Disturbing Happenings

There is a town in MA that you may know from the movie The Perfect Storm. This town was featured in Time Magazine recently, you can read the article here.

So, some of the girls in this town made a pact to get pregnant while in High School and raise their babies together. All in all, there are 18 of them pregnant, the oldest ones being 16.

This is very disturbing to me. (understatement)

This is a seaside town where fishing is the biggest income getter. Unfortunately, the fishing industry is going through an extremely rough time right now. There are many business men in offices far away making laws and putting them into place without thinking about the families these laws affect. It is a trickle down effect...the fishermen catch the fish, if they can only catch so many, they fire some of their crew, because of the lack of landings, the buyers fire some of their workers, the people that make the nets are making less nets, and it effects the gas companies, welders, electricians etc... Anyway, all this equals a lot of stress on the families.

I can relate to the fishing crisis because I live it here on the Cape. DH is a fishermen as is his brother, father and was his grandfather.

Back to the pregnancy crisis. Some are claiming this happened because this High School conveniently has a health center (where they gave out a MULTITUDE of pregnancy tests) and a day care so kids that get pregnant can still graduate HS. One interviewed girl claims that these girls want babies so they have someone giving them unconditional love. Some girls would take the pregnancy test and cry if they weren't pregnant. Others would hi-five if they were.

The only thing I have heard about the "fathers" is that one of them is a homeless 24 year old. Who are the other 15?

Where are the parents of these girls? (And boys for that matter.) I am sure more will come out in the coming months about this crisis. And this is a crisis, they usually average 3 pregnancies a year.

I don't want to judge these girls (boys) or their families. I just feel bad for them. Hopefully, this will raise awareness and remind parents to talk to their kids about sex and all.

Comments?