I seem to have been subjected to a few conversations with otherwise intelligent and caring people lately that espouse "all these young girls are having babies for the money". These sort of stereotypes really annoy me. For starters, did anyone do any counting? Despite the dramatically greater financial support for single parents these days, substantially less young girls are having babies now than 30 years ago. There were less than a third of the number of births to teenage women in 2011 than there were in 1971. Because, surprise surprise, we now have more choices to manage our fertility and many teenagers are exercising those choices as well.
So what of the young women who are having babies? They aren't exactly from Presbyterian Ladies College. Have a look at what education and respect for women's rights does for birth rates. After 10 years of working with young women in early intervention programs and out of home care, however, I did not encounter one who chose to have a baby for the money. Their reasons are far more complex, and indeed, far more tragic. They spoke about wanting someone to love and that would love them. Coming from abusive and dysfunctional families, they wanting to make their own family in order to have what society told them families should be. When no one had been able to give them consistent love and care, their baby would be the one that loved them, that needed them. About wanting to have a valued role in our society. When they struggled with school or finding work, young girls saw being a mother as the remaining acceptable choice for women in our society. And about sexual experiences in which they did not feel able to exercise choice. You don't really want to know about what many of these girls have endured. It seems simple to just say no or use contraception, but when you come from a family that abused you, prostituted you out, failed to protected from predatory behaviour, told you you were bad and disgusting or instilled in you a deep sense of your inherent worthlessness because they were unable to care for you and left most of you basic needs unmet, well, saying no or exercising any control in any emotional situation is just a gazillion times more difficult than for those of us with a balanced sense of self and history of being respected for our needs and bodily integrity.
Sadly, the outcomes for many of these girls, and babies, if they do have them, are often poor. However, I have seen a few that have gone on make vast improvements in their lives and parent well and even those whose children had to be removed from their care obviously loved their babies. But regardless of this, it is just so disrespectful to these girls to label them as money seeking baby factories.
