The Culture of Fear_ Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things - Barry Glassner [56]
To make an object seem to vanish, a magician directs the audience’s attention away from where he hides it. Stories such as the one about Cindy-Adella likewise misdirected, focusing public attention away from real and enduring struggles of women trying to care for their children in an uncaring world.
During the early and mid-1990s teen mothers were portrayed as much more ominous and plentiful than they actually were. Although only about one-third of teen mothers were younger than eighteen, and fewer than one in fifty was fourteen or younger, you would not have known it from the media. An edition of the Ricki Lake Show in 1996 titled “I’m Only 13 But I’m Gonna Make a Baby” began with the popular TV talk show personality asking her studio audience, “Is it possible for a thirteen-year-old to be ready to be a mother?” The audience yelled “No-o-o!” as Lake introduced Kassie and Angela, thirteen-year-olds who looked even younger than their age. For close to an hour the two girls had insults and allegations hurled at them by members of the audience, by their own mothers, by Ricki Lake, and by a regretful sixteen-year-old mother of two.5
Kassie and Angela proved themselves remarkably composed and articulate. Accused of having no experience raising children, they pointed to skills they had gained from bringing up their younger siblings. Asked who would take care of their babies when they were at school, the girls nominated relatives who could help out and said they knew of schools that provided day care. Told by a member of the audience that her boyfriend would abandon her once the baby arrived, one of the girls calmly replied, “I know he’s not going to be around.”6
All in all they came off as more thoughtful potential parents than some I have known who are twice or three times their age, but no matter. Neither of these girls was actually “gonna make a baby” anytime soon. Kassie’s mother let it be known that she had had her daughter injected with a birth control drug that would make her infertile for several months, and Kassie herself blurted out at one point that she knew she wasn’t ready yet. Angela, meanwhile, made it clear that she had no intention of getting pregnant, though she did hope to convince her mother to adopt a child whom she would help raise. In other words, Ricki Lake’s producers had come up with a pregnant topic but no pregnant thirteen-year-olds.
More high-minded programs also promulgated the fiction of an epidemic of pregnancy among very young teens. In an interview on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” in 1995 Gary Bauer of the conservative Family Research Council intoned: “It was not many years ago in this country when it was not common for thirteen-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds to be having children out of wedlock. I’m enough of an optimist to believe that we can re-create that kind of a culture.” The interviewer, NPR’s Bob Edwards, failed to correct this patently misleading statement. Nowhere in the segment did he indicate that it remains extremely uncommon for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds to have children.7
Nor did Edwards note that, until relatively recently, most thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds were unable to bear children. Considering the tendency of American journalists to overemphasize studies that show biochemical causes for a range of other social problems, such as hyperactivity in children, depression in adults, and crime in the streets, they have done little to call the public’s attention to a fundamental statistic about teen pregnancy. As recently as a century ago the average age for menarche was sixteen or older, whereas today girls typically have their first menstrual period by age thirteen, and some as early as age nine. Some scientists blame high-calorie diets and sedentary lifestyles for the early biological maturity of contemporary girls, but whatever