It was obvious to me that Mary and weren’t going to be friends in the near future so I did a little homework into the statistics of being pregnant and simultaneously a teenager. Even I was shocked at the grime picture that the numbers painted.
A new analysis from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy shows that teen childbearing (teens 19 and younger) in
The costs of childbearing are greatest for younger teens. In
Nearly 80 percent of fathers of children born to teen mothers do not marry the mothers. These fathers pay less than $800 annually in child support, often because they are quite poor themselves. Since child support can be an important source of income for poor children— accounting for 23 percent of the family income among those families who do receive child support— children born to young fathers are at further disadvantage.
This left Mary to fund $3438 on her own, while going to school full time…which she told that she was committed to…right. Which meant that her mother, a single parent who was herself an unwed teen mother would have to pick up the slack while working a menial job herself.
Two-thirds of families begun by young unmarried mothers are poor.
Almost one-half of all teen mothers and over three quarters of unmarried teen mothers began receiving welfare within five years of the birth of their first child.
Teen mothers are less likely to complete the education necessary to qualify for a well-paying job —only 40 percent of mothers who have children before age 18 ever graduate from high school compared with about three-quarters of similarly situated young women who delay childbearing until age 20 or 21. Furthermore, less than two percent of mothers who have children before age 18 complete college by the age of 30 compared to nine percent of young women who wait until age 20 or 21 to have children. This disparity in education, not surprisingly, tends to affect income level. In fact, over the past 20 years the median income for college graduates has increased 19 percent while the median income for high school dropouts has decreased 28 percent.
Virtually all of the increase in child poverty between 1980 and 1996 was related to the increase in nonmarital childbearing, and half of never-married mothers begin their childbearing as teens.
I knew that this kid was in trouble when I met her the first time but I had a deep down gut feeling that neither of us knew the extent of her problems when we signed onto this uneasy partnership, so I decided to just lay the facts out for her. Statistics are just that…cold numbers that simply predict the general trend, and it was going to be up to her to transcend those numbers. But she had to be hit over the head with them so she knew that the odds were. And so once again I was going to be the uncaring asshole and she was going to be the belligerent child who happened to be with child.
“I’m going to put some facts in front of you Mary and I want you to read them to me” I said.
“I want you to know where you are in the scheme of things and exactly what can be expected of you…statistically.”
Mary didn’t even get through the first paragraph before she started with the whole litany of how I didn’t know her…how she was different from “those” pregnant teenagers.
“Statistics don’t lie” I told her.
“That’s you… there in those facts.”
“You don’t even know me” she responded defiantly.
“I don’t have to… it’s all right there in front of you. That’s what happens to girls in your situation most of the time. That’s what statistics are all about. They predict that happens to… most people.”
“To most people”
“You could be different… but it’s going to take you on a different path. One that you never saw for yourself.”
“Read the rest of it to me out loud” I said.
She read through the tears, the rest of the smattering of the horrors that awaited her and then she sat silent.
“I guess we’re done then?” I said.
“I wish we were” she answered, “but Steve told me that you’d help, and so far you’ve been horrible. What makes you think that you could know me, judge me?”
“Hey, you can walk out on this whenever you like” I told her, “I’m doing this because Steve asked me to, because he thought you could use a friend.”
“Some friend you are” she responded.
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