Recently, I’ve been posting teen pregnancy prevention ads to our Facebook page to see what we think about them.
In general, I think billboards and posters are a weak way to combat teen pregnancy rates. (Never mind that they are the lowest they’ve been in 40 years.) Peer mentoring/counseling, comprehensive sex education, and active, involved parents are some of the best (most effective) ways to decrease teen pregnancy. Billboards that have no real message other than “Don’t get pregnant!” don’t do much for me or the millions of teens each year who are sexually active.
Then I saw this ad from the people behind the “Get Britain Fertile” campaign. In it, a 46-year-old woman was made up to look like a 70-year-old pregnant woman. It’s part of a push to remind people of their fertile years and to encourage them to take advantage while the eggs are fresh.
Whaddya know? A campaign to encourage women to have babies at a younger age? Craziness, huh?
Kate Garraway is the 40something mom in the picture. She had her first child at 38 and her second at 42 and says she now feels disappointed that she isn’t able to have another. “I do look back now and realize that leaving pregnancy late can be a risky bet as diminishing fertility can stack the odds against you,” she told the Telegraph. “In some ways I wish I’d had my babies younger.”
Some women, particularly those who have struggled with infertility, find the ads offensive and don’t believe there needs to be a campaign to highlight what most women already know. I know many women who have had to do all the charting, temperature-taking, injections, pill-popping, sex-on-the-right-days-of-the-month measures in order to get pregnant. Just like the teen pregnancy ads, it is not enough to simply present an image and have people think, “Oh, no. I won’t do that.”
Why are women waiting longer to have children? The trend is mainly with college-educated women, which makes sense because they tend to have higher incomes and better ability to control when they reproduce.
While I adore being a young mother and have dedicated my career to empowering teen and 20something mothers, I don’t think it’s the path for everyone. Some people don’t meet the right person until their 30s. Some people aren’t sure they even want children until later on. Other people want to hit certain career goals first. And that’s fine.
I think women have been beat over the heads for years about our biological clocks, which makes the “having it all” discussion even more cumbersome. There’s always that fear in the media that women won’t have the perfect trifecta (partner, kids, career), but we don’t all want the same thing, and there’s no reason to push everyone to make the same decisions at the same time in their life.
Some people will have babies earlier and some will have them later. No matter what we do. No matter how many billboards we put up. No matter how many condoms we pass out. No matter what we do.
I see this campaign as ineffective because again, it doesn’t address the reasons why women are waiting later and ignoring the fact that if they want to wait, that is their right to do with their bodies what they wish.
What do you think about it? We’ll know more once the full campaign launches June 3.
This is a very interesting campaign picture. For women who are not in their teens and in the throes of their careers, it is an important reminder. Somehow, we are taught that we can do it all and have it all. Sometimes, we can realize that time is running out.
I really don’t understand why there is a need to have a campaign. Let people do with their bodies what they will do. I don’t need a reminder that I’m low on eggs..Lol