Archive for July 26th, 2004

Where there is no vision the people perish - Pro. 29:18

 
Young girls are getting pregnant because they want to.  Not all of them, although any is too many.  According to this article, nearly 25% of the girls between 14 and 18 years of age who participated in a survey in Birmingham, AL expressed a interest in being or wished they were pregnant.  I have some problems with that.

Now, I could get up on my soap box and go off about how all people, but kids especially, need to save themselves for marriage, and I would be quite correct in doing so.  I’m sure there are many other people who will take that angle, however, so I’ll leave that to them.  What I’m more interested in is why.  What in the world can a 14 year-old possibly want with a baby?  Some possible answers are mentioned here:

Researchers didn’t look at why the girls wanted to get pregnant, but past studies have suggested that young women sought babies so someone would love them or so they would have someone to love. Studies also have suggested that young women wanted children to heal scars from their own childhood or to be independent of their families.

Those may certainly represent some major components of the situation, but I think there is a more pressing aspect.  “I think it’s kind of appealing for girls who don’t see a lot of positive future options,” she said. Young, black women need more opportunities, Davies said.

I did some research on teen pregnancy when I was in undergrad and I came to a similar conclusion.  People who can’t see the future get caught up in the present.  The pregnancy rates among girls who had solid plans for the future were significantly lower, as was the age of first intercourse.  Obviously, anybody who’s active can get pregnant, and sometimes it happens to the girls who have the most to lose, but more often than not,  the girls who are already struggling to see tomorrow wind up with babies today.  I think lack of vision is clearly the culprit here, because not only do the girls fail to see the benefits of forestalling their activity, they fail to see the consequences of having a baby.  Like Common said, “Young girls with weak minds, but they butt strong.”

So what’s the solution?  Yeah, abstinence training should be an integral part of whatever is being done, but that has to be done within a context.  You can’t just tell a kid “Don’t.” and expect that to be it.  No matter what a given person’s reason for not-doing anything is, it’s based in the future.  If a person is celibate for Jesus, that celibacy is based on something beyond the present.  It’s not just being celibate for the sake of being celibate.  The sooner we realize that, the better.  We can’t just go in there talking about, “You shouldn’t be active because you shouldn’t.”  Well we could, but we’d be getting the same results we are now.

I think this is another example of the type of opportunities I was talking about the other day.  A large abstinence program…while it may be effective, does not have quite the same impact as a person speaking to a person, woman-to-girl (preferably) and not so much stressing the act of abstinence as the benefits of it; really, not even stressing abstinence so much as stressing the limitless possibilities that can be realized with patience and the willingness to delay certain gratifications. But it’s more than that.  The point is not just to go somewhere and talk, but to be able to model it; not necessarily model abstinence, but model the possibilities of a future worth waiting for.

This is why Chuck D is Chuck D:  he says what I would’a said if I had thought of it:

Anti-Lectualism and dumbassification in our society has leaked into the concept of having unstealable items in your crib. For example 30 years ago cats would rob your house and take a tv or stereo equipment and sell them on the street to get good money when the dollar was longer. 20 years ago DJ and stereo equipment, Tv , and the new invent the VCR would be a thiefs theme. 10 years back a DVD player along with those others would be items. Now everything is within the brain of a computer, at the same time none of the afore mentioned items can get jack on the streets. You can get a BRAND new TV,STEREO, VCR,DVD from your nearest Wal-Mart for under a $100.At the same time, you can leave 10 crisp $100. bills under any computer keyboard and it may be safer than a vault. This in the way is a social embarrassment, knowing that if a 4 stack of SPINNING RIMS were in a corner that along with some shiny CUBIC ZIRCONIA jewelry would distract todays crook to lumber them out the backdoor even if they didnt have a vehicle.

Now this is what I would regard as authentic gospel hip-hop.  Like I said before, the message and the music aren’t necessarily incompatible, it’s just that it needs to be handled by somebody who knows what they’re doing.