High School Moms, Week 3: Biological Injustice

Kaylynn

This week on High School Moms we met two more young women enrolled at the Florence Crittenton School for pregnant and parenting students in Denver, CO.  First we met Kaylynn who is struggling with her relationship with her mother, her son’s behavioral issues, her weight, her grades at school, and making financial ends meet – needless to say, it’s a lot for a 17-year-old mom to handle.   We also met Alyah, the daughter of a teen mom, who at 16 is nine months pregnant and understandably scared to death of the reality of giving birth. 

The greatest contrast between Kaylynn and Alyah has to do with the men, or lack thereof, in their lives.  Kaylynn didn’t provide us with many details, but it was obvious that the father of her son is not involved and that his absence contributes to a lot of her struggles.  Alyah on the other hand has a very supportive boyfriend – the 16-year old father of her soon-to-be born son.  Alyah told us that when she broke the news of her pregnancy, he hugged her and reassured her that everything would be okay.

The contrast between the two girls’ realities was further evidenced by a discussion held in class. The students had their desks in a circle, Socratic seminar style, and their teacher asked them if they agreed with the statement, “Women and men are equal.”  For those that have been tuning in weekly it did not come as a shock that the overwhelming opinion in the room was a resounding no.  The girls all started talking at once, expressing their frustration with the men in (or not in) their lives.   Kaylynn summed it up well when she said that, “Women are expected to be moms, but men aren’t expected to be dads.”  “You can’t ever depend on a man,” one student said as the discussion about the inequity of parenting responsibilities continued.  It was unfair, one young lady concluded, that women are expected to step up and take care of their kids, but the dads get to go off and do whatever they like.  Most of them seemed to feel stuck, that as mothers they are left with a burden that the fathers of their children can freely choose to walk away from.  At the end of last night’s episode, Alyah is induced and gives birth to a healthy 7-pound baby boy while her boyfriend holds her hand.  She admits that having a supportive boyfriend by her side makes her the exception to the rule.   

Alyah

Unfortunately, the uniquely female burden of being pregnant can be perpetuated by sex discrimination on the part of schools.  In our report on the barriers faced by pregnant and parenting students, we discuss the example of two teen moms in Kentucky who had excellent grades but were denied entrance to their school’s National Honor Society chapter.  The school argued that it was not because they were pregnant (which would blatantly violate Title IX), but because their pregnancies demonstrated that they had engaged in premarital sexual relations, which violated NHS’s requirement that NHS students “maintain a good and clean lifestyle.”  But this is still sex discrimination; the judge ordered that the teen moms be admitted to the NHS chapter because while their pregnancies made their sexual activity obvious, no one asked any other applicants about their sexual histories.  In a similar case in Arizona, the evidence showed that male students who had fathered children out of wedlock were admitted to the school’s NHS chapter even though the teen mom plaintiff wasn’t, in violation of Title IX and the U.S. Constitution.  Sadly, these cases are not ancient – they are from the 1990s!  We still have a long way to go.