COMMENTARY | It was 1991. I was 18 and I was pregnant. I was irrationally terrified and foolishly optimistic, depending on the hour and the day. Some people told me I should "just get an abortion" so I could go to college as I planned. I decided instead to put off college and keep my baby. Come what may, I was going to be a mother. And I was going to be a statistic.
According to a report released by the Guttmacher Institute, after peaking in the early 1990s, the teen pregnancy rate in America is at its lowest level in nearly 40 years, with 67.8 pregnancies per 1,000 young women aged 15 to 19 in 2008. The birth rate and the abortion rates have also declined, says lead author of the report Kathryn Kost.
Kost attributes the declines to improved use of contraception among teens. I agree contraception is a big part of it. But along with contraception, I think there is a change in societal attitudes about teens and sexuality, as well. At least, I hope there is.
Mixed messages. That's what I remember of the topic as a teenager. There was this prevailing attitude that sex was something done glamorously by rock stars. But normal girls from normal U.S. cities? If they did it, they didn't admit it. Admitting it meant you lacked morals. According to the Guttmacher report, the proportion of sexually active teens has not significantly changed since the 1990s. In other words, there were a lot of girls with a lot of secrets that tended to make them a bit leery of the notion of getting on the pill or buying condoms.
I think my generation was probably the one for whom the term "latch-key" was invented. I remember hanging out with my friends, even when we were as young as 13, talking about babies and how if a girl had a baby, then at least she wouldn't be alone. So sex was a secret. The product of sex was an antidote to loneliness.
I have three daughters now, and the oldest is 20. What I tell them about sex is that it is an act that comes with tremendous responsibility. Part of a healthy lifestyle includes making informed choices, including the choice to obtain contraception if needed. And parenting isn't about how a child can make you feel better about yourself. Of course, I tell them much more than that. But those things are part of a conversation that is ongoing.
I'm not the only one my daughters are getting their information from, of course. I would guess this hasn't changed since the 1990s either. It seems the direction of the information is different these days. As much as I sometimes miss the rock stars on MTV, I find its show "16 and Pregnant" and spin-off "Teen Mom" to be interesting -- and perhaps necessary -- additions to the discourse about teen pregnancy.
I like that these shows neither glamorize nor demonize the girls. They merely tell the stories of this part of their lives. I hope we're moving past the point where teen pregnancy is glamorized or demonized. I hope, for the sake of our kids, we can finally tell the complete truth, both the good and the bad.
While I can never say that having and choosing to raise my child was a bad choice (quite the contrary), what I can say is that having her and raising her likely would have been easier had I been a little bit older.
That it altered the direction I thought my life was going to go in. My oldest two daughters are now young adults, with the oldest in college and her younger sister soon to be. And -- 20 years later -- I am in college, too.
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