Media Activism #1

This past week has definitely carried a theme for me where it really felt as if everywhere I turned the same issue appeared. The topic was teen pregnancy and sex education. It began last week when the high school student [THIS PARAGRAPH HAS BEEN REMOVED AS IT CONTAINS PERSONAL INFORMATION NOT APPROPRIATE FOR ONLINE POSTING].

Feeling very frustrated and helpless, I decided that I had to get involved with an organization that is doing something about sex education in New York City. It blew my mind how little she knows about sex and health, especially since I had the impression that in New York City we don’t have the same conflicts that the rest of the country may have with the religious right insisting on preaching abstinence only in schools. I also decided that I am going to use this Media Activism class to figure out what else I can do.

I attended a panel at the New School last week called Promises I Can Keep: Poor Women, Motherhood and Marriage, sponsored by the Center for New York City Affairs. There was a very interesting presentation by Kathryn Edin, who is a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a book called Promises I can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. She conducted a very interesting study over two years looking into why poor women are more willing and ready to have a baby and less ready and willing to marry. Professor Edin’s findings showed that women are consciously choosing to stop using birth control after feeling that a relationship is becoming more serious. Not that they are fully planning a baby, but they are becoming less careful and “drifting into pregnancy”. The thing that resonated with me the most was a statement that she made regarding sex education. Her main finding was that women do not feel that their lives have much meaning beyond childbearing and don’t feel the opportunity costs of having a baby at a young age. She said we need less talk about ‘More Condoms’ and more talk about “More Meaning”. This made a lot of sense to me and has helped me widen my focus on the bigger picture issues and solutions, rather than simply more sex education in schools.

The same night as this panel, I attended a screening with my Documentary Film class of a documentary called Desire chronicling five years in the life of five teenage girls of various socio-economic levels and races in New Orleans. Through their lives, many of these same issues came up, including sex, sex education, abortion, STDs, hopes, dreams, and expectations of teenage girls. One quote from the film that resonated was a young African American teenager and mother of two said “Us as African Americans have struggled so hard, that we see every child as a blessing.” Which reiterated Professor Edin’s statement that the African American women involved with her study believed that abortion was a “white woman’s choice.”