Newsflash: I disagree with Kathy!
It happens maybe twice a year.
Kathy thinks the pregnancy of Bristol Palin makes the Palin’s look low class. I know where she’s coming from. Kathy’s family background is very similar to mine. My family was rife with unplanned pregnancies. Some led to adoptions. Some led to tacky welfare families. None led to abortions (to my knowledge).
Like Kathy, my family wasn’t wealthy. They weren’t even middle class. They were poor. I think had they been of the middle and upper classes, they could have supported unplanned babies. It would have been a lot easier to have them enveloped into a tighter-knit family, as opposed to a squabbling one.
I would rather see Bristol Palin pregnant, about to be married to the father, than see a poor teen whose mom is already on welfare bringing another baby into the mix. Which was why so many of my aunties gave their babies up for adoption. In fact, as it turned out through a stroke of fate, so did my own mother. Somewhere out in the great big world, I have a half sister. My mother was broke as broke could be, working a factory job, and didn’t want to have her baby in that life. She saved that for later on, when she was married and settled. That was her choice. This is Bristol’s. At least she has a strong family and a few $$ behind her to help the young couple along. We should all be so lucky.
Call me a murderer…oh well…I don’t understand why she wouldn’t get an abortion, but Assembly of God… like Catholics, are not in favor of abortion.se la via
Getting pregnant is not related to class, except for, after class, and skipping class, and having such a high sex drive that using that little rubber thing is not an alternative…nor is taking the pill. Many girls raised in fundamental religions are educated against taking precautions because the only method recommended is abstenance…isn’t that a licorice drink? anyway..girls I went to school with got pregnant very young…16..and were from middle and upper class families..amazingly, a few are still happily married after 47 years.
My daughter thinks Palin is folksy and uneducated…I just want to see the footage of her moose hunting…and bagging one…but the real crunch is whether or not she guts it, skins it and takes the head off. That is all part of the process.
If kids in foreign countries can do it to human beings…certainly a future Woman vp of the u.s of a..must be capable of the complete moose hunting process…
It is kind of a balance to her religious fundamentalism and other unsavory stuff..
Ever try looking up your half sister?
Comment by cosmos — September 1, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
You’re not a murderer, Cosmos; you’re just following the same terrible piper that most people - not a majority, I maintain - have been convinced to follow regarding abortion. It’s birth control, it’s convenient, it’s no big deal, it’s no different than getting your wisdom teeth out. You’re also wrong, but I have a terrible feeling that convincing you otherwise probably won’t be worth the effort.
I somehow ended up going to a private boys’ school, and one of my graduating class ended up a father before he was in college, so I know that teen pregnancy isn’t reserved for the working classes. In general, though, it’s like anything else that can be affected by having a safety net in the form of money and family - it’s a lot easier to live through if you’ve got a lot of both.
“My daughter thinks Palin is folksy and uneducated.” There are so many euphemisms working there I don’t know where to start. Because she comes from a hunting family? Because she’s openly Christian? Because there’s almost nothing in her life and CV that could have been obtained in a big city or at a northeastern US university? I think a lot of people are going to have to confront this reaction to Palin for themselves - frankly, I think it’s far more insidious than the question of race that Obama’s supporters so coyly play with. Is your daughter capable of having that little think for herself?
Frankly, I like Palin a lot if only because she’s forcing these issues out in the open.
And while I wish her daughter had thought twice and kept her knees together as well, as the product of a teen pregnancy (who was adopted by my mom’s aunt - things were different in 1964) I can’t say I’m as turned off as Kathy is.
Comment by rick mcginnis — September 1, 2008 @ 9:21 pm
An upside of having a child early is that any attendance at college will be delayed and done on the basis of a more mature assessment (and better organizing skills). Most people would benefit from a few years in the real world, rather than just staying in the artificial (and mostly leftist) world of education.
Comment by Brett_McS — September 2, 2008 @ 3:28 am
I agreed with Kathy blaming the girl herself for making a mistake, but she lost me when she shifted blame to the parents. By 17, my parents had drilled into me right and wrong, and a thorough understanding of responsibility and accepting the consequences for your actions. Still, I made some dumb choices - is that my parents fault? No. Why did I ignore what my parents taught me - I was 17! But the dumb choices were still my own.
Jay Currie also seems to want to blame the parents - especially the mother - for lack of proper sex education. The girl is old enough to be responsible for her own bad decisions.
And finally, I agree with your post here, at least the girl has strong family support and money to help.
Comment by Sheila T — September 2, 2008 @ 7:46 am
I to disagree with Kathy, I was raised a good RC Catholic and the Classy Catholics sent their good girls to wealthy homes for unwed mothers to have said children who were later sold to rich Americans. Google butter box babies. Of course they never stated the Virgin Mary was pregnant, it was always mono. Mono was the excuse for the long absense, I also went to church with several classy lassies who had abortions under the guise of going abroad for the summer vacation.
I think Sarah Pulin rocks, and it angers me that her harshest critics are jealous females. She has it all, a family and a man that loves her and a chance to one day be the President of the US. I doubt I’d survive parenting one child, five I’d be running around naked picking imaginary daisies. I grew up in a very large household, it’s not an experience for the faint of heart. I think she’ll do an awesome job if her fellow females don’t eat her alive first. What is it with women hating female politicians?
Teenage pregnancies isn’t a class issue, rich, poor or middle class teenage pregnancies is epidemic. Dad use to say “Why buy the cow if the milk is free” it didn’t work on my generation and I doubt it would work today.
Comment by Rose — September 2, 2008 @ 6:54 pm
I think Kathy has it correct. If I understand it correctly, it’s not teh pregnancy itself that detracts from sarah palin’s moral authority to govern, it’s her reaction. She seems to be saying that everything is just hunky dory and there is no reason to be ashamed or dishonored. This is adamn shame, because any parent in his or her right mind should be ashamed of their pregnant, unmarried 18 year old daughter. Stand by her. Fine. Support her. Fine. Admit that none is perfact and forgive her. Fine. But at least have the common decency to admit that teenage pregnency out of wedlock is a bad thing and, quite franky, a blight on modern weestern society. It feeds the nanny state and denys children their inherent right to be raised in a cohesive, loving, married, hetrosexual family unit by both their biological parents. There are too many bastard children out there already. The fact that this latest on is born to a potential US VP doesn’t make the social implications of its bastardy any less significant.
Comment by INP — September 4, 2008 @ 11:01 am
INP,
“She seems to be saying that everything is just hunky dory and there is no reason to be ashamed or dishonored.”
I don’t know that I would hold that against Ms. Palin. For one, that may be only the public face she is putting on this. Second, in today’s society, where “shame” seems to have disappeared, not many people would agree with you. Now, I tend to agree that Bristol’s pregnancy is shameful and should be an embarassment for the family, but I think Sarah’s public display of love and support is the perfect way to handle things with an entire political group out trying to find anything possible to crucify her for.
And cosmos, I can’t cite it here, but I believe I read somewhere that she does field dress her moose when she bags one.
Comment by Former Lurker — September 18, 2008 @ 5:36 am