Paying Girls Not to Get Pregnant

In response to William Raspberry’s column “Give Teens a Future and They’ll Be Chaste,” Commentary, May 22:

Raspberry says that daughters of the Maryland middle-class don’t get pregnant because they take for granted that they have a bright future while the poor feel trapped in poverty. “What we have to do is persuade these youngsters that their behavior affects their prospects. But in order to persuade them we have to make sure that this is as true for them as the middle-class.”

Is Raspberry cognizant of the distinction between personal and social problems? He implies that these girls should just try harder, study, change their attitudes--it is their fault if they don’t make it. This will actually only perpetuate the sense of inadequacy due to self-labeling not uncommon among the impoverished. Social problems stem from circumstances that cause contradictions incompatible with the desired quality of life--people’s difficulties may not be due to individual traits but from social structural features of the system over which they have little influence. Does Raspberry know about the babies in Chicago, Washington and Watts being born prematurely, addicted to crack and alcohol--or of the children without fathers already two grades behind by the time they start kindergarten?

His solution is simple: Give disadvantaged, slum-dwelling children nice schools with well-stocked libraries and bright, motivated teachers. Then they will “have desirable behaviors.” After all, teen pregnancy is only a symptom of hopelessness. Raspberry says that we must inform our young people “they have it in their hands to build secure and satisfying lives.” This is like telling someone to “put a Band-Aid on it” after his arm has just been amputated.

Paying teens a dollar to not get pregnant is not much of an answer. But at least it is an idea. On the other hand, Raspberry is merely filling column space with rehashed, bourgeois rhetoric which accomplishes nothing in the real world.

Mr. Raspberry, if you do figure out how to give all children good schools, please pass on the information to William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago, or Robert H. Lauer of U.S. International University, two of this nation’s leading sociologists. They have been trying to come up with a solution for many years.

DAVID SCARPERO

Inglewood