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A buck-a-day -- that's the incentive being offered to young girls to keep them from getting pregnant.On the surface, it's easy to assail the folks of College-Bound Sisters for what they're doing. Essentially, they are paying young girls cash money to do something they should probably have the personal desire and willpower to do on their own. Much like the (somewhat successful) act of paying kids to do well in school, you wonder what message is really being conveyed here. Are these girls being taught to value their goodies, or simply that $1/day is better than a sweaty five minutes in the of some random boy's Momma's basement? I honestly can't call it, and that's likely why God blessed me with two sons instead.
The group College-Bound Sisters was founded at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro by Hazel Brown, a maternity nurse who thought too many teens were having babies.
Girls in the program attend 90-minute meetings every week at which they receive lessons in abstinence and the use of contraceptives. Brown said she hopes the program, which pays $1 each day to 12-to-18-year-old girls, will keep them from getting pregnant. In addition to remaining pregnancy-free, the girls must also attend weekly meetings. The program is funded by a four-year grant from the state.
The nation's teen birth rate, after declining for 14 consecutive years, has increased over the last two years and now stands at 7.2 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. Three out of 10 young women become pregnant by age 20, and costs associated with teen pregnancies exceed $9 billion annually.
"Our three goals are that they avoid pregnancy, graduate from high school and enroll in college," Brown said.
Under the program, $7 a week is deposited into an interest-bearing college fund that the girls can collect once they graduate high school. Some recent graduates earned more than $2,000 and are an inspiration to those still in the program.
"I might want to be a teacher for a few years and then be a lawyer," said 12-year-old Chelsey Davis. "I might want to be an actor or singer," another girl in the program, Amanda Davis, added.
Six girls of the 125 who have been enrolled for six months or longer have gotten pregnant or otherwise dropped out since it began in 1997. Funded by a grant from the state's Department of Health and Human Services, Brown said it costs about $75,000 a year to operate the program.
Program director Laurie Smith said those aspirations are more achievable because of the incentives the program provides and the friendships it helps create. Smith said nearly 100 percent of the girls who finish the program have gone on to graduate college. If a girl drops out or gets pregnant, her money is divided among the other girls still in the program.
On second thought, I give College-Bound Sisters credit for at least trying, and thinking outside the box. Many Conservatives are already decrying this as a proof that Obama wants control of your child's uterus, and will stop at nothing to impose his Socialist policies on her libido. I wouldn't go that far, but I do think this "pay kids for something they should do for free" thing is getting out of hand. We are already paying kids to simply attend school and show up on time. What's next? Paying kids to not smoke weed? This is getting outta control.
What do ya'll think?
Question: Is it unethical to pay young girls to keep their legs closed?
Program Pays Girls $1 Per Day To Not Get Pregnant [WXii12]
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The girls who are most likely to get pregnant aren't going to sign-up for this in the first place.
This is a program that rewards "good girls" for being good girls.
If they want to reach the girls most at risk they're going to have to cough-up more than a buck a day. Because the dudes out there trying to knock them up can surly afford to give the girls more than a dollar a day.
" Essentially, they are paying young girls cash money to do something they should probably have the personal desire and willpower to do on their own."
It's odd that you're bemoaning conservatives on one hand, and then reducing the issue of teenage pregnancy to an issue of "personal desire and willpower" --- which is the language conservatives use when they talk about it.
@ GD
I'm simply repeating what some Fox News wingnuts said the other day. I assumed they'd be all for this program because it does protect "the sanctity of life", but of course they assailed it as "the government trying to control you", "a waste of Stimulus funds", "evidence of the corrosion of our country's moral fiber" and other assorted idiocy.
What the women in the program are doing --- like the schools that pay for attendance* --- is that the kids on the margins have different motivations who aren't there.
If you're some middle class kid and expect to go to college, you also face family/social pressure to go to college (and of course, the realistic opportunity to do so), and so your orientation toward that goal is different than some kid for whom none of that is true. The consequences of getting pregnant are greater, which is why you see so many fewer middle-class girl/boys having kids as teenagers.
It's not about "willpower," it's about expectation and opportunity (which are often the same thing).
If you go to some failing high school, and you don't know anyone who has gone to college, and half the people you start high school with drop out, what exactly would having a kid be derailing you from? The social pressures are totally different.
Will this program work? I think Monie's right; there's probably some suggestion bias which means that the girls in the program are gonna be the least "at-risk" of the targeted group. But the idea --- on class difference in motivations --- is a sound one.
*It's worth noting that there are schools that don't pay for attendance, but also pay for good grades, too.
oops. mad typos.
The first sentence should read: "What the women in the program are doing... is recognizing that the kids on the margins have different motivations than those who aren't."
My best friend, who was in school, got pregnant over her summer break. She was 19. It doesn't matter how much you could've paid her, she knew what she was doing and is now paying the consequences of that.
Anyway, I think this is hella backwards. If money is the only reason why you would keep yourself from getting pregnant or catching an STI, then you need to get your priorities checked out.
What we need to do is tell girls that there are health options that may be available on their campus. For instance, at my school, we have testing services, pregnancy prevention such as birth control and gynecological care (I know not all colleges can afford this, but school should be very open in letting their student body know the options available on or around campus).
They told us all of this information at Orientation. When my Father and I were driving back, he straight up said to me "Birth control is covered by our insurance so you don't have to ask me if you wanna get it" As shocked as I was about his statement, he wanted to make sure that I didn't come home pregnant, which meant letting me know that it's okay if you go get BC. I thank him for that til this day.
College breeds crazy ass behavior (I went nuts my first week lol) but it takes the strong ones to know how to protect themselves. You shouldn't have to pay me to teach me self-respect.
The ethics are questionable if you think money will always inspire people to do what's right. Sometimes, though, young people need some help developing the maturity so many of us take for granted. 6/125 ain't bad; in fact it's quite astounding.
I agree this is a slippery slope; the more we enable people, the more they will depend upon the enablers to take care of them. Yes, this does sound suspiciously like many of the proposed policies of our current Administration, but that's an argument for another post. :-/
It's called your goddamn RIGHT HAND, people. Jesus Tapdancing Christ.
(Sorry, AB. I won't blame you for deleting that.)
Joking aside, it's things like this that bring out the cranky old conservative in me, which I don't enjoy one bit. Seriously, what the hell? It's really come to things like this? I feel like we'll hear about paying kids not to pee on the floor any day now.
@ G.D.
"If you go to some failing high school, and you don't know anyone who has gone to college, and half the people you start high school with drop out, what exactly would having a kid be derailing you from?"
Derailing you from bringing yet ANOTHER kid into an environment that doesn't really want it, can't really provide for it, and lacks the maturity to give it the proper emotional guidance keep it from becoming as a much of a zombified washout as you are.
How's that?
I have to wonder if there's a way to get stats on how many children were not only accidents, but simply not wanted and continue to be unwanted even with the passage of time. Probably not, but I suspect the results of such a survey would be depressing.
If I were a sorceror, I'd cast a magic spell on the human reproductive system so that it would require THREE rounds to sucessfully conceive.
No no----ten!
And all on the night of a full moon!
On the Bangladeshi coast!
Wearing purple bunny slippers signed by Little Richard!
There.
This awakens my inner conservative as well. Damn- has it really come to this?
My parents employed the age-old tactics of fear, intimidation, threats, groundings, curfews, ass-whippings, never-ending Bible studies and Church Youth groups, picking up my phone while I was talking on it to listen in, scaring the hell out of potential partners and warning me that sex could lead to a lifetime of dipping fries into sizzling oil at Micky D's.
But I guess that only worked on my sheltered behind.
"...has increased over the last two years and now stands at 7.2 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. Three out of 10 young women become pregnant by age 20."
Can somebody explain this statistic? If 3 out of 10 girls will become pregnant is that not 30%. But 7.2 pregnancies per 1000 girls is not 30%. I'm confused. Please help.
Marbles, you are crazy, lmao.
You know, this is one of those stories that makes me uncomfortable. But it's clearly an act of desperation, initiated by people who want to help.
Teens rebel by nature. We all did some version of that. But ultimately, that family structure is what really enforces the "law" for lack of better term.
Also:
Monie's comment sounds correct.
And, OneChele, I'm laughing with you. Oh, those sermons and youth groups!
@Marbles,
Embrace you true inner self, young jedi; give in to your true feelings ;-)
For 14 years I'm sure I've taught a frightening number of 'mistakes.' Every former student with whom I still communicate regularly has had either no relationship with one of their parents (dad) or a limited/fractured one, and those parents even if alive were not present in their lives as they should have been.
The apologists and permissiveness in society today don't want to accept a core solution to all of this, which is simply keeping it in your pants/legs locked shut until BOTH OF YOU ARE READY TO RAISE A CHILD. That we have divorced the pleasure of sex from the responsibility of sex (procreation) has destroyed poor folks families (Black) worse than others.
In the long run is this any different from parents paying students for good grades? A kid probably wouldn't give up $500/week selling drugs to bust ass hoping to make $50-100 for A's & B's.
Sure it won't appeal to the ones most at risk but it will help some, and something is better than nothing. You've got to start somewhere.
My parents didn't have to scare me out of sex. I didn't have the game to get any no way. However moms taught me how to spell with a book in one hand and a belt in the other. I never got less than 85% on a spelling test....EVER. true story.
@cjames this is just my take on it but im pretty sure its right. basically teen pregnancies per year, and the amount of women pregnant by 20 are an apples an oranges situation. A girl only needs to have a baby once btw 13-19 and she's included in that 30%. To get that number they added a bunch of probablities or rates together i.e. the rate that 13 year olds get preg, 14, 15 etc... up to 19. That 7.2 per 1000 number is probably a simple average of all the kids born to all 13-19 year olds in whatever year. hope that helps
I think that the best incentive for young girls NOT TO have babies out of wedlock or to have babies in adolescence are strong fathers and mothers in their homes who have MADE responsible parenting choices.
Those young girls who get pregnant out of wedlock while in school USUALLY are children who were born out of wedlock themselves OR they have mothers and aunts and cousins who made that decision.
My parents married and acquired degrees PRIOR TO starting a family and THAT was the greatest influence on my own life choices...
Marbles: "Derailing you from bringing yet ANOTHER kid into an environment that doesn't really want it, can't really provide for it, and lacks the maturity to give it the proper emotional guidance keep it from becoming as a much of a zombified washout as you are."
That's cute and snappy. It also completely misses the point.
Okay, lemme try again. We're talking about teenagers, who almost necessarily have no perspective. And not just any teenagers, but teenagers on the margins who are being pushed toward certain outcomes. But again, none of our values and expectations are formed in a vacuum.
The reason middle class kids don't get pregnant at 17 is not a lack of willpower or a lack of priorities. The level of education that your parents have --- that is, your socioeconomic class --- correlates with the age you begin having sex, and your own educational attainment correlates to the age you get married and when you have kids. Hell, there've been studies on how just being raised in a middle class home means starting elementary school with a substantially larger vocabulary. Being middle class also teaches you how to delay gratification (poor people don't have anything to save, rich people have more than they can spend, but the people in the middle have to make decisions about long-term gain). If you're the kind of kid that this program seems to be aiming at, you're on the wrong side of all these social pressures.
What matters in success is *realistic* social expectation from your parents and peers. You can't just tell some kid from the PJ's in some failing Anacostia school to dream of going to college --- she needs the kind of implicit, broad-based encouragement and the resources that the kids who are not at risk take as a given. If you're gonna work at some minimum-wage service job when (if?) you graduate high school anyway, what's the compelling reason to not just drop out of high school at 16? It's easy to understand why that same kid would make a whole host of different decisions were they had been raised by people with postgraduate degrees and went to good high schools. It's not because her natural ability would change, it's because her environment would nurture those abilities toward the pursuit of a certain kind of life.
The question at the center of this program is a compelling one: how do you change the expectations of these kids?
Ciara: "You shouldn't have to pay me to teach me self-respect."
adinasi: "The ethics are questionable if you think money will always inspire people to do what's right."
Broadening the conversation a bit: It's pretty telling that you're framing this in "self-respect/moral" terms. It's a pretty big leap to suggest that getting pregnant as a teenager means you don't "respect yourself" and it's debatable as to whether not getting pregnant is "doing what's right."
These aren't moral decisions that people are making; at their base, these are cost/benefit decisions. Depending on the environment in which you grew up, the cost side of the ledger can change dramatically. Your parents are teachers? There's more at risk if you get pregnant or don't go to college --- socially, economically, whatever. Neurosurgeons? Even higher risk. And so on. You make life choices accordingly, and so ingrained is the encouragement in one direction that you don't even really have to think about it.
But when you go down low enough on the SES ladder, the ledger becomes much more even. There's less social or economic risk to instill an aversion toward getting pregnant and there's little to no social pressure (or resources) to go on to higher education. Those things were never that likely to begin with. And again, you make your life choices accordingly.
The reason these become conversations about "morality" is because that's the simplest ways to transmit and reaffirm our values. But the problem with going this route when talking about social issues is that it doesn't work when you're talking about people who are operating in a different framework. It assumes we're all starting in the same place. But more than that, it's just tone deaf. It assumes that people who look at their world and come to rational decisions based on their understood options are morally bankrupt for coming to different conclusions than you.
But there are real limits to shaming, and sooner or later, the shamed start tuning all that noise out. Which makes me think the effectiveness of this approach is sort of beside the point; it's the affirmation that comes with being able to do the shaming that matters.
On the surface this sounds like a great idea. But it doesn't seem to account for something much bigger than a $1 a day: teenage lust and/or low self-esteem
Rather than paying these young women NOT to get pregnant, provide them access to birth control/condoms, but also self-empowerment.
I'm amazed by the number of women my age who had sex in high school just because some guy wanted to. OR because they felt like they didn't have anything else to offer.
Low self esteem is a motha.
It never occured to me to have sex with a guy because I was dating him. I was always told that the choice to have sex was just that: MY choice. And because of that I can look back fondly on my "first time" and not have a baby to show for it.
@ G.D.
Re: your words to me, Clara & adinasi:
You're right.
I was mindful of your earlier comment that college wouldn't even be on the radar for many kids with this kind of background---that's why I avoided mentioning college or white-collar aspirations at all. I worded it "zombified washout" because I was trying to be broad enough to not directly imply those things. When I cited "lack of maturity and proper emotional guidance," I was referring to things that are less tangible on paper, but are real nonetheless.
There are so many ignorant, hardened people in the world, made that way by an ignorant, hardened environment that cares little for beauty or tenderness. That's what I lament more than anything. It's not always about your degree or your suit 'n tie. You can be a minimum-wage drudge at White Castle your whole life---that doesn't implicate you as hostile to learning, or dead inside to the point where cruelty becomes as unremarkable as breathing.
So many kids are clearly not wanted--that much is obvious from the way they're treated in front of everybody. It's like watching the light being pounded out of them right before everyone's eyes.
I can't lie. It really gets me.
Having said that, I nevertheless defer to you. Because unlike me, when speaking of these issues you would actually know what you're talking about.
@GD,
It's never right to bring a child into the world when that wasn't your original intention. If you're gonna have sex, you better be prepared to rear a child, period.
Monie got it right: "The girls who are most likely to get pregnant aren't going to sign-up for this in the first place."
And the whole thing reeks of yet another erosion of personal responsibility. I don't necessarily think it's unethical so much as pointless, although I applaud the College-Bound Sisters for trying to do something.
I wish I could come up with a better idea.
@ Marbles
What are you on today and would you please share with the rest of us?? :-)
You are cracking me up!!!
Soda and Candy: "And the whole thing reeks of yet another erosion of personal responsibility."
You mean from the good old days when everyone loved themselves and each other and no one got pregnant except for the right reasons?
When, exactly, were the halcyon days of personal responsibilities.
@ adinasi:
"'Embrace you true inner self, young jedi; give in to your true feelings ;-)'"
"Your powers are weak, old man. ;]"
Lots of comments so I'll make it short. I agree that some girls do what they have seen growing up. Their environment tells them they are prone to and should expect certain things as the norm such as teen pregnancies and drop-outs.
If they have a different environment or someone they look up to who has gone a different path then that personal resistance to not become a statistic will likely appear. I have two boys too...God highly favors me because I don't think I could handle little girls.
GD - No, I mean from the days when people took responsibility for their actions and the consequences of same.
Getting pregnant or not getting pregnant, it's your own responsibility, not up to someone else to bribe you not to.
Soda and Candy,
When exactly were those days?
This program is even better and is in NC as well. NC seems to do pretty well with this. It need billions more funding though, 10 times more than public schools.
http://www.projectprevention.org/
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