It's not their fault. Most people simply don't know what bottomless despair is like. Even fewer know what it's like to have no resources whatsoever to deal with it.
I sometimes still cry and question why I wasn't born normal like others. It doesn't matter what I know and understand. It doesn't matter what I tell myself. I still feel that stab. I couldn't have imagined what this felt like until I had to go through it, and herein lies the problem. The people who often try to erase social injustices are those who have lived a life of privilege and have absolutely no idea what it's like on the other side. A lot of them rely on second or third hand sources, but they often fail to get the gist of things. This isn't something wrong on it's own, but whenever people are frustrated they tend to grope for explanations and a lot of people fail to give this any thought whatsoever.
Even though this article seems to be well intentioned, but stuff like this hurts people in the longer run. Take a look at this;
>>>It is not simply a case of teenage girls from deprived backgrounds accidentally becoming pregnant. Evidence from many sources suggests that teen pregnancy rates are similar in poor and affluent communities. However, motherhood is a choice, as both Geronimus and Johns are keen to point out. Teenage girls from affluent backgrounds are more likely to have abortions than their less-privileged peers. In terms of reproduction, the more affluent girls are best off concentrating on their own career and development so that they can invest more in the children they have at a later stage. "It seems that girls are assessing their life chances on a number of fronts and making conscious decisions about reproduction," says Johns.<<<
The reason why they don't have pretty often is because they can't afford abortions. Even if there are clinics that perform this for an extremely low cost. Most people lack access and awareness in the ghetto, which is just another side effect of growing up there. Affluent children can think about their life choices because they have the luxury of doing so. Most children from the ghetto don't.
The very idea that such behavior is driven by genetic impulses is something that shows a flawed understanding of the entire concept at some stage by the writer. I am not an expert on it, but Richard Dawkins surely is and he takes the pains to point out that genes are like a coder who writes a complex AI program. After her/his job is finished the program is on its own. If you think about it everything comes down to genetic impulses and the environment plays a crucial role in determining those impulses, but in humans another paradigm also comes into the equation; the ability for us to make a conscious choice.
What I am trying to say is that the expert who wrote that paper is trying to get an extremely valuable point across, but the way it is used to explain everything is demeaning and flawed. There is no magic bullet for such problems, and you really need not resort to such things. Good ole' hard work with dedication and understanding ought to do.
[edit: I forgot to add "flawed understanding by the writer" the expert who has been quoted is spot on, but the general conclusions derived seem to be pretty shabby.]
The reason why they don't have pretty often is because they can't afford abortions.
A lot of the research in that article was done in the UK, where cost is not really a factor. Abortions are covered by the national heath service. Also, there are no parental notification rules or any similar barriers that make it so hard in the US.
Contraception is also free, and so I don't think it is completely unreasonable to speculate that many of these births are actually wanted and to examine the reasons for them, as the researchers are attempting in the OP. Whether their theory is actually correct, I don't know.
My mother works in the health ministry and I read some of her files one day. They had the same problem even though they were giving out services and contraception for free social stigma, lack of awareness and access resulted in people turning away from such resources.
I am not saying that the births are not wanted either. What I am trying to say is that as a result of the environment such children are in they are taught that this is life and there is nothing more they can expect. This doesn't happen explicitly but implicitly through the actions of others.
I really can't explain this. I think that the OP is right and they are well intentioned, but they are making the same mistake over and over again. There is no magic bullet over here.
Of course, you should try to find ways to increase your ability to make change, but there really is not magic bullet.
I don't think the reason teenagers don't use contraception is because they want to get pregnant, but because they don't clearly see the implications. I know abortions are emotionally hard and if you don't see yourself having a future to protect it's harder to make that decision. Still as far as I know abortions are very accepted in Europe and it probably more likely that you have an abortion if your parents know you're pregnant. Especially if you have successful parents that can see the implications of having a child at an early age, which many underprivileged teenagers don't have.
> because they don't clearly see the implications.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
A lot of policy makers who make rules and laws about how to fix poverty always assume they deal with rational, clearly thinking, autonomous agents. They assume there is some logical planning taking place in teenagers' heads before they get pregnant: "...Having sex will lead to pregnancy which will lead to having a baby, who, even though I can't support, the state will take care of it, my boyfriends will be forced to pay child support therefore it makes perfect sense to have a baby." Something like that.
A 16 year old guy will think he can support all the babies in the world when having sex. The girl might think it will make the boyfriend love her more, they'll get married, find jobs, move out and have a happy your family and live happily every after. That is a very different thought process than what policy makers usually assume goes on.
Teenagers who are privileged end up making a lot of stupid decisions as well, but their parents, hover over them, guide them, fix their mistakes for them and wait for the kids to mature and start thinking rationally and maturely.
Many poor teenagers never have that. They don't get a second choice, a do over for small mistakes. Many are from a single parent family, or their parents are working 12 hour days to make ends meet, perhaps one or more parents are drunk or on drugs and there is just nobody to guide, to teach and to iron out the consequences of small and large mistakes. Consequently the teenagers grow up but mentally never mature. Then they become the next generation of parents. Then the cycle repeats.
Overall I think all the teenagers would end up procreating as soon as they can if they just grew up in the wild without any parental guidance. The ones that lead privileged lives have parents who teach, guide and iron out mistakes ("read : trip to the abortion clinic"), and this leads to a delay in procreation until some arbitrarily chosen "life event" usually : marriage + first job + new house.
I think taking this problem and turning it into some kind of evolutionary / genetic issue is pointless if not plain dangerous.
"The very idea that such behavior is driven by genetic impulses is something that shows a flawed understanding of the entire concept at some stage by the writer."
The article isn't saying that poverty is caused by genes, it's saying that the the behavior of having more children earlier when poor is caused by genes. Which is exactly the same sort of "coder" analogy that Richard Dawkins points out. It then says that this behavior then tends to "trap" individuals into this particular behavior, as any deviation from it results in fewer offspring surviving. In the game theory world, this is an evolutionarily stable strategy.
There are lots of instances where genes encode behaviors that are conditionally expressed by the environment, eg. the phenomenon where most mammals tend to have more girl babies then boys when times are bad, and vice versa when times are good.
I am so sorry that I couldn't get my point across effectively. What I was trying to say was that the idea that such behavior tends to trap people into poverty is a derivative of our genetic code is extremely deterministic.
Of course, you're right, but you forget that these are people capable of making a conscious choice. They are people who if given the right resources and understanding can choose otherwise. Perhaps we have a higher tendency of making such choices due to our genetic makeup, but that's what it exactly is a tendency. It is not an absolute, and my problem isn't the fact that this happens.
It is the fact that this does happen and that despite the fact those people can choose whenever someone meets them they will label them under something like this. We talk about them as mammals and subjects. This is a good thing when you're trying to get down to the facts, but we need to remember this; they are people, human beings with feelings, desires, dreams, aspirations, hopes and pain. If we want to help them we should respect them not label them.
What I was trying to say was that the idea that such behavior tends to trap people into poverty is a derivative of our genetic code is extremely deterministic.
I think the key word here is "tends:" as far as I know, no evolutionary biologists or psychologists would argue a 1:1 correspondence between these kinds of situations and behavior. But, from both a game theory and evolutionary point of view, the kind of behavior described in the article makes sense. This isn't at all about being "extremely deterministic;" it's about analyzing how people might respond to certain forces and situations. They will have free will and can still exert their preferences in a wide variety of ways.
I think the author of the study and many others are trying to figure out how genes and environment interact -- which turns out to be a far more complex question than many simplifiers would have (and I'm not saying you're one of them).
> The reason why they don't have pretty often is because they can't afford abortions.
When I lived in such communities, access and cost weren't significant issues. Young girls wanted to have children. They got status and other social rewards for having children. (The sad ones said "a baby has to love me".)
They didn't see having children as a cost because, for them, it wasn't.
It has been postulated that American welfare assistantship programs are somewhat to blame. I think it has been discussed here (sorry to repeat it, and for not quoting -- I forgot who mentioned it).
Basically the programs to help "single mothers" was created to help widowed mothers support their family. Eventually some women realized that having a baby is not that bad as they can take advantage of the "single mother" status. There is sort of a logical reasoning behind it.
Now, not that every girl goes through that logical reasoning and decides on having a baby. Rather with time this choice of having a baby become "encoded" in the culture as something else "it is cool" or "it bring attention" or "status". Girls see other girls get attention and acquire status when they have children to they want to emulate.
Basically in this particular case, the welfare system completely backfired and instead of just helping, it started expanding the population segment that would take advantage of a particular feature.
I don't know why it's such a bad thing to give welfare assistance to young single mothers. This should be extended to all mothers regardless of marital status or age. Parenting in America has turned into a scary, expensive headache, rather than the normal way of perpetuating the species.
Americans complain that "only stupid people are breeding" but we do almost nothing to make having kids easier for non-stupid, gainfully employed people. In contrast, places like Norway, Japan and Australia basically pay women of to have children, regardless of social status.
> It has been postulated that American welfare assistantship programs are somewhat to blame.
I don't know how significant such aid was with the folks that I knew. I think that a bigger factor was the culture.
In most cases, they got their basics from family, so the assistance went for "luxuries". It's not enough for real luxuries, but it's enough to buy "stuff".
I don't think that the "stuff" was a big motivation, but its unclear why society should provide it.
The law was written more with the intent to help widows with small children. But it turned out that many young un-married girls could also just have a baby and take advantage of the same program. At some point having a baby became a good way to get decent welfare assistance.
The economist is a British journal, this is in Britain -medical care, including abortions, is free.
Abortions are also available essentially without question, for teenage mums.
I sometimes still cry and question why I wasn't born normal like others. It doesn't matter what I know and understand. It doesn't matter what I tell myself. I still feel that stab. I couldn't have imagined what this felt like until I had to go through it, and herein lies the problem. The people who often try to erase social injustices are those who have lived a life of privilege and have absolutely no idea what it's like on the other side. A lot of them rely on second or third hand sources, but they often fail to get the gist of things. This isn't something wrong on it's own, but whenever people are frustrated they tend to grope for explanations and a lot of people fail to give this any thought whatsoever.
Even though this article seems to be well intentioned, but stuff like this hurts people in the longer run. Take a look at this;
>>>It is not simply a case of teenage girls from deprived backgrounds accidentally becoming pregnant. Evidence from many sources suggests that teen pregnancy rates are similar in poor and affluent communities. However, motherhood is a choice, as both Geronimus and Johns are keen to point out. Teenage girls from affluent backgrounds are more likely to have abortions than their less-privileged peers. In terms of reproduction, the more affluent girls are best off concentrating on their own career and development so that they can invest more in the children they have at a later stage. "It seems that girls are assessing their life chances on a number of fronts and making conscious decisions about reproduction," says Johns.<<<
The reason why they don't have pretty often is because they can't afford abortions. Even if there are clinics that perform this for an extremely low cost. Most people lack access and awareness in the ghetto, which is just another side effect of growing up there. Affluent children can think about their life choices because they have the luxury of doing so. Most children from the ghetto don't.
The very idea that such behavior is driven by genetic impulses is something that shows a flawed understanding of the entire concept at some stage by the writer. I am not an expert on it, but Richard Dawkins surely is and he takes the pains to point out that genes are like a coder who writes a complex AI program. After her/his job is finished the program is on its own. If you think about it everything comes down to genetic impulses and the environment plays a crucial role in determining those impulses, but in humans another paradigm also comes into the equation; the ability for us to make a conscious choice.
What I am trying to say is that the expert who wrote that paper is trying to get an extremely valuable point across, but the way it is used to explain everything is demeaning and flawed. There is no magic bullet for such problems, and you really need not resort to such things. Good ole' hard work with dedication and understanding ought to do.
[edit: I forgot to add "flawed understanding by the writer" the expert who has been quoted is spot on, but the general conclusions derived seem to be pretty shabby.]