Today’s Washington Post highlights the difference between the upper and lower classes in terms of unwanted pregnancies.

It ultimately says:
“Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line — now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period.”

The authors of the study suggested “that some state and federal reproductive health programs have been cut or made more restrictive in recent years. State and federal programs have increasingly focused on abstinence rather than contraception, and some analysts have argued that the shift is leading to less use of contraceptives and more unintended pregnancies.”

So if I was very liberal and not too wise, this would be an easy target for criticizing the administrations abstinence-only methods of teaching sex-ed. But honestly, how many kids really pay attention and remember what they learn in sex-ed? Furthermore, the period of the study is concerned with women before this administration’s influence- from 1994-2001- ending when Bush was just starting as a President .

So the increase in unplanned pregnancies for the lower class is probably based on lack of use of contraceptives. However, I think it’s archaic to think that today’s teens don’t know what a condom is or how to use it just because it wasn’t taught in school. According to this study, lack of knowledge about or funds for contraception are not major reasons for adolescents to not use condoms- regardless of their race. I think the major difference between the variance between the upper and lower classes is not access to contraeption but rather the choice to use it.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around
this article but I think that the author provides a more likely possibility for the difference: pregnancy as a rational choice for the poor black girl.

The only problem with that is, whether or not a poor black girl would actually concede that teen pregnancy was her best option and then decisively not use protection during sexual intercourse. Does she want to get pregnant? I still think that for the majority of the time, the answer is no.

In
this study of over 200 inner-city black teenagers’ views on abortion, for the most part, the teenagers chose whatever their mothers did. Another study points out that most teenagers with unwanted pregnancies had parents that didn’t know or didn’t care where they were during the day. This study from Stanford also points to the large, extended family that a potentially pregnant poor black girl can look to depend on to help raise her child. Perhaps this points to the likelihood that a poor black girl is the result of a poor black mother, who had to depend on an extended family to raise her. I think it’s key to see that even though we are talking about “rebellious teenagers”, parents play a huge role in all of this. First, they are the models for behavior. For better or worse they set up a family model that the child will probably see as her future. Second, kids are well in tune to their parents concerns. Even the inner-city kids of the 200 inner-city teens reflected their mother’s thoughts. If teens feel that their parents don’t care about where they are or what they do, perhaps the teens also adopt this lack of concern over their own future. Third, by a mother not achieving anything of note or doing anything in her life other than taking care of her child (perhaps receiving assistance and/or working menial jobs), the mother is sending a message to her child that having a child is the only thing that separates her as an adult from her child. It puts an inordinate important on one’s life into having a child. While this child may live in a dangerous neighborhood, or at least seems dangerous from the media’s portrayal, she may live a life that’s risky because her life might end spontaneously due to violence. There is definitely no reason to delay childbirth or sex, no reason to fear childbirth and she is also fitting in with social norms in her environment.