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Published on 11/23/1998 All articles from this issue

Teen pregnancies drop

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By Mary Cristy

A View from the Hills

From New York's Alan Guttmacher Institute we learn that pregnancy rates among 15- to 19-year-old women are now at a 20-year low.

The rollback to 1975 levels represents the best news to come out of a national campaign to prevent teen pregnancy, and director Sarah Brown reports "a true decline in pregnancies." The lower birth rate is not due to abortion, Brown said.

So this can only mean the kids are listening and either abstaining, or heeding the warning to use contraceptives. Implications are ripe for a review of standards summarily tossed overboard with a sexual revolution that made the "shack job" commonplace, as a whole generation laughed their elders to scorn and rushed to embrace cohabitation sans preacher and/or wedding vows.

Times go by turns, however, as each generation defines its own mores. When the pendulum swings too far and remains fixed for too long in one direction, a force is set in motion to send it in another.

Admittedly, the twin specters of disease and death drive the downward trend. But I like to think the kids have taken a thoughtful look at premature parenthood, and the high price it exacts, and decided that where promiscuity and its consequences are concerned they're well advised to "think this out again."

The possibilities of a return to chastity are delightful to contemplate. Parents and grandparents may breathe easier as children too young to bear children practice the admonition of St. Paul to "keep thy vessel in holiness" and rein in what too many have been persuaded are raging hormones justifiably out of control.

Perhaps the well-considered life will come back in fashion. Dating, romance, innocence and courting was fun when grandmas were girls. The downcast eye of a maid inspired a poet to write an "Ode To My Lady's Eyebrow." In "The Courting," 19th century poet James Russell Lowell had these delicious words to say about the girl who set his heart a-pounding: " ... And she'd blush scarlet right in prayer when her new meetin' bonnet felt somehow through its crown a pair of blue eyes sot upon it."

The vintner knows the value of "selling no wine before its time," and this too is romance.

Perhaps it's too early to rejoice since our teen-agers still produce close to 400,000 babies a year. But the downward trend is significant enough to encourage hope that the future holds a promise for better lives and fewer children falling through the cracks as they earn self-esteem and place greater value on affection and meaningful relationships.

Teen-age children are far too precious to be left untutored in the differences between lust and love, between restraint and licentiousness. Newborns are far too precious to be denied the nurturing responsible parents can give them.

In too many ways, our society has sold our children short. Perhaps the solutions will come ultimately from the kids themselves, who, viewing the wreckage of their classmates' lives, will opt for a better way for themselves and the offspring they will produce when the time is right for them.

Mary Cristy is a Los Altos Hills-based free-lance writer and longtime contributor to the Town Crier.