Comments on: 4 Discussion: Forcing Your Daughter

By: H2o_girl

H2o_girl — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 01:27:53 +0000

Oh this is such a tough question. My daughter is 15 and we’ve had a discussion about this – I told her that she was a surprise pregnancy and also the best thing that ever happened to me, even though was totally freaked out at the time. I couldn’t bring myself yet to tell her that I planned to give her away but changed my mind. Someday.

I also told her of the history of hyper-fertility in the women in our family and that if she ever got pregnant (which I hope won’t happen for at least 10 years, if not more) she had three choices – she could get an abortion, raise the child, or I would raise the child. I told her she’d have to step over my dead body to give up the baby for adoption – that there was no reason to send that baby outside of its family. We were sort of kidding around, but not really.

Now as far as the law is concerned, it’s a harder question. There are girls in abusive homes to consider, but the idea that a young teenager could place their child for adoption, a decision she might come to regret later, pains me to think about.

By: Eileen Burke

Eileen Burke — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:08:29 +0000

Emphatically no, a parent should not be able to legally force a young woman into abortion, adoption, or parenting. I do believe, however, that if the parents are willing to parent their grandchild and the mother is not, they should be allowed to do so (except in cases of abuse or neglect of course). My reasoning is that a child should grow up in their biological family whenever possible.

Emphatically no, a young woman facing a crisis pregnancy should not legally have to inform her parents of the pregnancy, whatever she chooses. I also don’t believe a young woman contemplating having sex should need parental consent to obtain proper birth control. Although I have heard the stories of parents not realizing their daughter is pregnant until they go into labor, I would think it would be fairly rare for a teen to hide a pregnancy and subsequent adoption without her parents ever finding out.

From a personal perspective, if my daughter finds herself pregnant as a teen it is my greatest hope that she will come and talk to me about it. I would be upset, certainly. But to force her to make a decision she is against, I just could not live with myself. It is a decision that she needs to make, with support and non judgement. She would be the one who would have to live with and make peace with her path in life, not me or her father.

By: shannon

shannon — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:37:26 +0000

That’s an unfortunate double standard. I had no idea this issue even existed – thanks for enlightening me.

By: Suz

Suz — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:29:08 +0000

Completely understand your point Psychobabbler even if I dont like it. What I mean by this is that too often laws, regulations, processes are put in place to protect/assist the teens you reference (the ones with abusive home environments). However, not all homes are abusive. Why should I be excluded from my childs life, decisions, etc. merely because some other parent is abusive to their kids? I had a lengthy debate with my sister in law on this topic. (in that case it was about STD testing of high school students without parental knowledge).

We blame parents for not being involved or better or whatever yet we regularly take away their rights and responsibilities by allowing children to circumvent them.

My thoughts are exhaustive so I may save them for another post. I don’t have answers of course, just frustrations, concerns, etc. as a PARENT and MOTHER. These thoughts conflict with my own experience as an unsupported young woman.

By: Psychobabbler

Psychobabbler — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:32:08 +0000

Ooh, that’s a tough one. As a parent, I would certainly want to know if my minor child were pregnant/got someone pregnant, and what decisions they were making with regard to such. So from that persepctive, parental notification regarding the exercising of all options sits well with me. And…after many years of working with college students, I am painfully aware that there are many teens for whom parental notification could be dangerous, due to an abusive family system. I immediately think of two young women I worked with whose fathers, upon discovering their daughters were pregnant, beat them into miscarrying (one of whom was also denied access to medical treatment following). The problem is that many of the complexities and varieties of individual circumstances are often inadequately addressed by “one size fits all” laws.