Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

ABC Family (that would not be your standard-fare ABC, this is a cable channel) has a new show whose “WORLD PREMIER” (oh, please) is tonight: The Secret Life of the American Teenager. It’s about a high school student who gets pregnant.

My initial thoughts: Oh, please. Yes, Juno made a lot of money. But that doesn’t mean that the networks (or even the network “subsidiaries”) can be anywhere near as relevant, snarky, or non-judgemental as Diablo Cody. Which means you probably suck.

But I said to myself, “Dr. Karen, you’ve got to give this a chance. Who knows? Maybe it’s the new Freaks and Geeks!” And then I laughed at my own little joke until I fell off the couch. Because of course nothing could portray teenagers as well as either Juno OR Freaks and Geeks, and even attempting to puts the creators in such a laughable place that it makes me fall off couches.

But hey, it’s my job to stay on top of things like this, so I prepared myself for five minutes of crap and went to take a look at their little trailer.  And here’s the stunning thing: It wasn’t so bad.  After the five minute trailer, I am willing to watch at least one episode of the show.

So according to this very little, tiny “teaser” about this show, here’s what they got right:

• Pregnant Girl isn’t a bad-girl-slut who finds her way, she’s a band nerd who doesn’t know what she’s doing.
• Pregnant Girl and her two friends seem, on first glance, to be pretty real.  This is a huge accomplishment.  I hope it holds up to the test of another 38 minutes of screen time.

And here’s what they got wrong:

• Pregnant Girl got pregnant after having sex for the first time.  I’m sorry, that’s so Juno.
• The dad is a boob.  This has been done and re-done and over-done far too often for anything good to possibly come of it.  I’m exhausted by stupid-TV-dads.  (Yes, even the one in Freaks and Geeks.)

I’m dubious (they are, after all, only 2-for-2 here).  And here’s my raging question:

What happens when Pregnant Girl gives birth?

Do they have a shitty show and not let her go past 6 or 7 months pregnant, forever living with an-unnamed alien in her tummy?  Do they jump the shark and bring a baby into the show, and Pregnant Girl becomes Mommy Girl?  Do they bite the bullet and end what might be a popular show?  This plot set up is time-limited, and I’m dubious that they’ll do the right thing and end it when it should end.

Like I said: I’m willing to watch the first episode.  Except that I can’t.  I don’t have ABC Family.  Anyone want to Tivo it for me and invite me over?

We have some old friends staying with us right now with their granddaughter, who is almost one year old. We’ll call our friends the Sullivans, their daughter Hannah, and their granddaughter Beth. Here is the startling story of the Beth’s birth:

Hannah was 18, and a senior in high school. The Sullivans thought she might be sexually active, and offered to provide her with birth control, but she declined saying she was not having sex with her boyfriend.

And then Hannah started…gaining weight…most prominently in her tummy area. The Sullivans started wondering between themselves whether Hannah was pregnant or not. They dropped hints, tried to bring up the possibility obliquely. But Hannah did not seem to pick up on their hints, and never showed any sign of being pregnant. Except that her tummy grew a bit more every month.

Finally Mrs. Sullivan asked Hannah point-blank if she was pregnant. Hannah looked her mother in the eye and said no. Now, Mrs. Sullivan knew that Hannah had a tendency to lie. But she just didn’t think that Hannah could lie about something so big so completely. So she took her word for it.

Hannah was in a car accident, and the police officer asked her if she was pregnant, saying that if she was, he had to take her directly to the hospital. Hannah told the police officer no, she was not pregnant.

Hannah’s friends asked if she was pregnant, and she told every friend who asked, that no she was not pregnant.

You probably get the gist of where this story is going.

So the Sullivans went on vacation.  They drove three days to visit extended family, and on the day they arrived they got a phone call from Hannah in the hospital: “Mom, I had  baby.”  It had been Hannah’s plan that she would have the baby during the Sullivans’ well-timed trip, and that she would give it up for adoption before they came back.  But after the birth, she changed her mind.

The moral of this story: What incredible fortitude!  What strength and will!  Hannah is an amazing, powerful young woman.  When her determination is pointed in a supportive, meaningful direction, watch out world!

Many children and teenagers have this kind of willpower.  But adults, for whatever reason, aren’t able to see it in that light very often.  Far more commonly, adults label these children and teenagers as rebellious or deviant or liars.  Young people in these places are rarely praised for this gift and power they have of determination and strength - and so they are far more likely to see it as a negative personal trait that they should try and rid themselves of, rather than a gift and a responsibility that they can train and use.

Next time a child or a teenager you know does something that you are tempted to label as “rebellious” or “deviant” or even “bad,” stop for a minute.  How can you change your perception of this action, so that you can see where something good inside the child or teenager was misled or poorly utilized to get to this point.  Then speak to the good rather than the bad, and suggest how that positive quality could be used differently next time.

And remember Hannah and the will behind her decision and her ability to stay behind that decision through incredible difficulties over many months.

Yes, Virginia, there ARE teenagers who want to have a baby.

Yesterday Mommy B sent me to this story about Gloucester High, where the fad last year was to try and get pregnant. Is this a new trend? Nope. Is it surprising? Maybe, if you haven’t been paying attention. And will the school’s attempts to offer free birth control without parental permission help the situation? Absolutely not. But they should do it anyway.

I am not surprised by a group of girls making a pact to raise children together. High school girls have been trying to get pregnant since I was in high school fifteen years ago, although I doubt it was a new trend then. I understood the draw of deeply wanting a baby in high school, although I never went so far as to actually try and conceive one until just a few years later.

And here is where this issue gets deeply personal for me. I was young, by many standards, when my partner and I started trying to conceive. I was 21 when I got pregnant, but perhaps I looked younger. I got many snide comments from strangers about making choices because of what I wanted rather than what a baby would need. I got crass questions from acquaintances about whether I knew what caused this sort of “thing.”

And I have never taken well to anyone who calls my daughter a “thing.”

So I was a young mother. And many took me to be a young teenage mother. So they asked me, rudely, why I wanted to have a baby. I tended to give vague answers I thought would get them off my back as quickly as possible about wanting to care for the younger generation, etc. But the truth was, I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to have a baby. But I knew it in the same way I knew my partner and I were meant for each other. Could I justify myself? Not really. How can you ask someone to justify something that there is no justification for? When it comes down to it, what is the “right” reason for wanting to have a baby?

Two Gloucester High students who were willing to be interviewed postulated that the girls were trying to get pregnant because:

“They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally.”

and

“No one’s offered them a better option.”

And those are probably not great reasons to want to have a baby. But as I’ve said: when it comes right down to it, what is a great reason?

Teenage girls who want to have babies will probably give much the same rambling, unsure answers to the “Why” question that I did. Some might say something vague about wanting someone to love and someone to love them back. But what do much older moms-to-be say about why they want a baby? Oh, that’s right, they’re not asked. It’s assumed that an older woman either has her reasons for wanting a baby or that it’s rude to ask. My point is that, unless you’re the woman’s therapist or partner, it’s rude to ask or conjecture about why teenagers or older women want babies.

However, there are often serious underlying issues when young women decide that they want to get pregnant. It is rarely a teenage woman who feels happy, supported, and loved who decides she wants to have a baby. But nothing can be gained from judging these young women’s choices - they have probably had their choices judged far too often already in their lives. And a pregnancy can not be stopped by providing a mother-to-be with birth control, because she won’t use it, regardless of her age.

So what to do?

Young women need to feel that they are (1) in control of their lives, (2) can make a positive impact on the world, and (3) that they are loved for who they are and who they are becoming. For that matter, young men need the same thing. And note the careful wording: Teenagers need these things, they are not casual desires.

Part of providing the control in need 1 is having access to free, effective birth control without parental knowledge or consent. Another part is providing more extensive sexuality education beyond the first year of high school. And there are lots of really cool ways to engage young women to meet need number 2. (Feel free to e-mail me if you need some suggestions!) As for need 3, I am sad that this is not among the most understood and most often met needs for teenagers. It can be parents, teachers, friends, siblings. Each of us needs someone to love us completely, but teenagers are in such a state of identity flux that they particularly need that kind of encompassing and supportive love.

Regrettably, the answer I am giving to the Gloucester High problem is not simple or easy to dispense for free (unlike condoms). But it is potentially life-changing for everyone involved.

Karen: Hi Tina, and thank you for meeting to talk with me about your work. First, can you tell me a bit about Jane’s Due Process Legal Hot-line?

Tina: Jane’s Due Process was formed after the state legislature passed a parental consent law for minors to obtain abortions. So Jane’s Due Process provides minors with access to judicial by-pass of parental consent if they’re unable to find or consult with their parents about their decision to have an abortion. In Texas you have to be 18 to be considered emancipated and make the decision to have an abortion. However, minors can go to health clinics and obtain substance abuse counseling, STD testing, family planning counseling, and birth control without their parents being notified.

K: Sounds like a great organization, Tina. What role do you play there?

T: I am the part-time hot-line coordinator. I answer the phones and screen the minors and talk to them about the judicial by-pass process and recruit mostly law students to answer the phone on the weekends and in the evenings. Although to volunteer, you don’t have to be a law student, you can be social worker or a lawyer, although really you just have to have an interest and be able to be non-judgmental with the youth. The volunteers go through a day-long training before they answer the phones.

K: And how to minors hear about Jane’s Due Process?

T: About 60% of the minors hear about us from the clinics. They call the clinics and try to make an appointment for an abortion and find out they can’t without their parent’s permission, and the clinics tell them about us. Others find us from the Internet.

K: Where do pregnant girls need to go to get a judicial by-pass of parental consent?

T: Well, the go to a judge. But they don’t have to go to a judge in the county where they live, but rather the county where they will be getting the abortion. In fact, there are some counties that don’t provide the bypass paperwork.

K: Why would a county not provide the paperwork?

T: Some judges are afraid of providing a bypass because of political repercussions. Others are just unfamiliar with the process because they don’t have a large population and so it doesn’t come up that often. But it’s a real problem for girls in rural areas because (1) there’s not an abortion provider in the county in which they reside and (2) they have to go to a different county to even get the judicial by-pass. So once again, the rural women have the hardest time getting access to the services they need.

K: Are the girls who call you generally still in the process of making the decision of whether or not to have an abortion, or do they generally already have their minds made up?

T: It varies between callers. Some calls I get from minors, I feel like they’re being coerced into having an abortion. Sometimes the call is not even from the girl, it’s from her boyfriend. I tell the boyfriends that they have to have their girlfriends call me. So then I ask her a series of questions to be clear that it’s her who wants the abortion. Sometimes they say “But my mom or my boyfriend is trying to make me have it.” And so I tell them to tell the clinic that, because there are no clinics that would perform an abortion on someone who didn’t want one. Some girls call and say they want to have an abortion, but their mom wants them to have the baby so they, the mother, can raise another baby. There are lots of sad cases like that, where the mother is not really thinking about the needs of her daughter.

K: What about young teenagers? What are the potential legal ramifications for a pregnant younger teenager?

T: Well, you have to be older than 14 to provide consent to have sex, so if they’re under 14, the clinic is required to report minors under 14 who are pregnant. I usually don’t ask the age of the boyfriends when they call in, because by-and-large I’m just the first stop in a process where they have to have the counseling, they have to understand the risk of the procedure, and they have to know all of their options. The minor also has to have had a sonogram and an options counseling session before she can have an abortion. There are a couple of counties that will let you get by with a blood test, but a sonogram is better because it can pinpoint the gestational age. Once they have all of these things then, I will assign a lawyer to them.

K: Why is gestational age important to pinpoint?

T: At 13 – 14 weeks, they generally have to do a two-day procedure. They have to soften up your cervix. So that’s why it’s always best to have an abortion as soon as possible so you don’t get into that two-day procedure process. The cost and the risk are both substantially less the earlier you have it.

K: Wow, a two-day procedure! That sounds expensive. So talk with me about cost for a minute here. How much does an abortion cost in Texas?

T: Some clinics around the state will waive the fee for clients who come through Jane’s Due Process. But generally the cost of the sonogram is about $100, and that is often put towards the price of the abortion, so you want to go ahead and have the sonogram at the same place you’re going to have the procedure. An abortion procedure costs between $300 and $500 before 11 weeks. As a minor, they can sometimes get financial support for the procedure.

K: Wow, that’s really pricey. I’m somewhat overwhelmed at the process for getting an abortion, and I’m not even a teenager in a difficult situation! Thank you so much for sharing your time and knowledge, Tina. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us? Anything that strikes you as particularly interesting?

T: Sometimes I ask the minors who call Jane’s Due Process “Who else have you spoken to about your pregnancy” and they’ll often say “the father of the baby” not “my boyfriend.” And I want to say “hopefully it’s more than that” but often it’s not, it’s just someone they’ve hooked up with.

Another thing - I think as Texas becomes more Hispanic, we’re going to get more phone calls from Hispanic minors. And I’ve had lots of Hispanics call who say they’re going to be shipped back to Mexico, or Asian minors call and say they’re going to be shipped back to the Philippines if their parents find out they’re pregnant. Whereas in my day (I’m 50), girls would mysteriously go live with their aunts in New York, and nobody knew what they were doing. But now I know they were going up to New York to have an abortion. So in many ways it’s easier for the minors now, because they don’t have to go somewhere else, but this judicial by-pass makes it difficult in a different way.

And one last point – One other kind of call I get are from minors who want to be emancipated from their parents. But Texas makes it very difficult unless you can prove child abuse or that she is financially self-sufficient. Even if a teenage girl has a baby, her parents still have legal guardianship over her. So the minor can make medical decisions for her baby, but her parent gets to make them for her.

Last week I wrote about a book for pregnant teens, and said I wish I had something iron clad to recommend instead. I’ve thought about that over the ensuing week, and realized that while I don’t have one single book to recommend, I do have several that when put together I think might cover all the bases. Here they are, in no particular order:

You Look Too Young to be a Mom Edited by Deborah Davis. I’ve briefly recommended this one before, but it will always bear repeating. Frankly, I’m surprised looking back over my past entries that I haven’t yet devoted an entire post to this fabulous book. But never fear, Gentle Reader, that post will be forth-coming! The second line of the title really says it all: Teen Mothers Speak Out on Love, Learning, and Success. It’s a must-read for a young mama just starting her journey.

The Essential Hip Mama: writing from the cutting edge of parenting Edited by Ariel Gore and Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers Edited by Ariel Gore and Bee Lavender. These are both good follow-ups to Deborah Davis’s book, and cover much of the same ground. But teen mothers just can’t get enough real-life, supporting images of young mothers.

The Hip Mama Survival Guide by Ariel Gore. This one is a bit dated (it was published in 1998), but it’s still got some good punch to it. It’s really just a fabulously supportive guide for young parenting. It doesn’t cover all of the physical basics - like whether an infant having a fever of 101 is a problem or not - but it does a fabulous job of addressing the emotional hurdles that young mothers run into.

You might be able to tell that I like Ariel Gore’s stuff. Her fabulous, 15-year-old zine can be found here. And I loved this book - cried as I read it the first time because it resonated so strongly with me- called The Mother Trip: Hip Mama’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Chaos of Motherhood She also has a book about parenting teenagers which I found good, if not as fabulously grand as her parenting books for young parents.

After this, you need to move on to books for new parents regardless of their age. Here are some parenting books I really like and think should be staples on any parent’s bookshelf when their children are young:

You Are Your Child’s First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin Dancy. This is a fabulous book that talks about child development and how parents can ideally support it from birth through age six.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Arlene Hathaway, Sandee E. Murkoff, and Heidi Eisenberg. This is just a basic book for when a young mama has questions. If she likes it, there’s a whole series that’s decent. There are many others that will do in it’s place if this one doesn’t appeal. For example, The Pregnancy Book: A Month-by-Month Guide by William and Martha Sears will also provide quite nicely.

And then, because most of these books are written with the mother in mind, my favorite book to recommend to soon-to-be-Papas is The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott and Jennifer Ash. This fabulous book goes into the details of how to become a daddy and a fabulous support for the soon-t0-be-mama. It’s the only book I take it upon myself to give to every soon-to-be father I know.

Hopefully this list will get you started on providing a fabulous library of parenting books for your favorite fabulous pregnant or parenting teen!

Rachel Brignoni set out to write a book to help pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers think through what they want in life and then go out and get it. And she stayed true to that goal throughout this little blue-covered book.

I really like Brignoni’s premise, her goal. Pregnant and parening teenagers need all the help they can get in finding their own footing in this very anti-pregnant-and-parenting-teens society of ours. I was a young mother, although not a teenage mother, and felt some of the public disapproval and negativity that actual teenage mothers feel at very high levels. I feel for these young women, and I am absolutely compelled to cheer on anyone who works to help them gain self-confidence and self-efficacy in their parenting abilities. And so, in that vein, I am absolutely delighted by Brignoni’s book. She’s done a great job of encouraging young women to trust themselves to be good parents and to go out and create a good life for themselves and their children.

Nevertheless (and you just had to know that was coming, didn’t you?), I am concerned the book won’t speak to many teenagers who actually get knocked up and decide to keep the baby. It’s a good book - it really is - but it doesn’t speak a language that most pregnant teenagers have ever heard before. So I worry that there aren’t many pregnant teenagers who will spend enough of their very limited time to get past Brignoni’s language in order to internalize her message.

For example, Brignoni includes a CD with the book that has a very heartfelt, very sweet, soft rock tribute to teenage mothers. And, of course, teenagers’ music taste varies widely, so it would be hard to find one song to reach them all. But these songs sound more like a generic Celine Dion than anything currently popular (like Lil Wayne, for example).

This is the problem throughout Brignoni’s book. While she is always looking to engage teenage mothers in deep conversation that will allow them to see themselves and their goals more clearly, she does so with a marked inability to reach out to teenagers where many of them are.

So for a teenager who can relate to the language found in adult self-help books, I recommend Brignoni’s Hope…Joy (and a Few Little Thoughts) for Pregnant Teens. And indeed, this may be the best option out there right now to help and support a pregnant teenager in getting a grip on her life and moving forward in a positive way. I just wish I had another option to suggest that spoke a bit more directly and productively to today’s pregnant teens.

I am about to drive to the Houston airport.  I am going there for personal reasons, but will now make the drive thinking about one 14-year-old Houston girl who was at the airport yesterday.

The AP reports that this young teenager gave birth to a stillborn fetus in an airplane bathroom.  She put the fetus in the trash bin and returned to her seat.  A stewardess found the fetus after landing when she was cleaning the bathroom.  The teenager did not know she was pregnant.  I’m sure she had no idea what to do when she went to the bathroom with cramping and then realized what was happening.

There were many places along this girl’s way when some informational and emotional sexuality education could have been highly effective.

This world of ours is so full of pain and sorrow.  My heart goes out to this child, who did not feel she had the ability or the resources to reach out for support in her moment of such extreme need.

(Thanks to Rev. Debra Haffner for the link.) 

(Written by Guest Blogger JustAnotherTeen.)

Let’s face it, my girlfriend and I are far from the poster children of safer sex practices. Sure, we are not that bad, and try to use two forms of birth control, but no one could argue that they are the safest ways to go. When we first had sex, she had already been on the pill for awhile to regulate her cycle after she lost an ovary. That was at least one line of defense, but I was adamant that we have two. So at first we used condoms. But, unfortunately, no matter how thin the condom, there is still a difference. Sure, not enough that it should have stopped us. So instead we switched to pulling out as the second line of contraception. And yes, I know, horrible is it not? Pre-cum has semen, it is hard to pull out in time, sometimes you lose the will to, etc etc. But it was just the second line of defense so I did not worry about it too much. Fortunately, we got lucky and never even had a scare. Now she is off the pill for a bit and we have started using condoms with spermicide. Not as much protection as I would like, but definitely better than just pulling out! And lets face it, condoms are some of the most accessible and most effective forms of birth control.

That said, I don’t think teens know enough about them. Can they become less effective if kept in your pocket or a warm car? Do the cheap ones in bathrooms work as well as any off the shelf in your local drug store? Honestly I do not know for certain the answers to these two questions (if I had to guess I would be pretty confident saying yes and no, respectively.) But some teenagers know far less than I do about them, and that is just sad. Furthermore, some teens probably don’t have access to condoms, and that is even more sad.

What forms of birth control do you/have you used in the past? Had any failures or scares? Comment back and let me know. Oh yeah, and feel free to berate my bad second line of defense!

(Written by guest blogger Wendy Harlowe.) 

First, again, please feel free to e-mail me privately at wendyharlowe@gmail.com if you don’t want to post comments here. I look forward to hearing from you. I’ve been gratified by the response to my first post, including comments and private e-mail correspondence. (Over the years I’ve worried about being too “in your face” with sexual issues, felt judged for having a lack of boundaries … part of what I think is important is for other survivors to know they can go on to have “normal” healthy sex lives, which I didn’t think possible for many years.)

Regards biology, know that I am not an academician on this topic (or any other topic, for that matter), but as the years go by I’ve thought about it more and more. There are two academic fields that cover this topic: sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. My interest is in human sexual behavior that can be explained through biology and evolution (the belief that animals act in ways to maximize the spread of their genes). And my thoughts are somewhat disjointed and inarticulated. I’ve never had an outlet for real discussion on this topic, and am very interested in your thoughts.

Some facts are obvious: the bodies of girls/women are best ready to have children in their mid-teens through their 20s. Our American/western culture has evolved to discourage childbearing until at least the age of 18/19, and encourages waiting longer than that. Women’s entry into the commercial workforce is hampered by childbearing and childrearing. This childbearing capacity is one of the factors for the disparity between the financial income of men and women.

Although sweeping generalities can always cause problems, the testosterone factor means that men are more hardwired for sex with multiple partners, and women are more hardwired to need protection (of course, I’m running into trouble right here, because the social structures have so much to do with this … if the village truly raised children, women wouldn’t need the individual protector that comes with monogamy).

Men are hardwired to be attracted to young women because they are more capable of healthy reproduction. There is no limit to the number of children one man can sire, but women are limited, physically. Men want monogamy because its the only way to ensure their progeny. Women have accepted monogamy because of the “protector” benefits it delivers. (I don’t believe that most people operate in this way because of conscious belief … I think the marriage/monogamy factor was consciously developed many, many years ago to ensure men’s lineage, linked with the development of Christianity and political power … I think today many people live very happily in monogamous marriages; I don’t think its wrong, I just don’t think its necessary for happiness and moral/ethical living.)

I do believe our human species is evolving. One hundred and fifty years ago, it was completely acceptable to own another human being. Slavery still exists today, but it is illegal and universally condemned. Although women still don’t have basic human freedoms in many parts of the world, human rights campaigns are seen as necessary, even while there is such a huge amount of work for them to do. (another digression … many people believe that pre-Christian nature religions created a far better world, less war, no patriarchy … I think that might be true in some times and in some places … I don’t think it is a given, but my jury is still out on that topic)

Because of this evolution, I do believe our species might be able to progress to the point of acting “above and beyond” those hard-wired biological “needs,” and there is a lot of evidence to signify this: women’s increased sexual assertiveness; faithful and monogamous men who stay with their partners far beyond said partner’s reproductive years; the trend among educated, more affluent couples to have fewer children … also the fact that the nerd/geek population is now more sexually attractive to women, rather than simply excellent physical specimens of the male gender, because success in our world is oftentimes so much more mental than physical.

But here’s what has gotten me thinking about more in recent years: I’ve played a small part in the child protective system, and seen what is so easy to judge … people having children with no thought to their ability to raise them … again and again … having children taken from them by the courts, and continuing on to bear more children. There is a horror to this, and yet … at some basic, instinctual level, we humans are breeders … and accepting that fact in some ways makes it easier to see, makes it more understandable, even if not forgivable. (well, I doubt in the big picture that there is anything unforgiveable, but I digress far too often in this meandering post …)

I suppose, also, that one’s spiritual / religious beliefs come into play here. Although I see Darwinism in human sexual behavior, I also believe in a Divine Spirit, a unifying oneness to us all. Wierdly, I fall into the intelligent design faction, although I certainly don’t want to be lumped in with those who oppose teaching evolution in the schools. Its just all interesting to me … could be seen as so anti-feminist, but over the years this instinctual male and female behavior does make sense at the instinctual level. I think as I have learned more about Buddhism, also, it becomes easier to observe and not be so emotionally attached to judgment.

What do you think? It’s clear to me that I’m not clear in my thinking, but I have been inspired by Chris Smithers’ ditty (” The whole thing works like clockwork over time”):

Origin of Species, by Chris Smithers (you can find him singing this on YouTube, wonderful melody)

Eve told Adam, snakes! I’ve had ‘em!
Let’s get outta here
We’ll raise our family someplace outta town
They left the garden just in time
With the landlord cussin’, right behind
They headed East and finally settled down
One thing led to another …
A bunch of sons, one killed his brother
They kicked him out with nothin’ but his clothes
But the human race survives
‘Cause the brothers all found wives
Where they came from ain’t nobody knows

Then came the Flood, go figure,
Just like New Orleans, only bigger
No one who couldn’t swim would make it through
The lucky ones were on a boat,
Think circus, then make it float
And hope nobody pulls the plug on you
How they fed that crowd is a mystery
It ain’t down in the history
It’s a cinch they didn’t live on cakes and jam
But lions don’t eat cabbage,
And in spite of that old adage
I’ve never seen one lie down with a lamb.

Charlie Darwin looked so far
Into the way things are
He caught aglimpse of God’s unfolding plan
God said “I’ll make some DNA,
They’ll use it any way they want
From paramecium right up to man
They’ll have sex, and mix up sections
Of their code; they’ll have mutations
The whole thing works like clockwork over time
I’ll just sit back in the shade
While everyone gets laid
That’s what I call intelligent design.”

Yes, you and your cat named Felix
Are both wrapped up in that double helix
It’s what we call intelligent design.

*********

But, let me make clear, I don’t believe in Adam and Eve! The whole snake bit in the bible is a thinly-veiled attack on women and feminine spirituality … the asp/snake was a sacred animal and image in the Goddess-worshiping cultures of pre-Christianity. But, I do enjoy the song. Gawd sitting back in the shade, while everyone gets laid. Who can doubt that?!?

I have been thinking a lot recently about teenage moms.

I wasn’t a teenage mom myself - I was 21 when I got pregnant - but I looked like a teenager, and was often treated like a teenage mom. In other words, strangers felt they could make derisive comments about (a) my assumed inability to parent, as attributed to my age, (b) my assumed lack of responsibility, as evidenced by inability to use birth control, and (c) my assumed poor choice in a job as a nanny, because clearly I was too young to have my own child.

The thing was, I knew I could parent well, that I was responsible, and that I wasn’t too young to have my first daughter. I had an inner core of strength and belief in myself and my little family that I’m not sure many teenagers have.

The way to help families, even families with teenage parents, is to hold them, strengthen them, support them. Negative and assumptive comments by strangers, acquaintances, or friends do not support families.

I am reminded of a book I like, You Look Too Young to be a Mom, by Deborah Davis. It’s a collection of writings by teenage mothers and adults who use to be teenage mothers. Here is one poem that I think expresses teenage pregnancy well:

#9 Bus by Caitlin Crane

He unfolds like a Japanese fan

and I can feel his slippery feet

kicking my ribs like fence posts,

his head growing between my bones,

jumping with hiccups.

I can feel where his heart is beating

and where his fists, juicy plums,

beat out moon-music.

I want to move my swollen feet,

dance,

brave and hysterical,

down the narrow aisle.

I want to say to

this woman sitting next to me,

watching rain from the open window drip onto her sweater,

“My son is signing, can you hear him?”

To the bus driver, who has never heard of reggae,

who spent the seventies in a cathedral with Elvis,

I want to say,

“Listen, he is singing God songs.”

To the pretty girl with red hair and two babies,

who drinks orange juice out of a water bottle,

and coughs into her fist

I want to say,

“Why are your eyes apologetic?”

But when I turn to speak,

my mouth open and half a word hanging out,

I can see it in their skin.

Their faces thin over hard lines,

over, “Get her out of the welfare office, get her out of my wallet.”

Over, “Another one.”

And, “Poor baby, poor girl. She doesn’t even have a chance.

My son is coming,

And I don’t have the time to wait for you.

My son is coming

and he will dance to your echoes of injustice,

his face to the sun.