This tip is primarily for parents of a teenager.
If, as the parent of a teen, you believe there is such a thing as an accidental pregnancy then you are ripe for your teen surprising you one day with an “accidental” pregnancy. In other words, given your present belief system, your child already knows that you'll accept "accidental" because your definitions of the words
responsibility and
intention are inaccurate and, you haven't delivered the following ultimatum:
- Parent to teen: No babies until you are living on your own and can afford all the costs. A pregnancy would be your way of saying you don't value our support and that you'll be moving out immediately. We refuse to pay for your pregnancy because we know it will be premeditated; it won't be an accident. I mean what I'm saying. There will be no second chances about this matter. Do you understand? Be certain to tell each date about this consequence before you con them into begging for sex. Also, introduce me to any date with whom you are thinking of making out. I will ask them if they are prepared to pay 50% of all costs for raising a child for 18+ years, for any accidental pregnancy you may create.
Typically a teen's “accidental” pregnancy explanation will contain a lie, such as, “I don't know how it happened” (a covert victim-blame statement) as opposed to, “
I conned him into wanting sex and impregnating me.” Or, “
I arrogantly ignored everyone’s advice, specifically about accidental pregnancies, and impregnated her knowing full well it would upset her parents.” Few teens will acknowledge to both sets of parents, “I knew with absolute certainty that you didn’t want an accidental pregnancy problem. I knew it would not feel good to you and that it would be abusive of me to dump such a problem in your space, but, obviously I don’t respect you enough to honor your wishes. I blame you for my irresponsibility and disrespect of others; I knew that I could con you and Welfare into paying for my contemptuous behaviors.”
Let’s put it another way.
Any teen who creates an accidental pregnancy is communicating to everyone (non-verbally) that he/she is not in-communication with his/her parents (there are no exceptions to this phenomenon). The implication being, “I wasn’t experiencing love and affection at home so I found someone to 'love' me.” [Yes, teens mistake physical intimacy for love]. If a teen isn’t observing affection between his/her parents, if he/she isn’t continually receiving warm experiential hugs from both parents (
as it used to be) the teen automatically assumes that he/she is the cause and that they (the teen) don't inspire love and harmony and, that they are not lovable
[no matter how many words a parent uses to assure a child that they are not the problem; the child knows that he/she is somehow responsible. I.e. "If I were Saint-like our relationships would be harmoniously loving"]. And so the child searches outside the family for the illusion of love/communication. I say "illusion" because what teens "in love" experience is not communication; the foundation of their relationship is based upon deception, both hiding from their parents the fact that they are having sex; the deceit, the humongous
incomplete, serves as a barrier to sharing the joy of the experience with their (parents) creators.
- “In-communication” meaning, the teen has not been taught how to communicate openly, honestly, and spontaneously—zero significant withholds—with his/her parents; instead, most parents train their child to deceive them, to withhold specific thoughts, especially, “I’ve been thinking of having sex with _____.” Such a parent-child relationship is fraught with breakdowns in communication.
Teens need to know that they have a positive effect on their parents. If a teen tries to inspire his/her parents to opt for healthy choices, or tries to bring the family together (perhaps back to the way it used to be), and fail, they experience invalidation; the thought being, "If I can’t affect happiness between my own parents then there must be something wrong with me." And so they begin living from the point of view that, ". . . something is wrong with me, I don't deserve happiness."
All teen pregnancies have one thing in common: No parent of either teen sat their teen down to have the “
birds and bees talk.” Such talks
always include—
- 1) Who pays for what? The parent sits with the teen and assigns the following homework (including a date for the homework to be completed). The teen is to research and itemize in writing, all the estimated monthly expenses, including the $1000.00+ hospital birth costs).
2) Having permission from, having the support of, both sets of parents to have sex. Parents who are withholding significant thoughts from each other are unconscious; they don't experience the guilt in the space between them and their teen.
3) A discussion about the fact that sperm can swim through underwear, that pills and other types of contraceptives don't always work.
4) A discussion about the fact that sperm sometimes squeezes out the opening of a condom or that condoms break or slide off when it's important that they don't, especially when there is a deceit being perpetrated. It's a perpetration that most males will immediately hide—that it broke—in hopes that his sperm were poor swimmers.
5) The fact that there are no accidents when it comes to pregnancies.* All pregnancies are a manifestation of either a conscious or an unconscious intention. The “talk” must include discussions about the unconscious motivations that produce a supposedly unwanted pregnancy. Just because one isn’t aware of how or why they produced a result doesn’t mean that they didn’t intend it.
6) And the all important subject—abortion or not—and, if yes, who pays for it?
7) A man must know that if the woman refuses to have an abortion that he still has to pay 50% of all expenses through to age 18.
Few parents of a pregnant teen acknowledge that the teen simply manifested their (the parent's) unconscious intention. Yes, both the mother and father unconsciously intended the pregnancy; we know this to be true based upon the results their leadership-communication skills produced. What's worse, parents usually lie about it, they make the teen wrong and blame him/her, honestly believing that it has absolutely nothing to do with how they (the parent) communicated (verbally, non-verbally, and psychically) with their teen.
Parents who are absolutely clear that they have no intention for their teen to produce a pregnancy problem do not create such a problem for themselves.
* All teen-mothers, when in-communication with a communication-skills coach, will acknowledged that they can now see that it was their intention to get pregnant, partly because they didn't want to confront the alternatives (learning how to communicate with her parents or studying for a profession). Many girls are able to see that they conned a boy into impregnating her which selfishly thwarted the possibility of him furthering his education due to bills (
it's not a gift of love). Thwarting is something those in the process of crashing and burning do; they take as many down with them as possible (everyone's parents, relatives and friends). Others are able to see that a pregnancy was a way to make his/her parents wrong because they did a lousy parenting job.
Most all teen-mothers eventually have to acknowledge the possibility that their pregnancy might be the consequence of a perpetration, a deception, of deceiving her parents and of supporting her boyfriend in deceiving his parents. All teen fathers eventually have to acknowledge an "accidental" pregnancy as being a consequence of deceit, of conning his girlfriend into deceiving his and her parents so as to have sex. Both teen-parents live with the thought that though they might profess love for each other, neither truly have each others best interests at heart in terms of continuing education. Worse, both arrogantly expect others (parents and welfare) to pay for the costs of their perpetration.
Most all parents of their teen's pregnancy hid from their teen that they, the parent(s), when they were first dating, deceived their own parents by conning each other into having sex behind the backs of their date's parents. Parents who hypocritically "teach" truth-telling while hiding their own teen-perpetrations from their teen, train their teen to be deceptive.