Thethreehugs? I must admit that finding a really interesting article like this one of yours on Steemit was like finding a needle in a haystack. It's more than obvious that Janet and the father of her baby had a better relationship with each other than even a lot of couples over the age of 21 do. They stood by each other through thick and thin. Janet saved the father of her baby from the horrors of prison and from the subsequent indignities of the sex offender registry by finding a legal way to make the statutory-rape rap against him go away, and the father of her baby loved and protected her and eventually married her and gave both her and their child his last name. I'm glad that everything worked out for them.
Nevertheless, as one American to another American, I have to say that if we look at the bigger picture, it all comes down to the fact that our public officials and our society cannot keep on doing the same things in addressing the concern over teenage pregnancy in our nation and expect different results. I suppose that our public school system across the nation could make contraceptives readily available in high schools and middle schools everywhere as they do in France. However, I don't think that such a notion would fly very well with ultraconservatives who are pushing abstinence-only instruction in public schools.
The other solutions that I suggest may seem slightly archaic, but I still believe that they would be better than the faulty actions that our public officials and lawmakers continue to take to this very day. First of all, I think that we as Americans have arrived at a crossroad where one of the best courses of action would be to split up the public school system into two separate entities. That is, end coeducation and divide our public schools by gender. Have girls go to one school and boys go to another school in each school district across our nation. If boys and girls are in less contact with each other from the time they go into puberty, they're not as likely to become teen or even preteen parents. Plain and simple. Second of all, our society goes way too soft on deadbeat teenage fathers. During the time that I worked temporarily for a social services agency, I noticed that what happened way too often whenever a girl became pregnant in high school or middle school was that the teenage father of the girl's baby would eventually bail on her and then pull all sorts of nonsense on her and family afterwards. The girl's parents would have to share the financial burden with the girl of raising her child, and usually the boy's parents wanted nothing to do with the situation. That is not right. I believe that our Federal government should draft deadbeat teenage fathers into the military on their eighteenth birthday. The fear that parents would have of their teenage son being sent off to war in the Middle East or wherever in the world in that event would definitely set them straight and make them come down on their son like a ton of bricks any time he planned on having unprotected sex with a teenage girl. In any event, I gave your article a thumbs-up. :-)
Wow, I'm surprised you even found that article. Lol. I have mixed feelings on your solutions. I worked with underage teens a lot, mostly females. Most that came in pregnant were from foster homes. Girls that age that have been deserted by their families often get pregnant just to have a family of their own by getting pregnant. They haven't been taught or even loved as they are more likely than not being abused in the foster homes as well. They are being supported by the state and their babies taken into custody. That's why most young girls in those circumstances run away and end up in gangs. As for seperating boys from girls in schools, I don't think it would make much difference..where there's a will, they'll find a way to hook up. Lol. I agree support enforcement should be stricter.
Yeah, the foster care system is in bad shape everywhere here in our nation. About five or six years ago, I was reading the job listings section in my local newspaper, and there was an advertisement there looking for people to become foster care parents. I thought that whoever had published that advertisement had to be out of his mind, because people looking for work were not going to be in any financial condition to take in foster care children. Moreover, it looked like an invitation for trouble in that whoever responded to that advertisement would likely not be a suitable foster care parent, to say the least. Separating boys from girls in schools may not completely eliminate the problem of teenage pregnancy today in the era of Internet and cell phones, but I believe that it would provide more control for parents and even their teenage daughters to shut out any undesirables that these girls would otherwise be forced to confront every day at school in a coeducation environment. Therefore, there would likely be fewer teenage girls feeling pressured into having sex and becoming pregnant by these punks who couldn't care less about their future.