United Way ads tell teens: Babies make you “miss out” on life
We want our youth to know that if you become a teen parent, it is going to profoundly change your life…. You’re going to miss out on a lot of opportunities, including sports and social activities.
We want teens to be smart and make healthy choices that will leave all the doors open in the future.
~ Nicole Angresano, VP of Community Impact at the United Way of Greater Milwaukee, commenting on a new ad campaign meant to discourage teen pregnancy by offering information on birth control through BabyCanWait.com (a site which directs visitors to clinics including Planned Parenthood), as quoted by JSOnline, August 21
Aug.23, 2012 1:00 am |
Pregnancy |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
If they are directing teens to Klan Parenthood, it isn’t to discourage teen pregnancy; it’s to discourage teens giving birth. KP thrives on teen pregnancy; loses out on births no matter how old the parents are. Makes big bucks on killing all those “inconvenient” babies.
A psychopath came come out of any situation including a planned pregnancy of two adult, stable, married parents. But it is far, far more likely that the sort of person who ends up in prison or death row will be the result of an unmarried, unprepared teen girl getting pregnant.
I can’t read the line below “With A Baby”, but as long as it doesn’t say anything awful, I don’t see a very bad ad here. I think there are teenagers who engage in sexual activity and think it would be “cute” have a baby. The question is: what are they being asked to do to avoid this fate? The other question is: is the choice they’re making today NOT ONLY preventing a pregnancy, but preserving their hearts and emotions and their integrity and physical health, in order to have a meaningful lifelong relationship with a spouse? I still maintain that a baby is not the worst “punishment” attendant on early sexuality, but the damage to the psyche. There’s no pill or outpatient butchery for that.
Basically, PP profits when youth are reduced to rutting sluts. A crude figure, but the right observation is that they rise as virtue sinks. And there’s little doubt they wish to be a growth industry.
“Babies make you “miss out” on life”
Right! When your parents were finally ready to miss out on their lives, they had you. Don’t make the same mistake your parents did and miss out on life. Because not missing out on life is the whole purpose of life.
A psychopath came come out of any situation including a planned pregnancy of two adult, stable, married parents.
Really? I’m stunned that you admit this. From all your comments, one would assume that only adoptees or those born to unwed mothers became “psychopaths.”
But it is far, far more likely that the sort of person who ends up in prison or death row will be the result of an unmarried, unprepared teen girl getting pregnant.
Pregnancy isn’t the problem. Lack of fathers and lack of committed relationships/marriage are.
Kel says:
August 23, 2012 at 9:25 am
A psychopath came come out of any situation including a planned pregnancy of two adult, stable, married parents.
Really? I’m stunned that you admit this. From all your comments, one would assume that only adoptees or those born to unwed mothers became “psychopaths.”>>
(Denise) There are many factors in this personality deformation — some of which are unknown. I’ve written about psychopaths from perfectly OK backgrounds.
But it is far, far more likely that the sort of person who ends up in prison or death row will be the result of an unmarried, unprepared teen girl getting pregnant.
Pregnancy isn’t the problem. Lack of fathers and lack of committed relationships/marriage are.
(Denise) Yes.
Kel: Right? But pro-choicers don’t give a rip about responsible dads, apparently.
Maybe that’s because they have a hard time, rationally, holding a guy accountable for a choice that’s putatively the woman’s alone.
There are a lot of multi-generational matriarchies out there that have reached self-perpetuating critical mass on the grounds that there’s a class of “man” who really, really likes that kind of “freedom.”
I don’t call ’em men, myself.
What really ticks me off about these type of ads and this type of mindset is the notion that what you’ll ‘miss’ is somehow better than what you’ll gain. Yes, your life will change radically when you have a babe, that’s as true at 15 as at 35. But I think you’ve got to be a special type of selfish, nieve, or just plain nuts to think that the joy, responsibilities, love, and journey of parenthood is somehow less than getting to play basketball or hang out at a club with friends. There isn’t anything I accomplished before parenthood (and I wasn’t exactly a slouch) that I wouldn’t give up in a second, or wouldn’t have been willing to ‘miss’ to begin with, to have my kids. Of course the free-sex feminst crowd can’t go around telling people, especially women, that the most rewarding experience they will ever have will be to have and raise the next generation.
A *real* honest ad would show a young mother gracefully gazing into her babies eyes, or smiling with maternal joy at baby’s first steps towards a grinning dad’s open arms with a caption like ‘or you could be memorizing the periodic table’ or ‘right now someone else is proud of putting a ball through a hoop’.
Because, as someone else noted, these ads don’t have anything to do with making teenage *sex* uncool or undesirable, just live births.
Hey, c’mon. It’s about Madison Avenue. Youth have to be saved from a life of not having disposable income, especially in hard times. Babies have a way of steering folks away from products with high profit margins. So what a coup! Portray the stereotypes of youthful freedom fettered by a pesky brat. That’ll scare ’em!
And this is a great example of why sex-ed today fails. The focus is on the wrong problem (intentionally or not). The problem is not teen pregnancies – the problem is how teens view sex and relationships.
You see, the activities portrayed that those teens will “miss out on” can also be inhibited by unhealthy relationships and pre-marital sex. This ad campaign is holding up empty activities as things that absolutely, positively cannot be missed out. When instead, they should be teaching teens that it’s the choices they make with the situations they find themselves in that matters. Make a mistake? Learn from it and make better choices.
All these ad campaigns are doing is further reinforcing in teens that it’s what they do that matters, not who they are. Will a baby change your life? Yeah. So will sex. So will bad relationships. And since when are the activities you do in high school “you life”? There’s more to it than that – so much more. No, a baby is not the worst that can happen – getting stuck in a pattern of heartache and unhealthy relationships and never learning to rise above your situations is.
Baby can wait? So can sex.
Besides, if teens are told that a baby absolutely will make you “miss out” on your life, as opposed to teaching them how to make healthy choices and how to make the best of difficult life situations and how to maintain healthy relationships, as soon as they get pregnant, how they gonna call so they don’t miss out on their “must-have” teen lives? Planned Parenthood or the closest abortion clinic. Because according to these ads, if you have a baby, your dreams will forever be blown away and you will never become anything in the world.
What a lie. What a sad, dangerous lie.
It should read: “Think your teen life won’t change with an STD?”
This campaign is irresponsible at best, endangering and contributing to the delinquency of minors at worst.
United Way: Stop telling teens they’re safe with contraception! You are literally killing people with that advice.
Babies can wait (to die) but sex can’t! Come on teens, we know you must have sex as soon as possible, don’t abstain cuz that’s impossible!
It should read: “Think your teen life won’t change with an STD?”
Oh, but Andrew, according to the “My Body My Health” section of the BabyCanWait website,
“Getting a disease can cramp your style, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Heh. I guess babies are, though.
“Getting a disease can cramp your style, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Heh. I guess babies are, though.
If PP has their druthers, it’s merely the end of the bay’s life.
Sex can wait.
“Getting a disease can cramp your style, but it’s not the end of the world.”
That is SICK. Add that to evidence for the “endangering minors” charge.
Oh, it gets better, Andrew. The “Teen sexual rights” section tells teens all about how they don’t need parental permission to get on birth control. Keep it hush, hush, and all that. I mean, sex is SO AWESOME that we MUST NOT let our parents know we’re doing it! Because we’re empowered! Don’t tell mom or dad, because they might cancel your allowance and not let you drive the car (you know, the one they probably own and pay insurance for, so you can drive it?)!
http://www.babycanwait.com/home/Teen-Sexual-Rights1.htm#Q2
OMG, and this, under “healthy relationships”:
Maybe it bothers you when your partner doesn’t listen to your stories or you don’t like it when they call you a certain nickname. It’s important to tell them the stuff you like and stuff you don’t like.
This is sick and hilarious at the same time. This kind of phrasing reminds us that YES, this is a website for CHILDREN. And children who don’t know how to tell their partners the “stuff they like and don’t like” are probably not ready for “stuff” like sex.
I don’t think these ads are really all that effective. A positive, or neutral, view of unwed teen pregnancy is certainly not unusual in specific demographics, but those demographics are unlikely to have fun things like cheerleading or school sports – the kinds of “teen life” things these ads always portray – to “lose” by having a baby.
The middle- and upper-middle class homes where kids have extracurriculars and college applications etc – those kids are already, demographically speaking, pretty unlikely to want – or feel ambivalent about – pregnancy. Those kids would be better served by an ad campaign that focused on sex, not pregnancy, because they generally are already pretty anti-getting pregnant and ambivalent on having sex.
The demographics where teenagers feel more ambivalent, or positive, about unwed teen pregnancy would not really be effectively reached by this campaign, because even taking into account the insulting view that something is “lost” when you have a baby, these demographics do not share the same experiences; they do not have the same things to “lose.” This is a couple months old, but the article and the comments are both worth reading: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/05/17/the-truth-about-teen-pregnancy/ Or read the book Random Family, which is the result of a journalist spending 10 years of following and interviewing a welfare/drug-supported family and their community. When your socioeconomic outlook is likely going to be the same whether you have kids in high school or not, children are often a source of pride and power, because there IS nothing lost by having them. There is even something to be gained – by having kids when your own mother is young enough to really help you raise them, by earning a permanent spot in a man’s life as the mother of his FIRST child, etc.
The conflation of these two radically different socioeconomic roots of unstable/unwed teen pregnancy – the unwanted, how did this happen” pregnancy of the middle-and-up classes, and the acceptable, “this is what happens” pregnancy of certain poverty-stricken demographics – happens all the time and is a pet peeve of mine. Few girls on the cheerleading squad are sitting around going, “I don’t really think having a baby now would be that hard!” I remember those teen pregnancy PSAs from my own high school and they were just so stupid – like, “oh, we don’t want to have babies right now? NO ****!”
The demographic these posters are probably trying to reach would benefit more from being told that babies are one of the BEST things that can come from sex – not the worst. And taking the discussion (and the implications) from there.
One message: You should wait until you are in a happy, financially secure marriage to have babies.
Another message: Babies are a drag.
Are young people being given the first message or the second?
Those babybjorn carriers don’t work out very well for me when I’m doing dishes either, so … And my husband manages to squeak out the door to play basketball without me strapping one of our three kids to him. It’s not the babies that are a problem.
So what would you folks do if your teenage daughter says she’s having sex? (I know, highly unlikely given that the children of pro-life parents practice abstinence.) But let’s make a believe that your daughter says that she’s involved in a sexual relationship. What then? Chastity belt? A session with the local parish priest? Confinement in her room at all times? Mandatory bible reading? What do you do? Obviously you can’t talk about birth control so what happens next?
Funny, while the reality based community is concerned about teenage pregnancies, you folks seem to worship it. Is that because teens are doing their womanly duty – as opposed to all those selfish career women who put off birth? Is that because a baby can help you prove all that statutory rape that Planned Parenthood allegedly abets? Is that because teens who have sex are little sluts who should be punished with a baby?
Funny, the states with the highest teen pregnancy rates are those who have abstinence education.
Funny, those of us who are liberal and pro-choice support programs for teen moms so that they can continue their education while keeping their babies. Can the same be said for the “small government” bible belt states?
“The demographic these posters are probably trying to reach would benefit more from being told that babies are one of the BEST things that can come from sex – not the worst. And taking the discussion (and the implications) from there.”
For upwardly mobile, high achieving kids, babies are not the BEST thing that can come from sex. But thank you for proving my point that the pro-life movement is a huge impediment towards dealing with the REAL consequences of teen pregnancy which have a far greater economic impact on poor families. And BTW, if abortion gets criminalized, those kids from the well to do, educated suburbs will be able to secure an abortion be it here or abroad.
The rich get rich and the poor get babies. Aint we got fun.
Oh, and BTW, the kids in the affluent suburbs practice birth control and that’s why they go on to college and become successful. Babies by choice not by chance. (a popular bumper sticker in the Boston burbs.)
Oh, and BTW, the kids in the affluent suburbs practice birth control and that’s why they go on to college and become successful.
Birth control guarantees college and success. Amazing.
I think that would make an even more tasteless ad campaign:
“Be successful. Get on birth control.”
“A life without birth control is no life at all.”
LOL. It’s amazing the entire country wasn’t impoverished before birth control was readily available. Astounding.
Maury sometimes has young teen girls on his show who think it would be “cool” to have a baby. They are sent to “baby boot camp.” That means they take care of babies for several hours straight. Guess what? They change their minds! Babies cry and fuss and they don’t always automatically cease when you cuddle them. I recall one girl who was determined on immediate motherhood with a bawling baby in her arms while she desperately begged, “Stop crying! Please stop crying!”
The people those ads are aimed at are NOT ready for the responsibilities of raising babies!!!!!
They might well be in a few years but a single teen girl in junior high or high should NOT have a baby!!!! Discouraging them from this makes perfect sense.
Kel says:
August 23, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Oh, and BTW, the kids in the affluent suburbs practice birth control and that’s why they go on to college and become successful.
Birth control guarantees college and success. Amazing.
(Denise) I have a close friend who is both asexual and sterile. Should she be on birth control?
Oh, and BTW, the kids in the affluent suburbs practice birth control and that’s why they go on to college and become successful.
Funny, I worked hard (oh, and *gasp* didn’t have sex) and that’s why I went on to college and became successful.
CC: “Babies by choice not by chance.”
So why are they rolling dice with their sex lives?
Wait . . . these are the successful suburban geniuses you’re talking about?
LOL
I see what Denise did thar! She made a funny! That was a good joke from you, how uncharacteristically hilarious! XD
@ Xalisae: I do other funnies. See here my short story “Dear God: A Petition from the Great Fish” by Denise Noe
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.men/9T8sD7cPONg
One of the reasons why, in some areas, teen pregnancy is on the decline is because those teens having sex are using contraception. Oh, nooooo……….
AS a teen mother who has an incredible little boy and is doing perfectly fine this ad makes me want to scream. Your life changes at ANY age when you have a baby. You think it’s easy for people over 25? You think they don’t have moments where the crying gets to them? Stupid stupid stupid. Just because your life changes doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. As far as i can see no one regrets having a child. But they do regret abortion. Oy Vey.
Whether they’re pro-choice or pro-life, I wish people would be more careful about their phrasing. How is someone who was the result of a teen pregnancy supposed to feel while looking at this? “Oh, I see. In an ideal world, I never would have come into existence! Great!”
bmmg39,
my ex-husband’s mother is (was?) Pro-Choice. She gave birth to him when she was 17. I sometimes wonder if these things didn’t culminate in him having the sorts of issues and mental problems he has today.
@ Sarah: Do you think the teen years are the best time for a female to have a baby?
Are you a married teenager?
Do you think it is best for babies to be born to a married couple?
Good to know so I will never donate to ‘United Way’
Girl Scouts donates a lot of money to United Way. It has been their cover story for years now to say they don’t donate to PP, yet if you follow the money trail, it goes to UW then to PP. And this is the crap that is influencing Girl Scouts.
Does anyone really think that young, unmarried teen girls SHOULD have babies?
Are babies likely to be well cared for by mothers who are immature?
Thanks for the info ddw, that is disgusting but it is better to be informed.
I agree completely! I have someone very close to me and my husband who was the result of a teen pregnancy. Yet I wouldn’t trade him for the world. This is yet another reason why ad campaigns like this shouldn’t focus on pregnancy, but rather why they should avoid sex.