They’re Having Babies. Are We Helping?

The Washington Post: The girls gather in small groups outside Alexandria’s T.C. Williams High School most mornings, standing with their babies on their hips, talking and giggling like sorority sisters. Sometimes their mothers drop the kids (and their kids) off with a carefree smile and a wave. As I watch the girls carry their children into the Tiny Titans day-care center in our new $100 million building, I can’t help wondering what Sister Mary Avelina, my 11th-grade English teacher, would have thought.

Okay, I’m an old guy from the 1950s, an era light-years from today. But even in these less censorious times, I’m amazed — and concerned — by the apparently nonchalant attitude both these girls and their mothers exhibit in front of teachers, administrators and hundreds of students each day. Last I heard, teen pregnancy is still a major concern in this country — teenage mothers are less likely to finish school and more likely to live in poverty; their children are more likely to have difficulties in school and with the law; and on and on.

But none of that seems to register with these young women. In fact, “some girls seem to be really into it,” says T.C. senior Mary Ball. “They are embracing their pregnancies.” Nor is the sight of a pregnant classmate much of a surprise to the students at T.C. anymore. “When I was in middle school, I’d be shocked to see a pregnant eighth-grader,” says Ball. “Now it seems so ordinary that we don’t even talk about it.”

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