Look, I'll step up to the plate and admit that I was a stupid, reckless, hormone-addled teenage girl completely in love with my boyfriend with whom I thought I would live happily ever after. But we were also thoughtful and respectful of one another and made the decision to lose our virginities to one another in a clothed conversation before we bought condoms and proceeded with doing the deed. And then sometimes, one would break or we'd run out or we'd be somewhere and in the mood and we'd take the VERY BIG BAD risk of pulling out. And it was stupid, yes, but we thought we were invincible or I wasn't ovulating or whatever and all of that shit ended the very first time my period was late, believe you me. That was the longest week of my fucking life, mostly spent crying where my parents couldn't see because I saw two very distinct options: trying like hell to save up to get an abortion in time to actually have an abortion (not easy when you make $4.35 an hour at the mall and can't work more than 16 hours a week); or ruining my life. Yeah, I saw Murphy Brown and I knew about adoption but everyone's best student goodie-two-shoes little me could not get pregnant because I had plans and I was going to get out of Scotia and stop underlining everything.

And, really, I doubt seriously that most young women think too much differently about it, Juno or no Juno. Yeah, she has a happy ending and whatever (and, yes, I have a completely age-inappropriate crush on Michael Cera), but watching a damn fictional move or television show isn't going to make a teenage girl with aspirations of being more than the check-out girl at the local grocery store go out and attempt to get knocked up.

But that's the crux of the issue, isn't it? Even the girls interviewed about the supposed pregnancy pact and every girl ever interviewed about (purposeful) teen pregnancy ever identified the cause — most girls that seek out pre-graduation pregnancies really don't have great aspirations. They don't think college is in the cards, or don't want to go. They aren't looking beyond next year or the year after because they're not expecting much out of their lives. And so, sure, maybe Jamie Lynn Spears saying that being a mom is totes awesome rings a bell with them because being a mom is the only way they are really expecting to make a difference in the world.

Planned Parenthood notes that 73% of teen pregnancies occur among teenagers in families living below or just above the poverty line, even though less than 40% of all teenage girls fall into those income groups. Young women in those income groups are less likely to use contraception the first time than other women, less likely to use it on an ongoing basis and more likely to view a young pregnancy as a good thing.

So, how about instead of yelling at Hollywood for not making this seem all horrible and terrible for every single girl, we start looking at the Bush Administration (and school boards and state Departments of Education) for pushing abstinence-only education? And then we should probably look at rising economic inequality (fed by, among other things, government policies) for failing to convince a large part of generations of women that they can't expect any more than their mothers had? And then we might want to take a deep and non-judgmental breath and start thinking about the generation or two of parents who failed to effectively parent their girls to believe that they can do anything a boy can do and then some.

No, wait, it's just easier to blame Diablo Cody. Never mind.

Teen Pregnancy, Hollywood Style [Newsweek]
Teen 'Pregnancy Pact' Has 17 Girls Expecting [MSNBC]
Reducing Teenage Pregnancy [Planned Parenthood]

And Italy, (where the birth rate is now about 1.3) isn't the only sumptuous locale where the birth rate is falling drastically short of the 2.1 "replacement rate": Greece and Spain are low on kids, too. But not, somehow, by choice: a European Commission survey found that the average European woman wants 2.36 children — and in Italy the answer was actually higher than average! But here's the catch.

According to Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania, analysis of recent studies showed that “high fertility was associated with high female labor-force participation . . . and the lowest fertility levels in Europe since the mid-1990s are often found in countries with the lowest female labor-force participation.” In other words, working mothers are having more babies than stay-at-home moms.

How can this be? A study released in February of this year by Letizia Mencarini, the demographer from the University of Turin, and three of her colleagues compared the situation of women in Italy and the Netherlands. They found that a greater percentage of Dutch women than Italian women are in the work force but that, at the same time, the fertility rate in the Netherlands is significantly higher (1.73 compared to 1.33). In both countries, people tend to have traditional views about gender roles, but Italian society is considerably more conservative in this regard, and this seems to be a decisive difference. The hypothesis the sociologists set out to test was borne out by the data: women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load. Put differently, Dutch fathers change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, “It’s about how much the man participates in child care.”

In other words:

By this logic, the worst sort of system is one that partly buys into the modern world — expanding educational and employment opportunities for women — but keeps its traditional mind-set. This would seem to define the demographic crisis that Italy, Spain and Greece find themselves in — and, perhaps, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of the world.

Put another way, stay away from Catholics, Asia hands and maybe classics majors. Society doesn't want their genes anyway. (Guess who's hereby off the hook?) Go find a Danish boyfriend and move to Italy once you're officially Euro! There's your pregnancy pact.

No Babies? [NYT Mag]

Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage In Yemen [NYT]

Related: Mayor Plans of "Listening Posts" On Teen Pregnancy [Gloucester Times]

And I suppose, from a purely statistical standpoint, Caldwell can make his argument. But being a good parent isn't exclusively about finances. I find it hard to believe that these young women would not make better mothers with a few more years of life experience, added maturity and potential earning power. "Baby-boom feminists did not replace a superstitious attitude towards teen sexuality with a rational one. They replaced one set of priorities with another. Their careerism prevented teen motherhood as reliably as did their mothers’ moralism," Caldwell writes. "The Gloucester girls appear equally unimpressed with both logics. If the old 'pregnancy pact' that went by the name of marriage is no longer so readily available, they are not fools to look for a substitute." Caldwell is making a host of assumptions and relying on many stereotypes of the American lower classes, and both his sweeping generalizations and the fact that he needs to bash second wave feminism to make them are distasteful.

Also distasteful: Brenda Hampton, the creator of The Secret Life of an American Teenager, tells Reuters, "I don't have anything to say about the issue of teen pregnancy…I'm just telling a story about a girl who happens to get pregnant." That's the most patently idiotic thing I've heard all week. Especially since the New York Times review of the show points out that when the heroine of Secret Life discovers that she is pregnant, "Her friends tell her she has options, but abortion is apparently not one of them; that choice is dismissed right away in horrified tones." (Sound familiar?) I think Hampton was missing a word in her quote. She meant to say, "I don't have anything intelligent to say about the issue of teen pregnancy."

The Ideology Of Teen Pregnancy [Financial Times]
TV's "Baby" And "Secret Life" Explore Teen Taboo [Reuters]
A Teenage Pregnancy, Packaged as a Prime-Time Cautionary Tale [NYT]

Earlier: Teen Pregnancy Rates Are Declining — Or Not

The Guardian also interviews Karlee's dad, 17-year-old Michael Mitchell, who is a total piece of work. He was given a Mustang when he graduated from high school earlier this year, but he already crashed it and has a summons for speeding. When asked why so many kids from Gloucester are knocked up, he told the Guardian, "They were horny, it was a cold winter. It's boring around this town. Nothing to do." Also, his plans for the future? "Throwing a party."

For his part, the Gloucester High principal whose comments set off this maelstrom in the first place, Joseph Sullivan, stands by what he said to Time, despite denials from other quarters. He told Time's Kathleen Kingsbury that he found out about the pregnancy pact through "staff reports and student/staff chatter, all of which I have found to be very reliable in my experience as principal." However, due to the controversy, his job may be imperiled, so at this point, he's not going to be doing any more interviews. Sullivan says: "The affected children need to be left alone with their parents and families to deal with the consequences of their actions"

'Pact, What Pact?' Ask Teenage Mothers As The World's Media Come To Town [Guardian]
Gloucester Principal Stands by Story [Time]

Earlier: Time Writer Goes On Today To Discuss Gloucester "Pregnancy Pact"
Time's Nancy Gibbs Thinks "Pregnancy Pact" Teens Are Responsible
Pregnancy Pacts: Better Than Suicide Ones, Still Not That Good

Pregnant Student Denies Pregnancy Pact [AP via MSNBC]

Earlier: Pregnancy Pacts: Better Than Suicide Ones, Still Not That Good
Sex And Consequences