Jean Greenberg Women In Poverty Summary

At first, I was going to choose an article on women in poverty but I realized that just having gotten out of the teen years myself, I realized I could relate more on teen pregnancy. Growing up in high school all we ever heard was don’t have sex or you will end up pregnant. It was something that we were constantly being told on a what seemed like a weekly basis. The girls in high school were held to different standard than the boys were because we were the ones that could actually get pregnant. This article brings a common every day issue into the light. Zoe Greenberg follows the lives of inner city teens who are taking a different approach on how they deal with their sexuality. Instead of shying away and being told that abstinence is the only

Throughout this article, there was no statistical evidence for males because they are held to a different standard than women are. Women, even as teenagers are expected to keep themselves abstinent and keep up with appearances. Women are seen as different from men, they are seen as not being able to express their sexual desires. When they do, they are usually the only ones held responsible. When we show our boys that they will not be held responsible for impregnating a female this leads them to believe they can live a care free life style. Although, this article talks about trying to help all teens in general there are only focusing on the female’s perspective of things. It ties back to the topic of double standard that we discussed in class and how what may be pass for one gender and be acceptable, will be the other gender’s downfall. Even though, I do like this article because of what they are trying to implement in the high schools now, I have to say I still don’t agree on the outlook on females. Teen pregnancy is seen as a female problem instead of a teenage problem. I know that it’s called teenage pregnancy, but there are no statistics on males, and most often males lives continue as normal. If it were really a teenage problem males would be held just as equally accountable as females were, and would be ostracized as females are. Since neither of these two things occur, we know we have a common double standard. Teenage pregnancy has always been around and will continue to be around. As long as teens go into puberty there will be pregnancies, it’s kind of inevitable. However, our approach in how we deal with teaching sex-ed could help drop teenage pregnancy rates. Preaching at a teen about how having sex is bad and all of the negative consequences, only leads some teens to want it more. We need to take the focus off of sex itself, and shift the focus