I have a solution to the teen pregnancy problem, which has recently notched up its numbers after years of gradual decline. While many have pointed out that federal funding to teach only sexual abstinence and not provide information about condoms, the pill, or any number of pregnancy prevention inventions may be partly to blame, I think a better translation of the Korean instruction manual kids are using couldn't hurt.
However, no need to introduce drastic measures such as female circumcision yet, which won't stop pregnancy, but may scare the crap out of young girls long enough to keep the barn door closed until they are 21. Nor would I want to embrace any of the punishment options offered to parents of young girls who live in Muslim and Hindu countries. Death by stoning or setting her on fire seems so final.
This week People Magazine steps up to the plate with poignant personal accounts of what happens to American teens when pregnancy puts a crimp in their social lives. Here is a capsule summary of what they wrote: Girl gets pregnant. Girl gets stuck with all the responsibility. The more things change the more things stay the same.
There wasn't one photo of an expectant father. Or a name to go with the DNA he donated to the event. So here are my suggestions to help young men understand that there's no free hootchie cootchie.
While we hardly expect males to stop dipping their unprotected wicks wherever they want, we have to draw the line at porking underage teen girls. However, in a magnanimous gesture, it's only when they actually produce an eating peeping pooping screaming machine that young men will have to pay for their lapse in judgment. So in an effort to discourage impregnating girls under 18, we suggest the punishment of:
a. a lifetime listing on the national register as a sexual predator, plus
b. an automatic $500 a month payable to the teen mother to use as she sees fit, adjusted for inflation until the baby is 18, plus
c. his name, address, and picture in the local paper as the father of an unnamed baby, when it is born.
Or to avoid the financial, social, and personal embarrassment of a, b, and c, the father can also opt to have one or more offending parts of his anatomy removed and kept on display in a jar as a reminder to any testosterone poisoned male who thinks that ten minutes offull contact noogie is worth leaving a teenage girl with a lifetime of low income jobs, insurmountable debt, neglected children, unfinished education, and overwhelming responsibility.
Trust me, once the fathers have to face real consequences, teen pregnancies would become extinct.
Ah, there's nothing like the warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I can make the world a better place.
4 comments:
Many of the women I dated practiced a remarkably efficient mechanism of birth control. They implemented a reliable, if not common, material to utilize the "barrier" method to the fullest.
I think they called it "denim."
It takes two to tango. Who leads is a lesser concern. NYAH!
Of course it takes two to tango. But once the baby is made only girls gets stuck with the consequences. Guys have taken a walk foir too long. Thanks to DNA testing, it's time for them to share the consequences of childbirth is a way that can help them feel the pain in a more meaningful way.
NYAH yourself.
Mrs. L
Ya, I agree they should be held more accountable but the sad fact is many NON teenage men do not also! And they should know better even more! And there ae some cases where the girls are not totally honest on age or that they are using birth control and so many things. Yes, not high percentage but how would one make sure of this...sign a document? God knows I had 19 yr old guys after me when I was 14 & if I wasn't honest on my age, oddly now people think I look younger than my age...they are shocked when I tell them. I'd wonder how they would get the $500 a month? So now they would be out of HS working & hmm that creates another whole set of problems. Child Advocate Marilyn Adelman Wright always said, 'The best prevention of unwanted children is Hope'. Many see having a baby at a young age as ok, and the next thing to do, or the grown up thing to do etc. There are so many reasons why a teen gets pregnant, you can't treat them all the same & they each have to be solved in different ways.
Oddly enough, I told my oldest, who was getting mouthy with me on how he would take a year off after high school and travel around Europe with his girlfriend, one who doesn't exist right now, that dating was not an option for him. I was kidding of course, but nothing takes the wind out of a 14 year old's sails like this:
"There will be no teenage impregnating...." I saw him thinking:
Ewww, Mom's mentioning....sex. Ewww, where's my GameBoy???
He left the room in record time.
Anna
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