Written by Martha Kempner for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Poverty is a leading factor in teen motherhood.

Like many RH Reality Check readers, I have been closely following New York City’s fear- and shame-based campaign against teen pregnancy. The print ads include pictures of crying babies with captions like “Honestly Mom, chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” The ads also tell teens that if they have a kid, they will grow up to be poor. But the ads get it all wrong. Teen parenting doesn’t cause poverty; poverty causes teen parenting.

Developed by the New York Human Resources Administration (HRA), the campaign has seen a significant backlash since it was introduced last month. A group of activists in the city created a counter-campaign and demanded the city take the ads down. As Miriam Pérez noted in an article for RH Reality Check, the backlash may have resulted in a few tweaks and improvements, but the ads are still up, and the HRA hasn’t changed the campaign’s underlying tone at all.

I finally saw the ads for myself last week. My subway car was plastered with crying babies telling their potential teen parents not to get pregnant. The ads I saw were focused on money. In one, a curly haired toddler in a bunny rabbit shirt said, “Dad, you’ll be paying to support me for the next 20 years.” Another featured a one-and-a-half-year-old African-American girl with a bow on top of her head and tears streaming down her cheeks, saying, “Got a good job? I cost thousands of dollars a year.”

But the one that got me, the poster that I happened to be standing in front of for my ride on the C train, was one that might almost be seen as encouraging had it not been so completely meaningless. It read, “If you finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children, you have a 98 percent chance of not being in poverty.”

I don’t know whether this statistic is accurate, though it very well might be. Let’s face it: If you graduate from high school and get a job, you are two steps ahead when it comes to not living in poverty, whether or not you get married and have kids.

But these are big “ifs” that are affected by things way out of teenagers’ control, like where they’re born, the quality of the schools in their area, whether their parents are highly educated, whether their parents are employed, the employment rate in their neighborhood, and what the economy is like when they turn 18. And none of that has to do with whether or not they become parents before they get married.

Pérez points out that supporters of the campaign are missing the point — stigmatizing teen parents won’t prevent future teen parents, because that stigma already exists. I would add that the campaign misses another very important point: Teen parenting does not cause poverty. Poverty causes teen parenting.

Cause and Effect

The ads point out that economic outcomes for teen parents and their children tend to be poor. We know that teen mothers are less likely to graduate from high school, that the children of teen mothers are also less likely to graduate from high school (one ad in the campaign points to this statistics), that teen mothers are less likely to marry, and that they are more likely to live in poverty.  It would be easy to assume that these are natural consequences of teen parenting.

Read the rest of this entry →

Written by Miriam Pérez for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Read more of RHRC’s coverage of the New York City teen pregnancy campaign here and here.

It’s been two weeks since the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA) launched its teen pregnancy campaign. Though the agency has made some small tweaks to the campaign in response to the significant backlash that has surrounded it, it remains hugely problematic.

The campaign immediately has drawn intense criticism from activists, and that backlash has gotten significant media coverage. For instance, reproductive justice activists in New York launched the No Stigma, No Shame campaign. (View a Storify of the media response to that campaign here.) The Bloomberg administration has yet to admit defeat, but the HRA has made subtle changes to the campaign, seemingly in response to the backlash. According to the Times, the SMS game I wrote about previously for RH Reality Check has been edited. In the exchange about Anaya, the pregnant teen character who is bullied at the prom, she is no longer called a “fat loser”—now she’s just called a “loser.”

Since my first article on the campaign was published, I’ve received a few additional text messages from the SMS bot. A few days into the firestorm, I received this:

A week later, I received another random text from the SMS bot, this time about premature ejaculation. The texts seemed strangely timed, and I got the impression that these new texts were sent out in response to media pressure about the campaign. Sending out a few relevant facts about pregnancy prevention is nice—but it does not negate the fact that the campaign is rooted in shame and stigma.

Meanwhile, the campaign’s ads can be seen all over public transportation in New York City.

Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Richard Reeves was one of the few self-identified liberals to publicly defend the campaign. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Reeves argued that shame is a necessary tool: “[L]iberals should think twice: shame is an essential ingredient of a healthy society, particularly a liberal one. It acts as a form of moral regulation, or social ‘nudge,’ encouraging good behavior while guarding individual freedom.” He goes on to cite examples of how shame can be used to discourage drunk driving or smoking. “Teenage pregnancy qualifies for some ‘moral disapprobation.’ It is a bad choice, for the parents, children and society,” he wrote, quoting John Stuart Mill.

It’s abhorrent to compare the decision to become a teen parent to drunk driving, which is not only illegal, but also directly puts the lives of innocent bystanders at risk. Shame has been used to address both issues, but they are not morally equivalent. At least Reeves is honest in one way: He acknowledges that shame tactics have negative consequences on teen parents.

But there’s an assumption in Reeves’ op-ed—and in the campaign—that teen parenthood isn’t already incredibly stigmatized. Teen parenthood is not like smoking, which has been glorified and glamorized through decades of cigarette ads and popular culture. Gloria Malone, a teen mom and blogger who was brave enough to go on The O’Reilly Factor to talk about the campaign and wrote pieces about it for RHRC and the New York Times, is one of many teen moms who’ve spoken out about the stigma and lack of support they faced. “Some people argue that these ads are a fresh approach to dealing with the problem of teenage pregnancy. But I can tell you that there’s nothing innovative about them. All they do is take the insults and stereotypes directed at teenage parents every day, and post them up around the city,” she wrote in the Times.

And that’s where we really must question the city’s decision to spend $400,000 on this campaign. Even if we believe, as Reeves does, that stigma is an effective or legitimate method of prevention, where’s the evidence that teens aren’t already getting that message?

Obviously I don’t think stigma works, nor do I even think prevention is the right goal, when it comes to teen parenting. Helping teens avoid unwanted pregnancy? Sure. But when it comes to teen parents, I think we should be investing money in making sure they have the resources they need to thrive. Further promoting stigma only makes those resources harder to reach, as Malone points out in her Times article: “[A]fter I had my daughter, my high school guidance counselor refused to see me and help me with my applications. She never expected me to graduate. Most people, even within my family, assumed I wouldn’t amount to anything and would be dependent on government assistance for the rest of my life.”

Teen parents don’t have to end up in poverty, and there’s nothing inherently immoral about parenting at any age. The problem isn’t teen parents, it’s the social and economic conditions that make it impossible to juggle parenting and a career. Those are things we as a society have control over, and improving them will help everyone, including parents of any age.

Written by Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Thanks to colleague Rachel Sklar for the original tip on this piece.

I would say this is in the category of… “you can’t believe it,” but these days there is nothing about today’s GOP I can’t believe anymore. From forced pregnancy, to forced ultrasounds (trans-vaginal or abdominal), to denial of care for rape victims, and denial of both health and pay inequities, the GOP is going out of its way to tell us exactly how they feel about women.

And now this: An anti-gay New York GOP legislator has decided that women are not acting “feminine enough,” so… he will teach us how to be feminine.

This is reported from Joe. My. God.

Anti-gay New York GOP state Sen. Marty Golden thinks women need to start acting like proper ladies. And he’s going to teach a class on how to do just that. City & State reports:

Later this month, Republican State Sen. Marty Golden’s office is holding a career-development event for women in his southern Brooklyn district teaching them “Posture, Deportment and the Feminine Presence.” That’s according to a taxpayer-funded mailing being sent out in Golden’s district, which an offended reader passed along. The taxpayer-funded event – presented by a “certified protocol consultant” – is part of a series teaching women in Brooklyn “what’s new in the 21st century as it relates to business etiquette and social protocol.” More details are also available on Golden’s Senate website, including the fact that women in attendance will be taught to, “Sit, stand and walk like a model,” how to, “Walk up and down a stair elegantly” and “Differences in American and Continental rules governing handshakes and introductions.”

According to Joe. My. God., “Golden says his classes are meant to help young women get jobs, therefore you are paying for it.”

Of course, assuming women need to be taught how to be “proper ladies” means to this guy that they should be quiet, demure, undemanding of their rights, available for sex whenever men demand it, willing to endure forced pregnancy and childbirth, submissive to their husbands and (white) male politicians and religious figures. And I am sure we should stop asking for things like pay equity.

In turn, I will be offering members of the GOP, Tea Party, fundamentalist right-wing nutcases, and those Blue Dog Democrats complicit in their agenda to attend a class on how not to be idiotic, sexist, misogynistic pigs, but something tells me that attendance will be low, because you’d have to have some measure of self-awareness to even decide you needed help.

And, somehow, I don’t think tax-payer funding would be available for said class. Just sayin’.