Beyond Sex Ed or Scare Tactics: Making Prevention about Social Justice

Why is the first real entry on our teen parent blog about teen pregnancy prevention? Well, quite frankly, because that’s what the calendar told me to write about today.The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy proclaims May 5 as the “National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy,” and so I was obligated to mark our first step into the blogosphere with a post about prevention.

This isn’t really true, mind you – I could have bumped back the launch date a week, or started writing a few days ago and let this day pass without remark. However, since the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy is an organization that works both on prevention efforts and teen parent support, I felt that we were up to the challenge of making a prevention message work in a teen parent space.

Too often, teen pregnancy prevention efforts make sweeping and dramatic statements about the (in)abilities of young parents: You’re going to be on welfare! Your kids are going to be teen parents! You won’t graduate; your relationships won’t be successful; your life is ruined. Nevermind that these claims are largely exaggerated or flat-out misinterpretations of the data; this messaging assumes that the only way to keep teens from having sex and getting pregnant is to make teen parenthood as scary as possible. Just as importantly, this mindset undermines the capabilities of so many hardworking, motivated young parents who work so hard to finish school, find good jobs, and make the best possible lives for themselves and their children.

Instead of making teen parenthood scary, we should work to make the alternative – delaying parenting – more attractive. If teens have a sense of a future that would be impacted by early parenting and believe they can go to (and afford) college, find fulfilling jobs, and be able to more fully explore their own potential, they’ll be more likely to delay having sex or use birth control if they do have sex.

So, let’s move this paradigm shift forward. Instead of blaming young parents and scaring teens, let’s build a more positive environment that empowers teens (including those that are parenting) to make the choices that will work for them. If, as a society, we’re doing a good job of true equity in opportunity, more young people will avoid risky sexual behaviors and more youth will delay parenting. And maybe, in this utopian society, bloggers will be able to write about whatever they’d like on May 5 (or take the day off and enjoy Cinco de Mayo!).

Welcome to The PushBack – we hope you’ll keep reading. :)

Gretchen is the Communications Manager at the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy and can be reached at gretchen@massteenpregnancy.org. You’d make her day if you became a fan on Facebook or started following the Alliance on Twitter.