Keeping the support network for pregnant teens
This winter, a professor in Rhode Island is taking a proactive and smart step to reach the lofty goal of ending the cycle of poverty.
When teens get pregnant during high school, the odds become higher and higher that they drop out of high school and fall directly in the middle of the cycle, with limited job opportunities and a family already started.
This article at physorg.com explains how Vanessa Johnson from Northeastern University is studying the few students that are pregnant or who are already parents that are at the same time actually excelling in high school. She is using their experience and success to help develope a program that will help other teens forge a path to finishing high school and hopefully getting a college degree.
A support network and continued interactions with their peers one of the key ingredients to life achievement is one of the initiatives Johnson is focusing on. Teens learn not only social skills from each other, but they offer opportunities for other life learning and the encouragement that comes from a social network.
Stopping the spiral into the cycle of poverty by keeping at risk teens in the net of community, family, and continued support is something that seems so obvious, yet is not something I have consciously considered before. This is such an important idea! Johnson deserves more than a pat on the back for having the determination to not giving up on teens, just because they get pregnant earlier than most people. I think there is a mindset that girls are lost causes, that they have already fallen into the cycle once they get pregnant. Efforts to keep up with them and steer them back from their detour will be a great asset to girls who otherwise would be dropped by the wayside. Hope is big, believing is big, and encouraging is big. Making kids understand that one step off the typical path is not a downfall, that one “mistake” according the outside world isn’t necessarily a mistake, simply a different route to the same place. Showing them that there is still hope and encouragement to be successful from friends and family, even after teen pregnancy.
