House of Eratosthenes

One of our more objectionable radio PSAs extols the virtues of early sex education in the public schools; I can’t remember if that’s the main thrust (sorry!) of what’s being said, or if it’s in passing. The one vivid memory I have about it is where the narrator mentions some kind of a myth that sex education causes an increase in teen pregnancies, “which isn’t true!”

I mean, gosh & golly, let’s just forget for a second about whether the possibility exists that a sex education program might promote teen pregnancies, and concentrate on how we go about finding out one way or the other. Just gathering the statistics you’d use to find out…there must be hundreds of ways. Good ways, incompetent ways, ways designed to make it look like this is exactly what happens, ways designed to conceal it. And then there’s common sense — which tells me, sure, such a program has all the potential in the world for putting the teen pregnancy statistic on a steep rise or on a rapid decline. It would have to depend on the content, and the competence of those who run it. You doubt me? Put me in charge. Task me to put together a sex education program guaranteed to cause a baby explosion. I’ll make one guaranteed to work…with my eyes closed. Then have me put together a different one that’ll nip teen pregnancies in the bud. I’m a guy. You’d better believe I can do that too.

So I object to the three words being tossed ’round with no foundation. It’s as if to say, “those other guys are getting their myths out there, we’d better get our myths out there too.” So thanks, Mrs. nameless faceless invisible PSA announcer person, but your authority here is somewhat lacking. I’ll continue to believe that sex ed program have at least the potential of sending teen pregnancies through the freakin’ roof. That seems only reasonable.

Especially when I read things like this…H/T Boortz, although I heard it on the radio the other day.

As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there’s been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, “some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. “We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,” the principal says, shaking his head.

The question of what to do next has divided this fiercely Catholic enclave. Even with national data showing a 3% rise in teen pregnancies in 2006—the first increase in 15 years—Gloucester isn’t sure it wants to provide easier access to birth control. In any case, many residents worry that the problem goes much deeper. The past decade has been difficult for this mostly white, mostly blue-collar city (pop. 30,000). In Gloucester, perched on scenic Cape Ann, the economy has always depended on a strong fishing industry. But in recent years, such jobs have all but disappeared overseas, and with them much of the community’s wherewithal. “Families are broken,” says school superintendent Christopher Farmer. “Many of our young people are growing up directionless.”

The girls who made the pregnancy pact—some of whom, according to Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers—declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. “They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,” Ireland says. “I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.”

The high school has done perhaps too good a job of embracing young mothers. Sex-ed classes end freshman year at Gloucester, where teen parents are encouraged to take their children to a free on-site day-care center. Strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders and junior ROTC. “We’re proud to help the mothers stay in school,” says Sue Todd, CEO of Pathways for Children, which runs the day-care center. [bold mine, italics in original]

Blogger friend James Bostwick, whose site does not seem to be online anymore, proffered a hypothesis about the female mind that he called Girls Gone Wild Syndrome — named after the curious phenomenon in which shy girls, self-conscious about flashing so much an innocuous body part as a flabby ankle or a toe with some of the nail polish missing, would suddenly have no reservations at all about ripping the sweater up and flashing the pink puppies once it became The Thing To Do. Simply put, GGWS is good old-fashioned peer pressure, but it’s also the observation that our females are more hooked into it, on average, than the fellas. Boys and girls are both stupid enough to “jump off the bridge if your friends all do it too,” but the boys are a little bit dim on this. They’ll come to the conclusion their social status will suffer if they don’t go along with the crowd, after it’s been made clear to them. Girls have more energy here. They anticipate. When it comes to hopping on a bandwagon, girls are active, boys are passive.

I think what we’re seeing here is GGWS in its purest form, exercised according to its original design. Once you ignore man-made conventions and taboos and concentrate on nature, you see a girl is most likely to sway to and fro according to The Thing To Do, at almost exactly the same minute in which she is most likely to get pregnant. So that’s my theory — GGWS is a trait boys inherit from the girls; and it’s sexual. It has to do with procreation, and it’s an evolutionary trait.

A tribe is hit with famine or disease or war, the numbers of that tribe dwindle, it needs a device for replenishing its numbers and it needs it to work fast. And so getting pregnant is The Thing To Do. Because let’s face it — one young maiden out of the village feels all frisky & froggy, that isn’t going to do a whole lot of good. It takes ‘er nine months, and she can only bust out one or two new tribe members. You’ve got to have a wave; for that, you’ve got to have some groupthink. You need a pregnancy fad. And so humans, in their most primitive form, are built to accommodate pregnancy fads.

Like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park: Life will find a way.

This kind of groupthink is going to hit the girls hardest, because we guys don’t need it. We’re already in the mood. We’ll poke whatever is ready to be poked. Whatever stands still long enough.

So if my theory is correct, this is something that needs to be understood about sex education programs. That the programs, with all their tolerances and sensitivities and extra accommodations and extra attention, touched off this pregnancy pact, seems indisputable — here. But for the rest of the districts putting them on, I think it would be good to understand the lessons from Gloucester High. Presuming my theory has something to it, the human genome supplied the gasoline and the sex ed program lit the match.

What if my theory is wrong? Then we’ll have to revert back to what we already know for sure: In a school in which “strollers mingle seamlessly in school hallways among cheerleaders,” the cheerleader lacking a stroller will have failed to integrate socially, and in so doing will have brought a sense of utter futility to her expensive (incomplete) cheerleader uniform. She’s going to want to have a stroller to go with. If that supposition hasn’t been lifted out of the realm of what’s subject to dispute and question, it certainly should be. So unfounded protestations from the radio PSAs that sex education programs — good ones, poor ones, imaginative ones, lazy by-the-numbers ones — don’t cause upswings in teen pregnancy trends, would remain most unhelpful. They’d be intellectually lazy at best, and socially disastrous and irresponsible at worst.

“Understanding the lessons” involves acknowledging that their theory of trying something new – embracing the discussion of sex early on – is just that – a theory. Many educators won’t acknowledge that the old way was the right way, so good luck with that. Expect quite the opposite: that it will spur new educational programs at even earlier ages. Bettors don’t cut their losses – they double down.
- wch | 06/20/2008 @ 14:25

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Pregnancy PactFriday, June 20th, 2008

Pregnancy Pact
Friday, June 20th, 2008