Pregnancy Pact

A group of High School sophomores make a pact to get pregnant.

In what can only be described as a very unsound decision, a number of teenage girls living in Gloucester, Massachusetts made a pregnancy pact with each other.

The girls, high school sophomores at Gloucester High School decided they wanted to get pregnant so they could raise their babies together. One girl even asked a homeless man to father the child, so paternity wasn't a big concern for her.

Pregnancy pacts seem like a really bad idea for so many reasons and it's amazing that these young girls have no idea of how much time, work and money it costs to raise a child. It's a lifetime responsibility and I don't believe it to be the dream of a lot of teens.

What I thought was interesting about this community is that they offer free childcare for their students while they attend classes, and although it's a good way to make sure that teenage mothers graduate, it might be construed as an incentive to have children and let the education system raise the babies, certainly not ideal.

It might be a better idea to teach these girls life skills, like how to balance a checkbook and cook using a stove before the casually decide to be a mother. Some have blamed the likes of Jamie Lynn Spears for the glamorization of having children.

I just hope this pregnancy pact is an isolated incident and isn't something that's gaining popularity. Teenagers don't have the resources that their "role models" do, so having a baby is going to be a much different experience than what Jamie Lynn is going to have. More importantly, they should be enjoying their own childhoods. There's plenty of time for having kids in your 20's, 30's and even into your 40's. No reason to rush.

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