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Stay at Home Moms
susanmosley
member
Daycares on Campus for HS Students' Babies
susanmosley
member
Good or Bad?
What do you think?
What do you think?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Daycares on Campus for HS Students' Babies
I totally agree.
I kind of agree, but I wonder if it makes some girls want to have babies... You know, if someone was bringing her cute baby to school, they might go, "awww, I want a baby too..." I remember some of my high school classmates had hopes and dreams about their future babies. (None of them had babies in high school, though.)
Proud mother of two breech babies:)
There was a daycare on campus at my school for teachers. Throughout my 4 years in high school, not one baby was born to a teenager. There was one case where a girl was rumored to be pregnant and next thing we knew she was shipped off to her aunt's house in Ohio and we never saw her again.
But the daycare on campus certainly didn't sway the kids in our school to have babies. (FWIW, I went to a suburban public school.)
I am not against it. As pp said, it is more important that we give those teenagers a chance to finish their education. If this is what it takes to do that, so be it. I really don't think there are too many cases thata teenager tries to get pregnant to be "cool" or anything (though we do hear about those cases on tv).
I don't think most teens end up with babies to be cool. I think a majority of them have self-esteem issues and/or are trying to fill a void in their life with the love of a cute little cuddly infant. It's also a great way to get attention, which lots of teenagers crave.
Eek, I'm kind of torn on this one. On hand I am totally for doing what people need to so they can finish their education. On the other hand, it is sending the message that it's perfectly acceptable and may increase the pregnancy rates.
I'm amazed at how many pregnant high school kids I see around. I'm just one school district away from where I went to school, but it's totally different. There were 2 girls that I knew of that were pregnant the entire time I was in high school. Not sure if it's changed at my own in the past ten years or not.
I don't think daycares on sight encourage girls to have babies. Is there any proof out there that confirms this? But I also don't think teaching kids to used condoms has an effect on encouraging teens to have sex to start with, and I know that isn't a widespread thought.
I think uneducated people is the core of many problems - many, many huge issues. So, I am all for avoiding that at a pretty heavy cost. And I think an uneducated parent is a pretty sad combination.
Our high school had a couple of pregnant girls. I know that for each of them it was a personal decision to not use birth control. While this may not always be the case, I believe the vast majority of unplanned teen pregnancies are the result of poor decisions.
I honestly don't think that providing daycare on a HS campus does anything to teach anyone. When you make a poor decision, you deal -- it's what builds character and makes you into the person you are. All is not lost when you have a child for crying out loud. Your life is not over. As a high school teen, things may be on hold for years, but that hardly constitutes financing programs like daycare on HS campuses.
How is that the end of life? Fulfillment in life is what you make of it. It has nothing to do with education, IMHO.
LIFE is not over. School is not LIFE. I don't think you grasp my point.
I don't understand this black and white way of it. If you think "Oh, woe is me, I have a baby, I can't do anything now" then your issue isn't the baby (a life sentence? Really?) it's having a lack of ambition to make things better for yourself and your child. Just accepting the status quo is giving up right there...not finishing high school would be the least of that teen's problems.
As for day cares in high schools, I could go either way. I think they would be beneficial to teens who want to finish high school yet, in this day and age, who would fund this daycare? Our school systems are struggling enough without providing more "help" for someone else's poor decision.
When SIL was a senior she was up for homecoming queen in a fairly big school (DD#1 attends it now). So was a previously "unknown" girl who just had a baby that everyone thought was "so cute!!"....guess who won? I'm not saying that she shouldn't have been up for homecoming queen, but is that really who the student body thought should have won? It's not like she received a monetary prize or anything that would have helped her out. How about the other girls for their achievements, friendliness, etc.? I know it raised a lot of eyebrows for that very reason.
DD#1~8/17/96------DS~10/24/05
Read the pet peeves post started by SueMo. Someone hit the nail on the head -- blaming others for your circumstances. It's a personal decision what you do with your life on any given day. Yesterday you had a kid, today you can change your life. Dreams don't pay the bills, making sh*t happen pays the bills... making something of nothing pays the bills.
You can continue to post up on the glass half-empty side of things, I'm gonna kick it here on the half-full side of things.
This for me, too. Absolutely.
DD2: Lucia (Lucy) 07/13
As a teen mother to DD#1 I ended up dropping out and getting my GED. If there had been a daycare at my school the chance of me staying in school and actually graduating would have been much greater. However, I don't think that a daycare at a high school should be funded by tax dollars, maybe by donations and volunteers. I never took any help from the government and I wouldn't want my tax dollars going toward that.
I know several other people that were teenage mothers that never graduated and still struggle to get by. I was lucky to have the support of my family to help me and I was able to get my GED and college degree. That is not how it works for most teen moms. If you don't have the support of family and no daycare available most teens really have no other choice but to drop out and work. Which becomes a vicious cycle of no education no money, no money no education.
You are completely off base. Most teen pregnancies happen because of failed birth control or lack of education on birth control not a need to fill a void. And as far as a "great way to get attention"... if losing most of your friends because you have no time to hang out with them because you are working and taking care of a baby and trying to go to school is a great way to get attention then sure. Being a teen mom is very isolating not attention getting!
I agree with you banana. I think there is a cycle that CAN'T be broken without help. If you have no example, experience, hope, it is damn near impossible to rise above and make good choices after something like this.
Thank you for taking on this argument, I am too tired for it. The whole "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" mentality drives me nuts when no one ever gave them the boots. It is a naive view of the world to think that children born into generational poverty have the exact same opportunities as everyone else. They have to overcome an enormous amount of obstacles before even reaching the starting line. I think the statistics prove that the cycle of poverty and teen pregnancy continues for most. We can always find a few exceptions, I know of a few myself, but they are not the rule.
As for daycares in schools, I don't have a problem for it. Students are not going to get pregnant just because there is a daycare on campus, they are going to get pregnant because they do not have the knowledge, self-esteem, or support system to fully understand the consequences of their actions.
As far as I am concerned, the daycares provide two benefits. The first benefit is that the mother/father gets to finish school. The other benefit, that seems to be overlooked in this entire post, is that the baby receives quality childcare in the first few years of its life which is one of the biggest predictors of future success. The parents receive education on raising children which can also help break the cycle of teen pregnancy. School districts that provide support for teen moms in the area are also investing in the future of their schools. In five short years, those babies of teen moms will be walking through the front doors of the school and it is in the district's best interest to ensure that the babies received quality childcare in their first few years of life.
I was a social work intern at a high school that had an on site daycare. Not only were these young women able to continue their education, they had a special room during lunch in which they could eat with their babies. (It was always such a happy room...the moms could see their babies, and of course the babies loved spending time with their mothers in the middle of the day.)
My supervisor and I held a weekly support group for these young mothers. It really is amazing how much they already had to do in order to finish high school. Looking back at myself when I was 16 or 17, I basically only worked in the summer, played sports, did a little homework, and that was it. And yet I have a master's degree, and half of them didn't even obtain their HS diploma. It most definitely is NOT about who works the hardest.
Oh, and anybody who says that getting an education doesn't make a difference clearly doesn't understand statistics. Sure, there are always outliers, but by and far the longer you are in school, the better off your life will be. That's not in terms of happiness, but of health, wealth, and better outcomes for successive generations.
Maybe you see this different living in Canada, but in the US, this would be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard.
This. I think anything that helps teen parents complete their education and have a better life for them and their kids is a good thing.
We didn't have one and a friend had to drop out because she couldn't afford daycare and there was no one available to watch her son (her parents worked). She was smart and could've done so much if she'd had this option.
It's not always as cut and dry as WANTING to do something. My friend desperately wanted to graduate (she later got her GED) but her parents weren't willing to help her. They had the same opinion that she made her bed so she had to lie in it. I've always thought that was horrible. yes she made a mistake but w/ a little help and support it didn't have to essentially ruin her life.
And yes it ruined her life in my opinion. She went from planning to apply to a great school and likely getting accepted and having a good career to cutting hair for a living to provide for her child. She's slowly working on gettting her degree at a local college now that her son's in school but she still has to work and be there for her son.
She worked a minimum wage job but by the time she paid for baby supplies (formula, bottles, diaper, wipes, clothes) her money was gone there was nothing left for daycare.
Maybe when I said "most", it doesn't apply to your situation, but trust me, I have seen it PLENTY of times first hand, and more often than not the teen mother was looking for attention and/or had self-esteem issues.
My high school had the highest pregnancy rate in our area, and there were many pregnant girls roaming the halls at once in any given month. I can't tell you how many times the girls would show off their bellies in the hall after lunch (I have one vivid memory of a girl lifting her shirt and carrying on loudly about whether or not she should remove her belly ring, while allowing all of her guy friends to rub her belly). One of them was pregnant for the first time in SEVENTH grade, and I remember clearly when she told me she was pregnant. We were in Social Studies class, and she said "Guess what??? I'm pregnant!" At that point I was just learning about sex and pregnancy, and was very confused about how it could have happened to her. She had her fourth before we graduated high school. With three different guys. Trust me, in my experience, a LOT of pregnant teens enjoy the attention it brings to them, whether it's through the careless sex they are having, or the end result of the pregnancy or the baby.
Having said all of that, of course I would love to see teen moms finish high school, but I can tell you for sure that in the case of my high school, an on-site daycare facility would have just glorified teen pregnancy even more. I'm not idiotic enough to think that would-be moms might make the decision to get pregnant based on a daycare center at their school, but it sure would give them one less thing to worry about if that were to happen, and it would be right there in the face of all of the other teenagers. A reduced rate at an off-site center would be better, IMO, but I'm not sure how realistic that would be economically.
This is a really great sentiment, it is. But, it's not how I feel. No, I don't think that a program should be fully funded on the off chance that ONE mom and child are *GIVEN* an opportunity for a "better" life.
For those of you PREACHING about generational poverty:
If watching your mom struggle, and her mom before her struggle (etc., etc.) for opportunities WASN'T ENOUGH OF A LESSON about life and cause/effect, how do you expect providing daycare for kids of kids is going to better their circumstances? How does that teach them about life? I fail to see the logic here...
Bottom line, teens are going to make poor decisions. That's how it goes. Dealing with the consequences is part of the deal. If my son has a baby while he's still going to school you bet your @$$ I'll do what I can to make sure he gets a high school diploma, but he's not going to college with any help from me in terms of daycare. He can suck it up and go to college while working, just like his daddy.
DD#1~8/17/96------DS~10/24/05
You don't think offering someone the opportunity to finish her education and not just drop out and continue the cycle of "her mother before her and her mother before her", is going to better her circumstances? You really fail to see the difference?
I think daycare for high school mothers is a fantastic idea.
I think it's a fantastic idea. If teenage parents are able to finish their HS diploma they're more likely to find a job that will lead to a career than they would without that. Especially for kids who are born into the cycle of poverty, giving them tools to get out helps everyone in the long run.
My high school had a daycare. I didn't know about it until my senior year, I was just discussing this thread with DH and he had no idea there was a daycare at our HS, so obviously it didn't make a huge splash or encourage the idea of teenage pregnancy. It just helped make it possible for the teenagers to complete high school. In order to use the program you had to take "home ec" (which was otherwise not offered by our school) for credit by assisting in the daycare for a period a day. It was a great program to help get these parents on their feet and break the cycle of poverty.
My school was also very proactive in teaching contraception so we didn't have a huge teen pregnancy rate, but instead of kicking the parents to the street without means of supporting themselves, those who did get pregnant could finish school, which is a great thing.
I know I made a mega run-on sentence in my post, but you misunderstand my point. If she's not learning to make better decisions to give herself more opportunities, daycare isn't going to help her out. She should have been motivated enough by her mom's struggles and her grandmother's struggles. Growing up in her poverty-stricken situation should have been the motivation she needed to break the cycle.
I see what you are saying, but kids aren't always that perceptive to the hows and whys of the people struggling in their lives. I don't think her mother, grandmother, or whomever, struggling because of early pregnancy and probably having to drop out of school means she wouldn't break the cycle if she is given a chance. Being able to continue her education could be the difference between her and her mother. Being forced to drop out won't help her, or the baby she now has to raise in this cycle.
I guess I just don't see a real downside to this.