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Dana, perhaps I should not have compared Elizabeth Cousins to Bristol Palin; Cousins never offered herself as a spokesperson for anything, except herself and her own experience. While I agree with you all about preventing teen pregnancy, Cousins' baby is already here. She should be commended for rising to the occasion, rather than roundly chastised. In addition, I don't think Bristol Palin's example paints a realistic picture of teen motherhood, and in fact could be accused of glamorizing it: She remains living in her mother's mansion with ample help from her wealthy family and a nationally televised platform. Sure, Levi embarrassed her, but I'd bet when at least some teens saw him on Tyra, they were swooningly jealous of Bristol having such a dreamy boyfriend.
Emily, at the end of the day, I think we're all products of our own environments. Elizabeth Cousins and Bristol Palin both come from peer groups where teen pregnancy is rampant and opportunities for the future are limited. I sincerely doubt the kind of teen who is watching multimedia presentations on the New York Times website would hear Cousins' story and say to herself, "Having a baby now sounds like a great idea!" She'd be the kind of teen who would be well aware at how much she had to lose.
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We've spilled a lot of digital ink talking about teen motherhood, though most of us have not been adolescent moms ourselves, so I thought I would post this New York Times package, which includes the narration of Elizabeth Cousins, a 16-year-old from East Flatbush, N.Y., and the mother of 19-month-old Mahniya. Bristol Palin could take some lessons on clarity and maturity from Elizabeth, who seems to have a real head on her shoulders. Elizabeth says she considered abortion, but ultimately decided against it because a friend pointed out that this could be her only shot at motherhood.
Elizabeth used to stay out all night partying, but having Mahniya has given her new focus on her studies, and the Times notes that Mahniya's father takes care of the baby several days a week while Elizabeth commutes to an alternative public school on the Upper East Side. For now, Elizabeth says she has "retired" from the motherhood business—she doesn't want to have any more kids until she has her future more settled.
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Amy Sullivan has a great piece in Time this week about the answer to the tired old abstinence debate we are about to launch into. Everyone fights over whether or not to mention condoms, she says, when the reality is that most students get no sex ed at all. Only one state requires schools to spend any specific amount of time talking about sex ed. When schools do, they might detail a gym teacher in his or her spare time to do the job. Sullivan says we already know from the research what is the most effective program: comprehensive sex ed, sometimes known as abstinence plus. She then profiles what she considers a model program in South Carolina, where a group of educators bypassed the culture war and constructed a program tailored to the realities of teen lives.
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I have some convincing theories about the rise of teen pregnancy and AIDS cases, Hanna! Let's start with the increased percentage of pregnant adolescents. In an article that "XX Factor" friend Margaret Talbot wrote for The New Yorker last year called "Red Sex, Blue Sex" she quotes sociologist Mark Regnerus on teens who delay sexual activity:
They are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risks.
Hanna, you note that the Latino population has seen a particularly notable spike in teen pregnancy, and that doesn't surprise me. As an article in Sunday's New York Times about the education of nonnative English speakers showed, there are near-impossible barriers for recent immigrants that prevent them from the "bright futures" Regnerus speaks of. The Times article quotes a 19-year-old Guatemalan woman named Amalia Raymundo, who "was a rising star in her remote village in Guatemala, the region’s beauty queen and a candidate for college scholarships." Because of her experiences in American public school, Amalia saw that her dreams of becoming a doctor were so far out of her reach, she thought about dropping out. “If I am going to end up cleaning houses with my mother ... why go to high school?”
If that's the reality for most recent immigrant women, why would they delay sex or prevent pregnancy? What's the motivation? Which brings me to my next point: I think AIDS is on the rise because condom promotion has all but disappeared and AIDS is no longer seen as a death sentence. If you don't believe you're going to die, and many think sex feels better without a condom, what's the motivation for use? In addition, as Talbot wrote in her New Yorker article, "many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease." So you have informed people who choose to take the risk because they think AIDS won't happen to them, and you have underinformed people who think that condoms don't work. Those taken together seem like enough to cause a statistical increase.
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Hanna, I feel pretty much the same about Bristol Palin’s predicament as I felt about the Crihanna debacle. The baby beaus weren’t going to stay together anyway, so why stay together in the midst of such drama? At these young ages, there are no guarantees—and actuarial tables, if not common sense, would counsel against making puppy love permanent. Sure, Rihanna and Brown became the breadwinners for their older family members at 21 and 19, respectively (a whole different story), and the 18-year-old Palin became a “role model” before even leaving the province of underaged handle-chugging, but someone (um, you know, parents) should have reminded them: You are not adults.
So of course Levi isn't "hands on." We should applaud Palin—however belatedly, she came to the right decision. But why don’t we teach kids that it’s OK to break up? Give it two years, max—and if by then you’re over 25, split or get married. Seems clinical, but is it any worse than this surreal mythology of true romance that allows teens to tear at each others’ emotions until, one day, there are bruises—or a baby on board?
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Jessica, I don't think we're quite "piling on" Bristol Palin for either her interview or her teen pregnancy, but I do see quite a difference between Bristol and Rachael's examples of Lauren B. and Amy Richards. Lauren B. is a writer and Richards is an abortion rights advocate, and they both decided to make their stories public. Bristol, on the other hand, was thrust into the spotlight—had her mother not been running for vice president, the news that the governor of a noncontiguous state had a pregnant 17-year-old daughter likely would have escaped notice altogether or been acknowledged only in short news items. Bristol chose to do this interview, but she didn't choose to become a poster child for teen momhood in the first place. I applaud Richards and Lauren for frankly discussing their experiences with abortion, but, as I'm sure they would both agree, they offered themselves up for discussion and criticism—two things Bristol has certainly been subjected to without having the same opportunity to tell her story herself first.
I don't know what her primary motivation for the interview was—to fight misconceptions about being an uneducated high-school dropout, to piss off her mother, or to warn other girls against unprotected sex (her "abstinence or whatever" comment seemed to me like a veiled attempt to advocate for contraception without speaking the words). Perhaps she merely wanted an excuse to put on makeup and do something a little exciting after six weeks of mothering a newborn.
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I think Bristol's insistence that her pregnancy was her own choice is entirely consistent with the notion that her interview was a tacit rebellion, despite what Rachael thinks. Bristol was further asserting her independence by saying: "It doesn't matter what my mom's views are on it. It was my decision. And I wish people would realize that, too." As Rebecca Traister at Salon cannily points out, regardless of what Bristol's views on abortion are (and those are still unknown, thanks to Greta Van Susteren's softest of softball interviews), she's using the language of choice to describe her decisions. As Traister puts it, "Bristol's ability to make her own decision, without regard to her mom's views on the issue, is precisely the freedom for which reproductive rights activists fight, trying to ensure that no daughters surrender control of their bodies to their mothers or fathers or husbands or clergymen or governments."
And to Abby (hi Abby!)—I think choosing to do an interview on national TV was Bristol's only mistake. She had sex, she got pregnant, she dealt with the consequences. Seventeen-year-olds have been doing the same thing for eons. The idea that we're "piling on" Bristol by commenting on her nationally televised appearance is ridiculous. She's legally a grown woman and a mother. If Rachael can so harshly judge Lauren B. and Amy Richards for sharing the personal stories of their reproductive choices, I don't understand why we should be treating Bristol Palin with such a delicate hand.
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I'm afraid I have to agree that on the vapid-to-moving continuum, I’d put Bristol Palin’s interview a lot closer to the vapid side of the spectrum. It wasn’t just the likes and the ums; that’s standard-issue and I do it, too. But I don’t understand how someone who clearly wants to take on an advocacy role has given no thought at all to what it is she wants to advocate. As several of you have already noted, “wait 10 years” and “abstinence is not realistic” is just not a public service message. It’s confusing, if not totally contradictory. Now I don’t think I agree, Willa, that this is attention-seeking or career-planning on her part. Bristol mostly looks like she’d rather be pulling a dogsled through the tundra than giving this interview. I think she really does want her life to be an example to other teens. But since she doesn’t seem to know what her message is, the net effect seems to be completely unrealistic and chaotic. (“I take care of him all the time except when I’m at school"?!). And Gov. Palin’s glossy observation—that having a baby at 18 is very unfortunate but also very fortunate—only contributes to the sense that the only message here is: “Don’t do what I did. Unless you do.”
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Jessica wondered earlier why Bristol Palin would agree to do an interview at all, now that the feeding frenzy is largely over, and posited Bristol's telling her overbearing mama to step off. I buy that, but I think there's an even simpler reason she might have decided to sit down with Greta: She wants the attention. Bristol mentions a number of times that having a baby isn't at all "glamorous." That doesn't sound like news, but I think it might have been to Bristol. She repeats the insight a number of times, enough for it to seem like one of her big revelations about having a newborn. (It's also a nod to the insidious power of the same tabloids that Bristol dismisses as trash. Where else would one get the idea that glamour has anything to do with child-rearing except from watching the likes of Ashlee Simpson, Gwen Stefani, and Angelina do it in $500 dollar jeans?) Greta Van Susteren may not be glamorous like Vogue, but she's chic-er than nothing (or what most 18-year old mothers have access to).
I was also struck by how often Bristol talked about how having a career would make raising a baby easier. Keeping herself in the public eye is a pretty savvy, if yucky, career strategy. Being notorious has already proved to be a viable career option for some. If Bristol seems unlikely to follow in Paris' exact footsteps, she can at least use her fame as a springboard to something else, be it advocacy or handbags. But she's got to extend her 15 minutes in order for that move to work.
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My reaction to Bristol Palin's interview with Greta Van Susteren falls somewhere between Hanna's "most honest and moving political interview" and Susannah's "mind-bogglingly vapid." Among the "ums" and the "likes" and the teen-speak—being a new mom is "awesome"—are a few moments of stunning honesty—telling her parents about her pregnancy was "harder than labor," for example. (Funny, to me, is that if this was a giant f-you to her mother, why she was so adamant to insist that having Tripp was her choice and not something her mother forced on her in the name of political expediency?) But mostly, she struck me as an average 18-year-old who is dealing with the pressures of unexpected motherhood. And yet so many are piling on.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Web, we’re either supposed to
celebrate or sympathize with, I’m still not sure, Lauren B., who has an essay
on Nerve.com about the crimp that her abortion put on her relationships with
men. Her story starts with her telling a man on their second date—and third
drink that evening—that she’d had an abortion the month before. She told the
first guy she dated seriously post-abortion about it on New Year’s Day because
she was “too out-of-control wasted” (and later complained that he insisted on
using condoms even though she was on the pill). Mixed in are the account of a
friend who got pregnant after a night of heavy drinking, and insults directed
toward abortion protesters and “teenagers in Utah practicing the pray-to-God-and-please-come-on-my-ass
method.” All this from a woman in her mid-20s who really, it turns out, just
wanted someone to be able to laugh with her about her abortion. Is this really
how the pro-choice movement presents itself? I feel about as sorry for her as I
did for Amy Richards, who gained notoriety for a New York Times Magazine essay
about how she’d aborted two of her three fetuses when pregnant with triplets
because otherwise “I'm going to have to move to Staten
Island. … I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying
big jars of mayonnaise.”
Maybe Bristol Palin shouldn't be a poster child for teenage
pregnancy. But she's doing more for the pro-life argument than a bunch of
narcissistic twentysomethings who get abortions because they're drunk and
forgot their birth control are doing for the pro-choice side.
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I agree with Hanna that Bristol came off as remarkably unaffected in her Fox interview. But that still doesn't explain why she felt compelled to do this interview in the first place. Why now, since the media lost interest in badgering Bristol months ago? It didn't seem like Bristol was positioning herself as the poster girl for teen screw-ups, or any sort of poster girl at all. The interview read more like an attempt to gain agency over the situation. Bristol was thrust into the spotlight mostly against her will, and I saw this interview as a tacit f-you to her mother. When Bristol told Greta Van Susteren that she neglected to inform Sarah about the interview until the day before, she looked pretty darn pleased with herself. And you know, I can't say I blame her. Being the unwitting centerpiece of a three-ring media circus when you're several months pregnant would make any normal teenager—or even grown woman—pretty resentful.
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Hanna, that's interesting that we had such different reads on the Bristol Palin interview. I agree that she was refreshingly honest in her shock about being a mom, but I hardly saw her as a poster girl. Her refusal to talk about the details of abstinence or safe sex—or, for that matter, to have been the one to tell her parents she was pregnant—struck me as immature, not endearing. My mom's golden rule of sexual activity was always that if you're not able to talk about it, you shouldn't be doing it. It's admirable how well Bristol's soldiering through her unexpected hardship (and lucky, as Gov. Palin told Greta Van Susteren, that she has such a huge, supportive family to help her through it). But if I got to hold an audition for my ideal teenage screw-up poster girl, I would make sure she could say words like condoms and sex, instead of coyly talking around the acts and choices that accounted for her screw-up in the first place.
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Bristol Palin spoke to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about life as an 18-year-old mom. She looks beautiful (what cheekbones!) but nervous, her eyes darting as she delivers clipped responses—far from the rambling poetry of now-Grandma Palin. It's unclear why Bristol agreed to the interview (which, in true maverick fashion, she didn't tell her mom about until the day before). She doesn't seem to have any clear message she's out to deliver, and her thoughts on teen pregnancy—ostensibly one of the topics of the interview—are frustratingly vague:
I wish [getting pregnant] would happen in like 10 years so I could have a job and an education and be, like, prepared and have my own house and stuff. ... I hope that people learn from my story and just, I dunno, prevent teen pregnancy I guess."
Right. But prevent it how? And wait 10 years for what? To have sex? Or just wait to get pregnant, by, you know, using birth control? Bristol "doesn't want to get into detail about that," but says she thinks expecting abstinence is "not realistic at all." Van Susteren doesn't probe, and in a second clip featuring Gov. Sarah Palin, we find out why. Cutting Bristol out of the interview now that the real star is in the room, Van Susteren asks the governor:
Isn't the bigger story or the bigger issue how important it is for families to pitch in? It's not just an issue of abstinence. ... When you have the conversation about abstinence, I almost feel bad because there's this wonderful child here [presumably she means Tripp, not his mother], so talking about abstinence ... it doesn't sound very nice.
Well, it's not always a journalist's job to be nice. If Bristol wants people to learn from her story and to prevent teen pregnancy, as she explicitly said, then Van Susteren owes it to the audience to ask the obvious follow-up: How?
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I, too, was fascinated by that Washington Post piece on pregnant high school students—and very conflicted about it. Making it as easy as possible for pregnant teens and young moms to get an education is admirable, but it also, I'd imagine, establishes unrealistic expectations for these girls. Once they're done with high school, even if they qualify for assistance, as many of them do, they'll face far more obstacles. It seems highly unlikely that they would have access to on-site day care in the real world, for instance.
Ann, I love your idea of having a new mom speak at the "family life" courses—and maybe she can be joined by a young mother who got pregnant as a student and has spent a few years trying to juggle work and getting a toddler to (and paying for) day care. That might help the girls and guys alike realize that the school's Tiny Titans is not something to be taken for granted.