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Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, riffing off a public interview with Alaska Governor Palin’s minor daughter, points to the basic contradiction of “abstinence-only” marketing, especially as it’s presented to girls.

In other words, it’s “obvious” that you shouldn’t take the greatest step in your life that fills it with joy and perfection and bliss and did I say perfection?  Getting pregnant at 17 will complete you, girls, so don’t do it!  That trifling boyfriend of yours will, the second you get pregnant, become so devoted to you that he’ll tattoo your name on his finger, and your mother will give you a year to plan the perfect wedding you’ve been encouraged to dream about since you could first turn a page in a bridal magazine.  Having a baby in high school is so fucking great, so girls, don’t do it!

Pardon me if I find the whole situation disingenuous.

Read the quote in context here.

What’s weird about this whole business to me is that in terms of reproductive topography it’s not even a bad idea in social-theory terms to encourage young people to a) have their own children while their parents are still young enough to provide in-home support and assistance and b) parents are themselves still young enough when their children go off on their own (to grandparent their own children’s children part-time!) that, still in their own 30s, they can then launch full-blown and reproductively-unencumbered careers, lives, etc. As opposed to, say, getting up a full head of steam career-wise and then… interrupting it to go “nuclear” (family) in your 30s and then try and get back off the parent track it in your 40s or 50s (or 60s as will be the case for me!)

And not to put too fine a point on it, with such a model it really wouldn’t matter as much if one or the other parent was a massive flake or not long-term, grow-old-together compatible because… there’d still be plenty of close supporting infrastructure, not only for, say, the abandoned father but also the interested-in-resuming-dating daughter.

I’m not saying that’s the best model, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.** If that were the conservative model. Which it manifestly also isn’t.

Instead the model seems to be to trap children in these weird double-binds that result in a) high expectations, b) sense of personal failure, c) making poor interpersonal/partner choices that d) you’re then stuck with that result in…

e) What midwife and birth instructor Penny Simpkin rather hauntingly refers to as “the empty years” where, especially if you’re a “traditional” woman, your children are out of the home and you have, basically, nothing left to live for because all you were raised to believe in was being a stay-at-home mom or a work-yourself-to-death dad.

So, sort of like Marcotte, I’m thinking would be fine if they wanted to have it one way — teenagers really are fucked up by pregnancy if they’re not really ready — or fine the other — when you get pregnant we’ll lavish you with a wedding and tons of parental support. But trying to have it both ways — if you get pregnant you’re really fucked up but we’re going to lavish you with big wedding and tons of support — just… ruins it for everybody! The joy of sex. The joy of parenting. The joy of having a career. Even the joy of grandparenting!

[** It wouldn’t even be the end of the world population-increase-wise if everyone still limited themselves to two children. In fact as long as I’m speculating wildly I suspect a start-your-life-after-kids model would actually increase interest in smaller rather than larger families. —fl]