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When news first broke of the Gloucester pregnancy pact (which is now not a pregnancy pact or perhaps it is a pact, but that's not important), as an infertile woman, I thought my first reaction would be "why them and not me." Teen pregnancy contains the photographic negative equivalent of emotions to infertility:
both groups need to mourn how their lives changed--one with additional weight, one with an absence. Both groups experience curiosity and pity from society at large. Both spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the person stuck in the center--the actual baby vs. the not-yet baby.
Except here is where the problem lies--these girls wanted to be pregnant. They worked to get pregnant and they gave each other high-fives when the tests came back positive.
Which is why my reaction to the news story in Time was one of sympathy. If adults who have years of imagining themselves as parents have difficulty with the transition, I am not sure how these girls will fare when they face their own squalling infant. In turn, my sympathy also goes out to the children born to these girls.
I don't blame them for not knowing about weeks six through eight where every child cries--regardless of whether they have colic--in the evening. I don't blame them for not understanding how it feels to get only three hours of sleep a night for months at a time. Again, adults know about these things and we are still shocked by the logistics of parenthood (not to mention the emotions of parenthood). It is one thing to nod and say, "sleep deprivation is hard." It is quite another to be in the middle of it.
Much has been said this week about the Jamie Lynn Spears of this world and how they are having an impact on teenage pregnancy. But there were pregnant teens prior to the movie, Juno, and I'm not sure the celebrities of today are more alluring than every other pregnant teen who came before them. I don't think there is one single reason for the pregnancy pact, but rather, alluvium from multiple sources collecting on the teen shores.
One of those sources is the same one that leaves even adults breathlessly unprepared for parenthood. We don't do a good job explaining to each other that it's just so damn hard. So I'll tell you this if you're not pregnant yet. It is going to be so damn hard. Which is not to say that the enjoyable parts don't outweigh the difficult parts and I would do it (and I am trying to do it!) again in a heartbeat. But it never gets easier. The difficulties merely change.
Part of the Mommy Wars is this one-up-man-ship where we hide how difficult parenting is from each other--especially those who aren't close to us that are being used as venting posts. How many times do you see a picture of a celebrity holding her head, a pounding headache from lack of sleep coupled with four hours of holding a screaming infant who has apparently not read Harvey Karp's latest parenting techniques book? Or how about a picture of Angelina Jolie sitting on the basement steps trying to collect herself emotionally for five minutes while Shiloh screams in her crib? Or how about a tear-stained Kate Hudson trying to parent Ryder in the middle of a tantrum? We see the hands resting on the baby bumps and the well-rested mommies cuddling sleeping infants and the hip women with designer diaper bags taking their toddlers shopping (while the nannies linger off-camera).
I belong to a women's group that meets once a month. At the beginning of each meeting, we go around in a circle and each woman says her name as well as the names of her mother and grandmother--as far back as she can go in her matrilineal line. One night, a woman brought her newborn daughter to the meeting and when her turn came, she named her daughter instead and then added her own name as her mother and then went back through her family. It was a very emotional moment to think about ourselves as the creators of this next generation who would name us as we grew older.
For a long time, she stared silently down at her daughter and then she finally said in the smallest
