Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010 5:28 p.m.

the allure of teen pregnancy

I'm sitting here watching The Pregnancy Pact on Lifetime tv. Why am I watching it? Well, see, there's this thing with Lifetime movies...sometimes they just draw you in even though you don't really want to watch them. :) Well, yes, then, also the topic is kind of interesting.

I really have come to an acceptance that perhaps we will not have kids. I don't know if I want to use artificial reproductive technologies, I don't know if I want my kids to be conceived that way...and I'm afraid that if we end up going through it, that I may always regret it. If it's meant to happen, it will...and since it doesn't seem like it's meant to happen - I don't want to force it. HOWEVER, I really don't feel the anguish and pain that I felt months ago at this. I've stopped imagining myself pregnant, I've stopped imagining it happening, so I'm no longer upset when it doesn't. I'm sorry for those people who have been with me in the past year and had to suffer my bouts of depression over and over again. I think I'm in a much better place now. :)

So...back to the Lifetime movie. I can kind of understand the allure of teenage girls to just want to be married and have kids. I really think there is something built inside females to desire this kind of stability. Sure, we also crave independence, and we often responsibly choose to suppress the desire to produce offspring until we reach a certain age/place in life. But I think that deep down, most of us still feel it...even if we are naturally terrified of the responsibilities that come along with it.

I know I've always wanted a family and my own children. Even when I was in college and determined to be independent and go off to L.A. to work in the film industry...a part of me always craved a simple life...I just thought that that would make me boring. I didn't want to be boring.

It's similar to how I ended up in the field of education. I always wanted to be a teacher. I taught my stuffed animals, heck, I'd even line up my markers and pretend they were kids and teach them (it made it convenient for them to "write on the board" that way :) ). But I didn't allow myself to study education in school - being a teacher was "too boring". I obviously eventually grew out of this and went back to school 2 years after college, to get, yep, my teaching degree.

So I've always wanted kids. It's why I choose to be an egg donor 3 years ago or so. I had such a pull to biologically reproduce and even knowing that we shouldn't "give up our lives" yet to have them, my body still wanted to produce. And donating was nice, and helped tide me over.

But now I'm here. And the desires are just as strong, and likely even stronger because I finally made them legitimate and agreed to give into them. I can never deny that they exist.

So even though I can live and probably find things to be happy about in life without having my own children (with K, I mean. yes, I know I'm in a weird situation where I technically have biological offspring, only not with my husband, and he is the only person I want to raise my own kids with), that will never fully quench my thirst or my insane curiosity as to what it is actually like to have another life growing inside you. It just seems so amazing, and so unique, and so, well, miraculous, that that's how people come about. I do want to experience that...and I imagine that many, many women (and teenage girls) do too. Even if it is not the most responsible time to do so.

A part of me is actually jealous of these teen girls that get pregnant. I know that this is horrible to say and I know that these girls have absolutely no idea of the hardship that will meet them because of their poor choice. But they are so young, and so pretty still, and they have people taking care of them, and they get so much attention...AND they get to experience what it's like to fulfill the most basic biological purpose of being a female. In many ways, they are more a woman than I.

When I was in South Africa many years ago working on that one crazy show, we we doing a segment in a local village. Some of the nearby vacation lodge staff were helping us out and I met this 19-yr. old guy (I was only 23 at the time), nicknamed Sepp, who was originally from Alabama but working at the lodge for a year. We had some really interesting conversations and I vividly remember one in particular: he told me that it was normal for the girls in the village, once they had reached menstruation, to sleep around until they got pregnant. Once they became pregnant and proved their fertility, they became more desirable as a possible wife. And to think that I at first thought that the 13-14yr. old girls carrying around babies were taking care of their younger siblings.

Part of me envies these young girls (though now "women" in some ways) too.

Ok - back to the movie. I'm sad for these girls, but I have to admit that I understand them. And though I know that it may never happen, I do still hope that someday I too will get to feel what it's like to be "woman".

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