Another one bites the dust...

One of our seniors found out recently that they were pregnant...

In one sense, I am glad that it was this late because by the time she ends up in the later stages of her pregnancy, she could still walk for graduation in June.

What still bothers me is the decision to have unprotected sex prior to graduation.

In spite of the message from many educators that teen pregnancy is not a norm nor should it be desirable, there are some students who are adamant in having children. In rare cases, students feel that having a child of their own would mean that there would be someone on this Earth who has to love them, which is a bizarre mentality (since they openly demonstrate their own hostility and defiance towards their own parents).

Here are some statistics from the CDC (published in 2008) about the rates of teen pregnancy in America. What's astonishing to me is the ethnic variation in rates of teen pregnancy. So here are the questions to consider with this issue...

1. How do you teach students (or even parents) to consider the long-term consequences of their actions in such a way that trial and error is not the practiced methodology?
2. Without resorting to the ethnic stereotypes of how children are raised in homes of different backgrounds, how can we account for this discrepancy in teen pregnancy rates?
3. Where is this discussion in the political arena?
4. Is it too politically incorrect to address the difference in parenting practices between the Latino communities and the Asian communities? If so, then what would it take to address this trend?

What scares me is that this doesn't shock me anymore. The unfortunate reality is that any female student can make the choice to have unprotected sex and make their final months, or years, in high school extraordinarily difficult.

The CDC offers some suggestions as to how to address this trend, but as an institution of health, it seems sort of beyond their scope and mandate to actually go into communities to do anything about it... Even if it does occur at "epidemic levels" in some areas...