SchoolFinder Blog

Gloucester Teens Make Pact to Be Mommies Together

This is probably the strangest, most disturbing high school story I’ve heard in a while. Apparently a group of teenage girls, all under the age of 16, made a pact to get pregnant at the same time. Out of 17 girls, almost half have followed through.

The girls attend Gloucester High School near Boston and made the pact so they could raise their babies together. When the girls shared the news of their pregnancies at school, they began giving each other high-fives and started planning baby showers.

The fact that they are giving each other high-fives for getting knocked up under the age of 16 is an enormous red flag that something is very wrong in their school’s sex education program.

But that isn’t even the worst part of the story. It was discovered that one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy. These girls were not messing around.

The issue was brought to the school’s attention when the school nurse reported an unusually high number of requests for pregnancy tests at the school’s clinic. What was even more unusual was that the girls with negative test results were actually more disappointed than those with positive tests.

What is going on with these girls? Some want to blame it on pop culture, with the popularity of the movie Juno and teeny-bopper Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy, but I’m not buying it. Lots of young girls saw that movie or are fans of mini-Spears, and they aren’t out getting pregnant by any man off the street – joke intended. 

I’m blaming it on the school. This is after I found that Gloucester High provides a free on-site daycare center for all young mothers and sex-ed classes are only offered in a student’s freshman year. It is not uncommon for cheerleaders and junior ROTC members to have their babies watching from the sidelines and strollers are the equivalent of a roller backpack in the school’s hallways.

The bottom line is that these girls need better sex education. The school needs to take all the glam out of being a young mother and show the girls what happens after the baby shower.

This story reminds me of the Tamagotchi craze when I was in middle school. It was the gadget that everyone wanted to have. It had to be taken care of and played with or else it would die and that would be the end of your digital pet. I would say that kids kept these alive for a couple of weeks at best, then they lost interest or ended up killing it.

Now I’m not saying this will be the fate of these teens’ babies, but that girls as young as them aren’t at the maturity level to be responsible for another life. Their school needs to seriously reconsider what they are teaching these girls.