The Main Cause of Teen Pregnancy: Idiot Moms
They always do it. They always put the kindly 50-something
matron in charge of the youth program at the church. The Mom if
not The Grandmom. A woman of values and principles, to be sure,
but, also, usually a woman woefully out of touch with popular
culture and incapable of discussing, in any effective manner,
real issues facing teens. Most church kids respect their Sunday
School teachers and youth leaders—sort of—but the overwhelming
evidence suggests that most teens, in church or not, seek their
most important and vital advice from, you guessed it, other
teens. The credibility gap widens as a child comes of age,
begins developing what Mom used to call “a mind of her own,” and
suddenly realizes there is, in fact, no Santa Claus and no
Easter Bunny and no Tooth Fairy. They realize their mothers have
been lying to them. Oh, gentle lies to be sure, but a lie is a
lie. And once a child realizes a parent is even capable of such
a thing, capable of lying to them, that bond is undermined, and
as the child moves into adolescence, most everything the parent
tells them becomes suspect. The child scrutinizes and parses the
language because the child now has “a mind of his own,” and has
learned to question authority.
Additionally, with the onset of adolescence, the child is trying
to carve out an identity of his or her own, no longer content to
be in the parent’s shadow or under Mom’s apron. Most teens will
actively rebel, becoming hostile and disobedient. This lashing
out, this rejection, usually comes as a shock to most parents,
mommies in particular, because most parents spend fairly little
time learning how to be parents. Most parents are just out
there, kind of winging it. Reading nothing, studying nothing,
taking no courses on parenting. Just kind of reacting to
whatever curve life throws them, being dragged by the heels
through the winding turns a child’s life can take. Single
mommies are, in particular, the biggest problem, the largest
roadblock to ministry to youth. I’ve learned the hard way that,
if you intend to minister to kids, you absolutely must minister
to the entire family. It has to be an all-encompassing process
because many mommies—specifically single mommies—fear change and
fear what is happening in their child’s life. They fear the
secrets their child is suddenly keeping from them. The happy
child who used to talk their head off, who used to tell them
everything, is now withdrawn and sullen, barricaded behind
locked doors.
I remember when my niece came out here to visit me from New
York. We’d spend some time together doing some activity or going
someplace, but once we got home, she headed upstairs and the
door closed and that was the end of her. She was watching TV and
talking on the phone—two things she didn’t need plane tickets to
do. I was baffled by this girl, by her intermittent hostility
and seeming hatred of me. But, see, I had this movie playing in
my head. And, in my movie, she was a precocious eight year-old
holding my hand and talking my head off. But now she was
eighteen with a mind of her own, with secrets and struggles,
trying to carve out her own identity and, unsure of what to do
with her emotions, lashing out at me for no apparent reason
because that was her only means of defining herself.
This was a temporary situation, one easily resolved by a short
drive to the airport. Single mommies, however, are stuck in a
war zone. Many single mommies became single mommies in their
teen years and fear their child will make the same mistakes. So
they go out of their way to try and outsmart the child or block
the child, but they are playing a reactive game, one bound to
fail. Their overly-emotional and over-protective scrambles only
push the kids into making precisely the same mistakes they
themselves made, the example they themselves set. Any kid who
can count can figure out how old mommy was when she got
pregnant.
Many single mommies have had bad relationships with men. They
can often transfer that bitterness to the child, painting all
boys as selfish and evil, and seeming so embittered by life that
the child simply wants no part of Mommy’s issues. In an effort
to further separate themselves from Nutty Single Mommy, the
child will often do the exact opposite, making himself or
herself emotionally or physically available in an unhealthy and
unsafe way.
Single Mommies are often lonely. The child then becomes a
surrogate companion, the only person they have a close and
intimate trust with. Many Single Mommies have dedicated their
entire lives solely and completely to raising baby and have
absolutely no clue what to do with themselves once the kids grow
up and move out. The normal and expected rebellious period
following the child’s emotional awakening, therefore, becomes
threatening to Single Mommy, as the child has been for so many
years, like luggage. Has been Mommy’s Property. Mommy is simply
not emotionally prepared to deal with being on her own, with
facing life on its on terms. Therefore, Mommy becomes the
hysterical nut job; professing to protect the child, she’s
really being quite selfish, lashing out out of her own fear of
loneliness and abandonment.
So, real youth ministry requires courage. Courage of
convictions. And smarts. Dr. Phil-level smarts. You’ve got to
out-smart these people—not the kids, the Mommies. Too many black
churches are still organized around principles set forth in 1965
Sunday School programs. The curriculum is set up to deal with
the kids, and assumes the full cooperation of parents who can
and often are contentious and difficult people to work with. Any
youth program that does not factor in ministering to and dealing
with the Mommies is a fatally flawed one. One hysterical Mommy
can crash your entire deal.
At a local church, here, I came under fire by one Mommy because
I insisted her daughters each read their own scripture lesson.
What was happening was, one week Daughter A would read it, one
week Daughter B would read it, and they would alternately copy
each other’s work. I explained to Mommy the whole point of the
scripture lesson was to introduce the Bible to the children and
get them to read the bible independently. Mommy let me have it,
lashing out at me and making a case that the girls already had
enough homework and soccer practice and dance lessons and all of
that. To which I suggested that, without Christ in their lives,
the homework and soccer practice and dance lessons meant nothing
at all. And asking the girls to read two (2) chapters of the
Bible per week (not per night!) and answering five
questions was no burden on them.
Mommy went postal. Went to the pastor, who backed me up, which only made her more furious. The girls, taking their cue from Mommy, simply stopped doing the homework at all, and I had no way to enforce discipline because Mommy would tell the girls what a jerk I was on the drive home. All of which struck me as an incredibly outsized over-reaction on Mommy’s part. That her anger had nothing to do with the girls reading or not reading the Bible. Had nothing even to do with me, specifically. It was whatever baggage she’s been carrying around, whatever hurt left unhealed in her life. My only avenue to Mommy was other women, as no man, not even the pastor, could have a civil conversation with her. CONTINUED
