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One of the things that I mention in my upcoming book, Standing Above the Crowd, www.standingabovethecrowd.com is the fact that life is challenging enough for our young people without adding additional challenges that you may or may not be prepared for. I encourage all young people to get their education and careers in place before taking on parenthood because you’ll be that much more prepared for it. In one of the chapters in my book, I mention that as a youngster, I made several promises to myself in an attempt to be the best that I could be. I ask the reader to make a little promise to themselves in regards to something that will help make them the best they can be. Perhaps one of those promises can be that you’ll wait for marriage before having children.
I had the recent experience of watching the television show “16 and Pregnant” with some young teens the other day, and I was horrified to hear some of their comments in regards to how they were looking forward to being 16 and pregnant. They thought it would be the coolest thing for them to do with their lives, besides all of their friends are doing it. So, I took the time to watch the show with them and point out the challenges they would face (i.e. non or under employment, lack of education, lack of income, lack of decent living arrangements and typically having a partner who is not ready for parenthood and most likely will leave you and the baby high and dry, etc.) if they decided to go that route with their lives. I think that I at least got them to pay attention and listen to me, even though there’s the old “it won’t happen to me” mentality that still remains with some of them. I hope that I was able to reach them in some regard though.
I know that speaking out of on the topic of unwed motherhood is something that a lot of people (especially in my own African – American communities) don’t want to talk about or deal with, but in this day and age, our children need all the assistance they can get in order to lead productive, healthy and successful lives. I’m very sensitive to all of the dynamics that are at play being that I majored in Sociology and I’m a student of history. I speak on the topic virtually everywhere I go. I just know that it’s a very competitive world out there and young people from every walk of life need every competitive edge that they can get. We can “Wait on Superman” only so long before we have to take into account what we can do individually to make our lives the best they can be. If nothing else we need to keep in mind the future generations that are to follow in our footsteps.
James Donaldson, Author of Standing Above The Crowd
