Journal #3

    In the article "Teen Parenting Reconsidered", the author strongly argues that society is viewing teen parenting under the wrong stereotypes. Most stereotypes come from poor families who have a teen who gets pregnant. Obviously, this teen is not going to have all the resources that a teen from a wealthier family might have and they might not even have the same moral support. The author of this article believes that we are looking at the wrong issues, they state that poverty and institutionalized racism and sexism are the real problems but people have turned to teen pregnancy to look down on instead.
    This author believes that teen parenting is just the same as adult parenting and that it is wrong to judge teens so harshly. In another article I have read, the author likely would have disagreed with this article, arguing that teen pregnancy is the issue we should look at because it puts the baby at an increased risk of health problems and puts the mother at an increased risk for medical complications. The second author believes that teen pregnancy is directly associated with  lower education levels, while the first author I talked about believes that teen pregnancy doesn't have anything to do with the circumstances that the teen is in but instead states that unplanned pregnancies are common in both adults and in teens.
    This article strongly supports my ideas and beliefs of teen pregnancies and parenting. In this article, the author talks about having friends who were teen parents but still went on to get a bachelors degree and were great parents. I understand how people like the author of the second article have come to the conclusion about teen pregnancy that they have, but the statistics aren't right to go off of. In my opinion, stereotypes about teen parenting are totally wrong and biased.
    New questions that this article has caused to come up are what kind of background about teen parenting do these authors have. It would make sense for an author to defend teen parenting because they have been one of those teens. I'm curious to know if any of the authors who are against teen parenting have ever found themselves in a situation directly involving teen parents or if they are basing their opinions solely on statistics.