long to be mothers and raise children. And they are.
They have
learned what “sexucators” have been teaching. Babies are no longer
the expected product of a married couple committed to each other for
life. Marriage, sex, love, infatuation, fun, babies and families…all
of it is up for grabs…depending on the mood of the day and the luck of
the dice.
Is it failure
when 65 girls at Timken High School are pregnant? Not if they have
succeeded in learning what we have been teaching them.
Copyright © 2005 Jane Jimenez
October 29, 2004 -
Food for the Brain
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