Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel & Director of Education Policy for At-Risk Students

Since I’m not busy enough in my day job here at the National Women’s Law Center, I volunteered to plan something for my 9-year old daughter’s Brownie troop to do in celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day. How could I not, given all the work that I do to ensure that Title IX is enforced and girls get equal educational opportunities, including the opportunity to play sports? The temptation was irresistible (I am a sucker for this stuff), and the troop leader was cool with it, so the project was mine.

Last year for NGWSD the girls got a visit from a teenage girl who plays lacrosse for one of our local high schools. She rocked; in fact, she has since gotten a scholarship to play lacrosse in college! I spent some time telling the girls about Title IX, and they were interested, but I knew they were ready for more this year. Not knowing what to do, I “cold” emailed someone in the U of MD athletics department to see if a female college athlete would be willing to come meet with our troop.

I got much more than I bargained for! The athletic department got right back to me, and planned a terrific event for last Sunday, for our troop and some other community groups.

When I advocate for better supports for pregnant and parenting students, a lot of people throw back the myth that helping them succeed in school will be seen as an endorsement of teen pregnancy and will encourage other students to get pregnant. And I tell people all the time: girls don’t get pregnant just because they can get subsidized child care or tutoring assistance. It’s far more complex than that, and the idea that “pregnancy is contagious” is old-fashioned and unfounded. To the contrary, the stigma that comes with being a teen parent is alive and well. Movies and TV shows about the subject and celebrities getting pregnant as teenagers have not changed that.

This was one of the themes of last night’s episode of High School Moms. The students of Florence Crittenton remarked about how annoying it is that so many people judge teen moms and assume the worst of them. One said, “I’m still in school; I’m not a dropout.” A teacher remarked that being at FloCrit is nice for the girls because “they are not an outcast here.” But even at a separate school dedicated to pregnant and parenting students, they are not immune from the power of stereotypes in our society. And the good news is that they are determined to prove those stereotypes wrong.