Do You Know a Juno??

June 20, 2008 at 7:08 am | Posted in What the hell? | 2 Comments
Tags: juno, teen pregnancy

I’ve given myself a bit of a gift by having my children occupied two mornings a week during the summer.  It’s really just to give me a couple of hours to myself to work out or grocery shop or watch The Today Show (not GMA, remember??).  So imagine my shock when this story pops up as a teaser of what’s to come in the next hour. 

As a parent, and a parent that didn’t come by parenting either easily or early in life, I can tell you it isn’t something to be so flip about.  I find it almost impossible to believe these girls have any idea what they have gotten themselves into.  In a quote given by the high school Principal he states, “these girls are generally lack self-esteem and have a lack of love in their lives.”  So I would imagine they think that by having a baby they will have someone in their lives that will love them unconditionally.  Yeah….when was the last time you heard a parent say, “You know what I love most about my kids is that no matter what, they love me.”  As a parent we know that they love us but more often than not what you’ll hear a parent say is “My kids are driving me crazy!!!  They need this, they want that, they need to be driven here, they want this friend to stay over….”  And that is typically kids who are a bit older.  What about a newborn?  Waking every 4 or so hours to eat, be changed, put back to bed only to wake in another 3 hours to start all over again.  The dependence and neediness of a newborn/infant/toddler is, in my opinion, the hardest need to fill because it almost isn’t enough for them.

These girls are 16 and younger (although not much younger I assume from the article).  What is going to happen when it is time to go to school?  Does the school make arrangements for them to bring their babies to school?  How will they be able to focus on learning when they need to feed and change their babies?  I didn’t have my daughter until I was 35 and I had a husband who worked so we could afford for me to stay home financially.  I didn’t have to think about getting my high school education but damn, I could barely shower or put a load of laundry in the wash I was so tired. 

So what happens to these babies?  Do their parents step in and raise them?  What about the fathers and their families?  Who becomes ultimately responsible for raising these children?  And what will they think when they get older about their parents decision to build their family in the way that they did?  Will there be more children by different fathers in the years to come?  I don’t know.  I don’t get it.  I was a 35 year old married woman who completed high school and college and traveled, had fun, lived a fun single life and I was both terrified and excited to be a mom.  But I had a strong support structure in my families and that is what helped me through those early years that are so difficult.

The title of this post isn’t really an accurate or fair one as anyone who has seen the movie knows.  Juno didn’t set out to get pregnant like these girls did nor does she have a romantic notion of what parenting and love would be about.  It is an unfair analogy the news media is painting between the real life decisions of these girls on the east coast and a fictional character brought to life by writer Diablo Cody.  But it is a serious issue that deserves some thought and action.  What action?  I don’t know.  I can’t even begin to know.  But I feel for these girls and their families and these children to be born into a situation that is so messed up from the get-go that I wonder, what will they be thinking about life and love when they are their parent’s age?