This inspires me. I'd totally take their lead if I weren't homeschooled. Maybe I can do it around schools here anyway.

While I pretty much agree with you about this, you might ask a high school teacher about the maternity leave situation before jumping for joy. Having students miss class for a month is a huge pain in the ass for a teacher - and let's face it, students who are getting pregnant in the first place are less likely to be stellar students anyway. And unless these students are willing to show that they're really going to take on the workload, then they should just be held back that semester. Yeah, yeah, having a kid is a terrible burden for a young person but they are also accountable to the school system. I'd imagine the already massively overworked and underpaid teachers would end up giving maternity leave students a free pass in the studies. Money, money, money. If they could properly fund it then it might have a chance. But fat chance.

Erm, although it's common sense to give new parents a few days of excused absence before settling down on an individualized program. Probably these folks are put on an IEP to make their specific situation more manageable in the bureaucracy. I read on Google News that they were tossing around four weeks of unexcused leave.

Good for the teens. I love seeing stuff like this.

Regarding maternity leave: Can they get a signed doctor's note stating they're medically unable to come to school? (My "maternity leave" at work was exactly the same as "medical leave", I needed all the doctor's notes and everything.) If a district is refusing to accept that doctor's note as a valid excuse, then that's fucked up. Sometimes kids have medical reasons for being out for extended periods of time, and if they are given leeway, anyone with a "medical condition" should get the same leeway regardless of what that condition is.

Let me get this straight. Students who are extra work for the teacher should just be held back a semester?

Yeah, yeah, having a kid is a terrible burden for a young person but they are also accountable to the school system.

The school system is also accountable to the student.

"less likely to be stellar students anyway..."

yeah but I think that's unfair to say. How many students in the public school system are 'stellar' anyways? Not alot.

I agree teachers need better pay and benefits, but students need help too.

No: having a student off for a month who isn't willing to keep up with the rest of the class is unfair for the teacher and should be held back for the semester. All I'm saying is that this idea, while good, amounts to beans unless the districts are willing to put in extra funding for it. I don't think it's too terrible to be held back a semester if you can't do the work for that reason. But just how many of these women do you think are going to keep up with their work? Let's not romanticize this: most of these parents probably come from low-income families already without an emphasis on education AND now they have a child to take care of.

There's a KY bill in the general assembly that would help pregnant teens. Something tells me the mouth-breathers won't be having any of that, though. Too much like "rewarding" them, you know!

Of course there's also a bill in the general assembly that would force welfare recipients to be drug tested, and yet another that would force women to look at fetal ultrasounds before having an abortion. Something tells me these last two will have a lot of support.

The problem is, speaking as a teacher, that no matter how good someone's reason is for missing a month of class, a student who has missed a month of class is simply going to be too far behind to pass.

I agree that all mothers, including teenage ones, need and should have maternity leave. But if one of my students (I teach college) misses a month of class, regardless of why, they have missed a significant chunk of class discussion, of learning concepts essential to understanding the material, and probably have missed some serious pointers in terms of the assignments; if she's kept up with the reading, that'll help, but I actually think that's a lot to expect out of a new mother or someone seriously ill. That student will fail the final exam, which I base largely on class discussion, for example. That student will probably not do very well on her papers, because part of coming to class is learning how to analyze the material through discussion with me and other students. Coming to class isn't a sort of optional extra; it's where the learning takes place. And if the student isn't present for that learning, how can it be right to pass her on to the next level? I don't mean right on a moral level--I mean accurate: she won't have acquired the skills that the course is supposed to teach.

If we're talking about a month of maternity leave in the context of a program tailored to the needs of new mothers, perhaps which has a more flexible schedule, doesn't necessarily keep to the semester system, that individualized tutoring/program of study, that sounds like a very good idea for me. But you actually can't just leave school--at any level, elementary, high, or college--for a month and then come back in without missing out on a serious, necessary chunk of that education.

The day care center should be there. There's no good reason not to have one. Plus, I bet a good number of teachers could use it as well.

"aside from the general struggles of being a teen parent, another Colorado school rejected the suggestion from one student that a day care center be created within the school because the principal felt it would encourage teen pregnancy."

I really hate these arguments. It's bad enough that they suggest - as Vanessa pointed out - that such little efforts to make things easier make having a baby at 16 attractive to girls who otherwise would live in such fear of pregnancy that they would keep their legs closed like good girls. (If it isn't clear, I think that attitude is pure misogynist evil).

On top of that, it does nothing but punish girls for something they can't change purely to make an example out of them. It makes life harder than necessary for no actual benefit.

yeah but I think that's unfair to say. How many students in the public school system are 'stellar' anyways? Not alot.

This coming from someone who doesn't realize that "alot" isn't a word. It's a lot. Try to check yourself before you speak so disdainfully of public school students.

Just wondering if the maternity leave would apply to paternity leave if the father was also a high school student and was willing and able to help out with the child.

A few things that concern me about this are, as tofu stated, the extra burden on the teacher and the school system. Yes, Geek, the school is accountable to the student but do you have any idea how much extra work it would require for the teacher. I think teachers are overworked and underpaid as it is. I also believe that many of these students would end up getting a free pass which benefits no one in the long run. I would be interested to know just how these women are supposed to make up the work? Wouldn't this be equivalent to them staying back an extra semester anyway? I know people that were out for weeks with mono, accidents, etc. and as a result they were allowed to make up the work but it cost them a semester. They also did classwork from home. Why should this be treated any different?

And I know I am going to take some flak for this but I really would like to be convinced otherwise but I just tend to agree with the principle that this would/could encourage teen pregnancy -- or maybe carelessness with birth control. To go along with tofu's comment about low-income teen pregnancy I wish I had the info at my fingertips that explains the psychological and emotional reasons (not to mention the lack of adequate sex education) for why these young women have babies. Having day care won't address these issue but would maybe help them fulfill the psychological and emotional needs by having a baby that opens up a whole other can of worms.

I am not sure if I articulating this clearly. But if someone could explain how/why this wouldn't encourage teen pregnancy I would appreciate it.

I think the problem of missing school can be addressed without the suggestion that these girls just aren't worth the effort anyway, tofu. "Isn't willing to keep up with" is not accurate. These girls have a good medical reason to miss at least a portion of that time. You're basically saying only stupid or lazy girls let themselves get knocked up in high school, so it's no big deal if they have to get a GED instead of a diploma. They weren't going anywhere anyway.

I missed a big chunk of my senior year because of a mono-like illness. I was out for 6 weeks. No one suggested I wouldn't graduate and reasonable accomodations were made. But then, I was a middle class white girl and my illness was treated as something that shouldn't hold me back, instead of something to be ashamed of.

Because having a baby at an early age makes one's life so difficult that it's not like anybody is actually going to think to themselves "Well, I wasn't going to get knocked up because I'll have a more difficult time achieving things, but hey, if there's day care, why not?" Conversely, what you're suggesting is that there is a sizeable portion of teenage girls who are thinking to themselves "Gee, I would get pregnant now, but there's no day care!"

Basically, the presence or absence of day care really doesn't figure into the emotional calculus of having a baby while still a teenager, as you yourself note by alluding to the constellation of reasons why teenage girls to decide to have babies. "I have access to day care" isn't one of those reasons.

It's like asking how we know that middle-class parents don't just have kids because they can get a tax credit out of it. We know because in all the reasons given by parents for having children, "we wanted the tax credit" never shows up. We know because that's simply not part of how human beings make major emotional life decisions.

But that sort of question is never asked of the middle class, is it? It's only ever asked about poor people.

How did your school work around your illness, Geek? I'd be interested to know.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of the burden on teachers. I think it needs to be addressed. But saying it's just not worth it just adds to the scolding, shaming attitude towards the girls.

This also only punishes girls from poor/lower class families who don't have resources to see to taking care of the baby while the girl finishes her high school education.

I also am not convinced that it would increase teen pregnancy, although I can see the possibility that it would increase the number of girls who choose not to have an abortion or give the baby up for adoption.

I was talking to my cousin the other day and her old high school has a day care center for teen mothers (She lives out east, I'm in the midwest, if that has anything to do with it). I was so surprised. I'd never heard of anything like it, but the more I thought about it, what a great idea. I'm wondering now how common or uncommon that is...

It was funny that another cousin of mine goes to a Catholic high school in NY and they will kick you out if you get pregnant...but only the girl of course.

Just re-read my post and don't want to be misconstrued. When I say, "why these young women have babies" I mean aside from the failure of having full information from sex ed classes, the reasons why these young women WANT children as such a young age when many of them are emotionally, financially, and mentally unable to deal with motherhood.

Also, Geek, I don't think that neither tofu nor I are making a comment on whether these young women are "good girls" or not. At least that's not where I'm coming from.

"This coming from someone who doesn't realize that "alot" isn't a word. It's a lot. Try to check yourself before you speak so disdainfully of public school students."

Lol wow. and disdainfully? I think thats too big of a word for a poor little college student like myself to understand. (for clarification, I accidentally left out a space in alot. Mistakes happen, I looove when people attack me because I'm not perfect:D)

I wasn't downing public school students, I used to be one! That's why I know most aren't 'stellar' students for whatever reason. Most just slide through highschool. Tofu implied that pregnant teens cannot be great students, I didn't. Why don't you check things before you start being rude to people?

Just re-read my post and don't want to be misconstrued. When I say, "why these young women have babies" I mean aside from the failure of having full information from sex ed classes, the reasons why these young women WANT children as such a young age when many of them are emotionally, financially, and mentally unable to deal with motherhood.

Also, Geek, I don't think that neither tofu nor I are making a comment on whether these young women are "good girls" or not. At least that's not where I'm coming from.

Oh, and I've also missed school (7th grade) for over a month because I was so sick. Worked out fine for me, I just got the assignments at home and whatever i couldn't do I finished up in class.

I couldn't imagine doing that in college though, I miss one class and I'm screwed!

Just re-read my post and don't want to be misconstrued. When I say, "why these young women have babies" I mean aside from the failure of having full information from sex ed classes, the reasons why these young women WANT children as such a young age when many of them are emotionally, financially, and mentally unable to deal with motherhood.

Also, Geek, I don't think that neither tofu nor I are making a comment on whether these young women are "good girls" or not. At least that's not where I'm coming from.

Crap! Sorry for the triple posts. I kept getting an error message when I clicked "post".

Whoa, I did not imply that pregnant teens could not be good students. But look, if you find some statistics (I don't have any and won't be looking until I figure out the much more pressing question of how to get all this bike grease off my hands) you'll probably see a trend showing that teen mothers have a tendency to come from low-SES families and tend to have a pre-existing record of low academic performance. Please don't put a correlation-equals-causation argument in my mouth. But data does bear out that poor students tend to perform worse than wealthy students and common sense suggests that students with low academic performance IN school will have low performance OUTSIDE of school as well. If you want to talk about why that is, well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms that I'd probably side with the structuralists on.

I have mixed feelings on this. I agree that there are not a lot of high school girls out there that think "Well, I was going to be super careful with BC, but now that there is a day care I can relax, because it will make things so much easier if I do get pregnant!"

There some areas with large populations of immigrants from other countries where it is quite common and no big deal for high school age girls to get pregnant and have babies. I am on a child free list (I am child free by choice) and one woman in California (I forget what city) says that the high school near her has this, and the majority of the pregnant teens are Hispanic.

I'm Hispanic too, and I have seen firsthand that the level of education of the family and the teenager directly correlate to teen pregnancy. The poorer families that live in little mountain shacks - I seriously doubt those schools teach anything about sex ed, STDs or birth control, and due to poverty and the poor level of education they receive, I don't think many of the kids that grow up in those poor little mountain towns even think about college.

I do think it's important for single moms/pregnant teens to continue their education.

However, I think that an in school day care is not the absolute answer. I think comprehensive sex ed classes are a MUST, and those classes should not only discuss the facts about sex, pregnancy, reproduction, birth control and STDs, but should also discuss how much work and how time consuming having a baby and being a parent is, and how much harder it would be to finish high school go to college (even just a community college) and get a good job if you get pregnant in high school.

It is unfortuante that there is so much shaming of pregnant teens. The high school boys who get girls pregnant aren't penalized, because they don't get pregnant or give birth, and they aren't the ones missing school, or unable to graduate and go to college.

I should've worded it differently, tofu. You said:

"and let's face it, students who are getting pregnant in the first place are less likely to be stellar students anyway."

I don't necessarily think it is much of a correlation, because there are TONS of students who aren't stellar who won't get pregnant. I just feel like you were saying: students who go and get themselves pregnant won't do good in school therefore we shouldn't be burdened with them.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, ok maybe it is a correlation, but does that mean that poor students will get pregnant, and do bad in school? I'm all confused now. Sorry.

[scratches head] I don't see why it isn't obvious that making it easier/simpler/cheaper/less invasive to have children will mean that SOME people will have a child who otherwise wouldn't. It's fairly simple economics. Obviously, an issue like "in school daycare" wouldn't be the tipping point for most children, but that's a separate argument.

IMO it's still a good idea because the benefits easily exceed the costs. But that doesn't mean there are no costs.

As for the academics thing, it is probably better to miss a semester--or a year, even--than to go through one in a half-assed fashion. Given the generally nonstellar quality of public education as it is, and the other issues which will present themselves to interfere with said education for a teen mother, we should try to use resources as efficiently as possible. That way we can provide her (and the other students in the school) the best education we can.

Group classes are better and more efficient than IEPs. Same-level students are easier to teach than wide-ranged students. Steering more students into individual programs with a fixed budget isn't going to increase quality, it'll reduce it.

A significant portion of the students we "graduate" can hardly read or write. That's not going to do a lot to help said moms.

Tell me which makes more sense: starting an IEP for teen moms so they can "graduate" on time? Or (1) giving them a decent amount of time off--three, four, six months--to mother their child, and then (2) moving them back a year so they can refresh, relearn, or otherwise pick up the material they need to know?

Kmari, just because most less-than-stellar students do not get pregnant doesn't mean that most students who get pregnant aren't less-than-stellar (yikes, hopefully I worded that right).

Maybe we have different views about youth in public schools, but every teen mother I've ever met was, if not in a lower-level track, doing the minimum to get by in school with decent grades. And there's really nothing wrong with doing all you need to do to get decent grades. But when you are independently educating yourself, you have to have a certain zest for learning, which is lacking in young people generally and in many teen mothers specifically. I'm not calling them out as stupid or lazy at all.

My mother teaches high school math to students who are essentially in a remedial track (algebra for students in the tenth grade and beyond) yet in our town this is considered a normal track to be on. Because my sister is severely handicapped she is also on several IEP boards to try to help students who aren't hacking it in the general system.

Most of those students fail. Not because they're stupid or lazy, but because they've never been taught that education is something worth valuing. Maybe it's a little hasty of me to lump most teen mothers into this category, but until someone here shows that teen mothers are able and willing to deal with the burden of raising an infant and educating themselves, I think holding them back a semester is the best solution for both parties.

My high school had a daycare. The teachers also used it. It was a sweet deal for everyone involved.

I can only think of three girls I saw pregnant the whole time I was there though, and we had nearly 3000 kids in the school. We were mostly upper-middle class white suburbans. No one said it was encouraging teens to get preggers. AND to top it off, we had comprehensive sex education. And look! I'm not pregnant! Who would have guessed with all of those incentives and all that encouragement?

Speaking of 'incentives-' I like the idea of maternity leave for students, but I think a month is too long, for all the reasons stated above. I think two weeks should be enough time to heal from labor and cuddle with the baby before dropping it off at the free child care in school and headin' off to class- not too far behind everyone else academically.

EG,
I wish I could remember exactly how it worked out but I graduated in 95 and my memory isn't very good. I do remember my homework was coordinated somehow and brought to me by my sister or friend and later when I could drive there but couldn't keep up with a whole day I would pick it up myself.

I don't remember exactly how I dealt with missing class discussions except that yes, it was a challenge. My grades that semester were not as good as they would have been otherwise.

I know I had a lot of advantages and was given a bit of slack because I was considered "worthy" and my school was predominantly middle class.

One other thing I know: I didn't have anyone coming up to me asking me to try to pass on the illness so they could get out of classes since the school made it so easy!

Tofu:

Ok now I totally get what you're saying. I'm sorry i interpreted it wrong.

I'm wondering now, why do most pregnant teens come from low-income families?

And I agree with you, I think, on the re-doing a semester thing. If they are willing to make up work at home, though maybe that could be an option as well? And I don't think two weeks would be enough.. I haven't been pregnant but I assume I would want more than two weeks to recover and bond with my child. Thoughts?

I'll clarify: The particular thing I said about "good girls" was aimed at people who think that having daycare encourages girls to get pregnant who wouldn't otherwise get pregnant. (When what they really mean is being pregnant in public by choosing to keep the baby instead of having an abortion or slinking off in shame to have the baby in secret).

not4nothin--maybe having an in-school daycare would sway a few pregnant teens in favor of keeping the baby as opposed to abortion or adoption, but as EG pointed out, this isn't going to be anyone's primary reason for having a kid. anyway, even if it DOES result in more teen moms, i'm a diehard liberal and i believe that as a society, we have an obligation to help everyone maintain a basic standard of living and have access to equal opportunities, even the people who make stupid decisions. not having the daycare might mean we have a tad fewer teen moms, but it also means that the teen moms that will exist have a way harder time with it. not a fair trade-off in my opinion. we should accept that a certain amount of teen pregnancies are inevitable, no matter how much or how little social services are offered to help teen mothers cope.

your logic is particularly dangerous because it's the same reasoning used by anti-choicers who want to punish women with unwanted children, arguing "she knew she could get pregnant when she decided to have sex, so she has to deal with the consequences." you can't punish people with fetuses. it doesn't help anyone and if you can't see how this rhetoric is severely fucked up in that context, you've got problems.

if you want to reduce the number of teen pregnancies, focus on comprehensive sex education and tackling broader social issues of poverty, gender equality, health care, education, etc. instead of limiting social services in some bizarre carrot and stick attempt to punish behavior after the fact.

/end rant

I believe that teen motherhood has correlation to low income and already poor school performance. I'm suspicious that teen pregnancy has the same correlation. I mean, if I know I'm going to college, abortion seems a lot more attractive than having a baby that will keep me from doing my best at school, derail my future, and keep me from providing for it as well as I'd like. On the other hand, if I already know that all I can look forward to after high school is a boring, dead-end job, having a baby doesn't seem like such a bad choice.

Likewise, I agree with the poster above who said that day care wouldn't stop kids from getting pregnant, but it might help them to decide to keep the pregnancy. Of course, it's the pro-life crowd who are opposed to the day care idea.

My high school had a day care fifteen years ago and I don't know a single girl who decided to get pregnant because of it. In fact, I don't know a single girl who gave the day care any thought at all unless they were already pregnant. Unless it was to complain that the day care was in the same hall as the advanced math classes, and it was hard to focus on a calculus test through the screaming sometimes.

And what rileystclair said.

"and let's face it, students who are getting pregnant in the first place are less likely to be stellar students anyway"

"Let's not romanticize this: most of these parents probably come from low-income families already without an emphasis on education AND now they have a child to take care of."

"But data does bear out that poor students tend to perform worse than wealthy students"

There is much to say on this topic, and since many have already hit on crucial points, I’ll try and keep it brief. I feel like whenever the topic of teen pregnancy arises the tokenizing and over- generalization/simplification train is never late. This issue always seems to conjure up the image of the poor, uneducated woman of color abusing the system. I’m not saying anyone used race here, but it saddens me that a site I come to, to escape the daily grind of “isms�, has some relying on these outdated notions of class, education and sexuality.

I would really like to see some stats on the claims made above. I don’t think anyone would say that examples/demographics such as those do not exist, but why is that the first place we go? I mean, dang, the valedictorian of my high school got pregnant senior year and not everyone in honors had money. And let’s hypothetically say that all of the above were true. Does that mean we just throw in towel?

I understand the arguments made on the teachers’ behalf, but clearly, the current educational system is failing us and our youth. We keep thinking in terms of how teen maternity leave or daycare might negatively impact the school (and the arguments against this have been on the mark so I won’t bore y’all with any of my rhetoric on that!), but as Audre Lorde so succinctly puts, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.� Perhaps we need a complete overhaul of the system, one that takes into consideration each and every student. I don’t have the answers, but I do believe that every child has the right to a safe and fulfilling education, regardless of who they are. Idealistic? Yes. Always.