Picket Fence Post

As I continued to marvel at the surprising GOP vice presidential selection, I fired off a column about my impressions of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s first national speech to the folks at Mommy Track’d in a piece entitled, “McCain & The Working Mom.”

Additionally, I wrote an essay about the difficulties working women have when they are asked to speak at national political conventions when their spouses are running for president, called, “Michelle As First Lady: General Election Edition.”

Image credit: Associated Press/Kiichiro Sato.

When the story about the pregnant Gloucester High School girls (all 16 and under) was being wildly hyped up across the media universe recently, I kept mum about it here at the Picket Fence Post. I had no initial desire to leap into the fray on that particular issue.

Then the July 4th weekend parade in a Boston suburb came along. It crudely lampooned the girls – the minors – the kids who’d gotten pregnant and had no real idea of how drastically their lives were about to change. And some folks in the media and elsewhere said it was important to ridicule these girls so as to dissuade future teens from getting (or desiring to get) pregnant, because, as we all know, it was reported that some of the Gloucester girls wanted to get pregnant.

That’s when I felt compelled to chime in, seeing as though the girls were being called every sexual slur in the book, while the boys/men who got them pregnant (they haven’t been identified other than one 24-year-old homeless man whose name hasn’t been released) somehow escaped all manner of excoriating commentary. The vulnerable girls, with their swollen pregnant bellies, make for much better targets it seems. So I wrote this piece on Mommy Track’d about the media’s and public’s treatment of the girls and of other single women who get pregnant.

And, although I didn’t mention it in the column, pundits repeatedly suggested that a “Juno effect” was at work here, referencing the popular film about a 16-year-old girl from a stable, two-parent household who accidentally got pregnant during her sole sexual interlude then gave the baby up for adoption. So I watched Juno again with The Spouse to see if it could be considered an inducement to teen girls to get pregnant. We agreed that it in no way made the teenaged character seem cool because she was pregnant and didn’t make teen pregnancy seem easy (she was ostracized, she missed her school’s big dance, she was scorned by most adults), though The Spouse did add that he thought she “bounced back” from the pregnancy well, better than most girls, he suggested. I think this moving, quirky film got a bad rap in the post-Gloucester news cycles.

Image credit: Fox Searchlight via Media Bistro.

Item #1: HS ‘Pregnancy Pact’

I must admit, a question mark lingers over my head in a cartoonish balloon when it comes to this story. I’m sure you’ve heard about it if you listen to talk radio or watch cable chattering head shows (which I’ll be watching tonight while The Girl commandeers the “good” TV to watch Camp Rock on the Disney Channel). A large group of teens, all ages 16 and under, from Gloucester, Mass. made a pact to all get pregnant at around the same time so they’d all become moms at the same time. And 17 are pregnant. The story was featured in Time Magazine and makes my heart sick on so many different levels. Why would girls be focused on procreating instead of going to college or pursuing a career? (Don’t blame Juno as they made the pact before the charming, independent film about the teen who got pregnant by accident and gave her baby up for adoption, was released.)

The magazine reports:

“The girls who made the pregnancy pact — some of whom, according to [Gloucester High School Principal Joseph] Sullivan, reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives and plans for baby showers — declined to be interviewed. So did their parents. But Amanda Ireland, who graduated from Gloucester High on June 8, thinks she knows why these girls wanted to get pregnant. Ireland, 18, gave birth her freshman year and says some of her now pregnant schoolmates regularly approached her in the hall, remarking how lucky she was to have a baby. ‘They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,’ Ireland says. ‘I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.’”

Item #2: Michelle Obama, Target Customer

US Weekly, which usually trafficks in sensational celeb-related garbage reporting, features Barack and Michelle Obama on its cover this week bearing the headline, “Why Barack Loves Her.” The story is largely a pro-Obama puff piece but has a number of interesting mom-related tidbits of info. “. . . [W]hen not on the road, the mom [Michelle Obama] can be seen in her Chicago neighborhood driving to Target for toilet paper and buying clothing for her girls at The Gap and Limited Too.”

The Obamas had difficulty getting pregnant, according to Us, and now are hands-on parents, when they’re home with the 6- and 10-year-old girls, a challenge these days for their presidential nominee father who’s on the road most of the time. Us said: “With the help of a housekeeper but no nanny, Michelle certainly has found her smart-mom shortcuts: She relies on headbands for bad-hair days, claims dessert at school potlucks so she can buy a pie and, until recently, packed Oscar Mayer Lunchables and juice boxes into her kids’ lunches. (She has now cut out processed food, after her pediatrician worried her oldest daughter ‘was tipping the scale,’ as she puts it.)”

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