Talking to kids about unintended pregnancy
[This article is a transcript of “Talking to kids about unintended pregnancy” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]
(Video also available on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.)
My oldest daughter is currently nine, and inspired partly by the movie Inside Out 2, she was asking me questions about puberty, and we were talking about different things. And then she says to me that she does want to have babies eventually, which I think is wonderful, I told her, and we were talking about when is the right time in your life for that, all these different things.
And I said, “The important thing, babe, is to make sure that you don’t get pregnant if you’re not ready to be pregnant. Because if you get pregnant when you’re not ready to be pregnant, now you have a baby coming, and that’s very serious. Babies are wonderful, but it’s a very serious thing. It’s a big deal.” And she said to me, “You know, if I got pregnant and I wasn’t ready to be pregnant, I would never get an abortion.” She and I have talked about abortion—our house is very pro-life. She said, “I would never get an abortion, but I would put the baby in the orphanage,” is what she says to me.
And I said, “Well, okay, hang on a second. I am going to teach you how to handle your decisions so that you don’t get pregnant if you don’t mean to be, but if that does happen for any reason—if it’s a mistake, or if for any reason you got pregnant when you weren’t ready to be, honey—all you’ve got to do is tell me and Dad. We will take care of you, and we will take care of your baby, and we will help you.” I said, “Think about it, babe. That baby is your baby and my grandbaby, and our family will take care of each other.”
I won’t pretend that I thought to have this conversation all by myself. I feel like she kind of led me in that direction, but I was sort of glad that she brought up the whole concept of “orphanage” in her nine-year-old mind, because it gave me the opportunity to clarify that yes, let’s learn about safe sex. Let’s learn about best practices for taking care of yourself and protecting yourself physically, emotionally, mentally. I’m going to teach her at all the age-appropriate levels as she gets older, yes. But also, the other important factor to this is: if there’s a mistake, it’s not the end of the world.
And I think about how many parents are pretty good at covering that first part, and maybe don’t think about emphasizing the second, and then you hear these stories of teenagers or very young women who get pregnant when they’re not ready, and one of many factors they consider is they think their parents will be so ashamed of them, or angry with them, or whatever negative reaction, and so they might seek abortion without even telling their parents they got pregnant.
And maybe there are some parents where that’s what they would want their daughters to do or their sons, if they got a woman pregnant. I don’t know. But if you are the kind of parent who would want your children—adult children, teenage children—to come to you and let you know that they have this difficult situation, and in particular if you’re the kind of parent who would not want them to get an abortion and would want to make sure they knew they had support, I think it’s probably better to say that sooner than later. Right?
My hope is to teach my children that they are extremely valuable and that so are any children that they have and that I am here to take care of and support all of them as much as I can. I don’t want them to ever feel like, if they did have an unintended pregnancy, that it was something they would need to hide from me. I want them to know that we’re in it together and it’s going to be fine.
This video inspired many to share their own related experiences, some of which you can scroll through here:
[Read more – How a pro-choice mom explains abortion to her daughter]
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