Maternity leave sought for teen girls

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

The "egg donors" I'm talking about aren't custodial parents.

Sorry. I thought you meant it in a sarcastic way to describe women who have kids and then neglect or abuse them.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Low C Sharp

This is slightly off topic, but if you ever do peer education or or teach sex ed...you won't BELIEVE the ignorance of a lot of the kids (and of a lot of adults, too, I'm sure). We're talking about not really understanding whether condoms are just for AIDS prevention or just for gay people; not knowing whether hormonal birth control makes you permanently sterile; believing that you can't get pregnant your first time/during your period/before your period/after your period/if you do it standing up/if he pulls out; etc. etc. So the question of where to get condoms is an academic one; there are countless thousands of kids out there with only a dim idea of what a condom IS or why they might need one.

No doubt there's ignorance too; I had a friend who taught health who explicitly taught about sexually transmitted diseases and reproduction, including information about condoms, but when the kids took tests, they had no idea. They'd label ovaries on diagrams of the male reproductive system.

At yet, the pregnant teenagers that I've known knew this stuff, knew where to get condoms or other forms of birth control, but still didn't act on it. All the knowledge didn't really help them. (I'm not a making a case for ignorance; I'm just saying that the folks who say, if only kids knew or were taught differently, they wouldn't get pregnant miss some of the picture.)

I really don't believe that the problem is the kind of official sex education that kids get or even access to birth control. They've got to be mature enough to accept responsibility for having sex, and that's where the breakdown occurs. I'm not sure there's anything other than good parenting that helps, and good parenting is no guarantee.

[DSTRen13]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

And it's been my experience that I've never had a super academically motivated kid in high school who had a baby while in high school. It's not a question of ability; they weren't dumb, but they weren't the kids who were going to do four weeks of work on their own. Heck, if I had a baby, I doubt I'd be as interested in anything other than the baby, either.

My experience in high school (which probably was unusual, I'll admit) was that the only girl in my class who had a baby while in still in school was in Honors/AP classes with me. Once she had the baby, she transferred to the Advanced Academy of Georgia to get a head start on her college degree. Her son is adorable

(Point being: Please don't make assumptions. People make mistakes and birth control isn't foolproof.)

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by DSTRen13

My experience in high school (which probably was unusual, I'll admit) was that the only girl in my class who had a baby while in still in school was in Honors/AP classes with me. Once she had the baby, she transferred to the Advanced Academy of Georgia to get a head start on her college degree. Her son is adorable

(Point being: Please don't make assumptions. People make mistakes and birth control isn't foolproof.)

I wouldn't let my assumptions about what was generally true override my direct experience with a particular person.

But we make policies to cover the majority of the cases and whether we like it or not, schools really do need policies when dealing with teenagers.