Maya Angelo and Crisis Preganancies

The following post from Maya Angelo on Facebook got me right in the feels and reminded me of some important things:

“When I was 16, a boy in high school evinced interest in me, so I had sex with him — just once. And after I came out of that room, I thought, Is that all there is to it? My goodness, I’ll never do that again! Then, when I found out I was pregnant, I went to the boy and asked him for help, but he said it wasn’t his baby and he didn’t want any part of it.

I was scared to pieces. Back then, if you had money, there were some girls who got abortions, but I couldn’t deal with that idea. Oh, no. No. I knew there was somebody inside me. So I decided to keep the baby.

My older brother, Bailey, my confidant, told me not to tell my mother or she’d take me out of school. So I hid it the whole time with big blouses! Finally, three weeks before I was due, I left a note on my stepfather’s pillow telling him I was pregnant. He told my mother, and when she came home, she calmly asked me to run her bath.

I’ll never forget what she said: “Now tell me this — do you love the boy?” I said no. “Does he love you?” I said no. “Then there’s no point in ruining three lives. We are going to have our baby!”

What a knockout she was as a mother of teens. Very loving. Very accepting. Not one minute of recrimination. And I never felt any shame.

I’m telling you that the best decision I ever made was keeping that baby! Yes, absolutely. Guy was a delight from the start — so good, so bright, and I can’t imagine my life without him.

At 17 I got a job as a cook and later as a nightclub waitress. I found a room with cooking privileges, because I was a woman with a baby and needed my own place. My mother, who had a 14-room house, looked at me as if I was crazy! She said, “Remember this: You can always come home.” She kept that door open. And every time life kicked me in the belly, I would go home for a few weeks.

I struggled, sure. We lived hand-to-mouth, but it was really heart-to-hand. Guy had love and laughter and a lot of good reading and poetry as a child. Having my son brought out the best in me and enlarged my life. Whatever he missed, he himself is a great father today. He was once asked what it was like growing up in Maya Angelou’s shadow, and he said, “I always thought I was in her light.”

Years later, when I was married, I wanted to have more children, but I couldn’t conceive. Isn’t it wonderful that I had a child at 16? Praise God!”

Maya Angelou from the essay “The Decision That Changed My Life: Keeping My Baby” in 2001 found in the Family Circle Magazine. 

Today you have the best opportunity to make the best out of the life you have right now. Don't wait for things to get better, make them better. The Angelou Johnson Family.

I'd never heard this story before, but I am an admirer of Maya Angelo. I think it's good to be reminded that just because abortion is legal, that doesn't mean it's the best solution to a crisis pregnancy. I've heard many stories like this, how keeping the baby saved the mother, often because she was willing to work hard and do things for her child that she did not have the self worth to do for herself. What made the difference for Maya was the loving support of her mother. 

We need more of that kind of support for women who choose to keep their babies. I love the work being done by Pregnancy Counseling Center in Santa Rosa. From high school sex education programs to free pregnancy tests, counseling and resource help, sexual abuse recovery groups, post abortion counseling, to the medical clinic with on site ultrasound services, they provide substantial care and resources to every woman who comes, and even support for their partners. Often a woman will have a dozen voices surrounding her that are pressuring her to have an abortion, but her heart is unsure. PCC is a safe place where everything is confidential so all the pressure comes off, and she can see clearly that she really has multiple options and support for whatever she chooses. We can't call abortion a choice if there is no provision for other options. 

What we've learned from surveys of counseling centers like PCC is that when women in crisis pregnancies are given accurate and complete information, and support for all their options, 95% choose to keep their babies. When they are able to see the fetus by ultrasound, 98% will choose to keep their babies. A small percentage (approx. 3%) of those will choose to give their baby up for adoption. I believe that women all have a strong instinct to protect our unborn children. Deep inside we know them to be unique living beings. But we also have a strong instinct for self-preservation. It's appalling to me that we as a culture are okay with putting women in a situation that requires them to choose between their own lives and the lives of their unborn children. 

If you are pro-life, or pro choice, or just pro-women, you should be looking for places like PCC to support. Because the issue is bigger than whether abortion should be legal or not. It's bigger than having autonomy over our own bodies. The issue includes how we treat women in a crisis they did not create all by themselves. It includes having autonomy over our minds to gather accurate information and make clear decisions without pressure from partners and friends who have their own motivations. It's about the life women have to keep living after they've made their decision, and the lives their children will live if we punish them socioeconomically for their choice. It's about the shame and other abuse we heap on them, as if the natural consequences of that decision are not difficult and deterrent enough. With the majority of women now having abortions being those who already have children, it's about the massive increase in poverty forcing women to choose between the survival of their whole current family and that of one more tiny member. It's not just uneducated teenagers who made a mistake that we're talking about.

When we balance the ambition and wealth creation of capitalism with a social safety net that ensures worker protections like a fair minimum wage, universal health care, and access to as much education as anyone wants to pursue, we create a pathway out of poverty for all of our citizens and remove the crushing weight, now unfairly carried by women, to provide what her village ought to. The whole country benefits economically from the steady addition of healthy educated young adults. Furthermore, the surest solution to overpopulation is not abortion among the impoverished, but the higher education of women. Around the world we see birth rates drop as women have increased equality and access to education. 

When we support women in crisis pregnancies with unconditional acceptance and a safety net to fall back on, like Maya's mother gave her, we help them to succeed in raising more beautiful people that will be friends and co-laborers on earth with our children, that we can hand our world over to some day with joy and pride. 

Child Safety vs Independence

When issues of child safety vs independence come up there's always a lot of tension. Not just between people, but within us as moms. How do we foster independence in our children without putting them in any danger? We can't! There's no way to do it without some level of risk. But that's the point. We want them to learn thoughtful risk management so they can continue to be safe out in the world as young adults. 

I was abused by my foster brother in the 'safety of my own home' and as a mother have had to fight the random persistent fear that anyone I know could be a child molester. I know in my logical brain that it's just not true, but I'm perhaps more vigilant in that area than a mother who doesn't have that experience. On the other hand, I had the run of our small town at age seven and was babysitting someone else's five children at the age of 15 and no one thought that was dangerous or unusual at the time. My kids are growing up in a much different world, but because of that experience I've pushed myself to find ways to give them more freedom than some people think is appropriate. It's easy to underestimate the level of independence a child is ready for because our protective instinct is so strong. But remembering the glorious feeling of my own slowly escalating freedom growing up, and putting specific ages to it, has given me some perspective. 

I've looked around to see what other parents are allowing and it's all over the place. Some people want to codify into law a specific set of guidelines, usually very strict ones. But they're usually people that don't have the challenges of poverty to contend with. The law is presently pretty flexible where I am in California and that's important because, as parents, we're all trying to do our best, every child is different in what they're prepared to face in the world at each age, and the world they're growing up in is constantly changing. Furthermore, the challenges being faced by an increasingly large percentage of Americans living in poverty can be solved in a variety of creative ways that may not always fit a legal box made by well meaning people in a more privileged class.

There have been times that I've considered calling CPS about what appeared to me to be a bad/dangerous parenting decision, but haven't been compelled to actually do it yet. My dad was a police officer when I was young so I'm not squeamish about calling the cops. But when we see something we have a choice: is it serious enough to possibly warrant separating the child from their parents (causing definite trauma) or is that family just in need of a supportive community instead. Like most parents, I would do anything to protect a child, including someone else's. We can stay and watch over a child we think may be unsupervised and talk (kindly) to the parent when they show up. We can lend a hand to another mom with her hands full. We can say a kind word to a child whose mom looks unhinged in the grocery store. We've all been there. But our culture has become very hostile toward parents. Making an effort to be the community that you would like to have can be a better solution. 

On the other side of that equation I've received a call from CPS because of something my two year old said in preschool. My husband and I met with the agent and clarified our disciplinary policy, which is well reasoned and was not a problem. But that visit was as scary as hell. I've done the mandated reporter training, though I'm not currently in the position of being one, so I understand why the preschool teacher had to report first. But my visceral reaction toward her for not approaching ME first was severe. I can imagine a less confident parent making more trouble for themselves by having a massively explosive reaction. For most of us a call from CPS is our second biggest nightmare, close behind actually losing a child.

This brings me to my last point. Ultimately, some children will be lost. That's why we have that nightmare. We know there are horrible people out there who know we can't do it all. They know we can't possibly watch our child every second of their lives. And they're looking for openings to exploit. We know that the world is a dangerous place and a deadly accident can happen in the blink of an eye. We know that our brains are not capable of the vigilant undistracted watchfulness that internet trolls expect us to have over our children. This is the horrible fear every parent must live with. We cannot take that much responsibility on ourselves. The world is what it is, and we can only do so much within it. When we are crippled by fear of the world, we cripple our children's ability to live in it. We have to raise them for the world we want to build, without unreasonable fear of the world we are in. This is the opportunity cost. Generations of parents who lost half their children to disease and accidents kept pressing forward. They left us a much safer world. We cannot let fear, or grief, stop the forward progress of humanity. 

As my kids are all getting older, the biggest takeaways on the independence vs child safety argument that I can offer are these:

• Teach the skills they need for independence early and often. It will be a long process and there will be some risk. 

• Don't rush to judge what other parents are allowing because you don't know what level they've taught to and what their risk/benefit analysis with their child was. 

• There's a big risk in waiting too long to cultivate independence, that you will miss the window and have risk averse young adults living with you forever. 

• The dangers we have to guard against are different, but statistically we are living in a safer world than the one we were raised in. Fear causes us to make bad decisions, so it's important to fight against it. 

• When you've done your best, be kind to yourself. And be kind to other parents. We all have to go through this, and not everyone will come out unscathed. 

On Compulsory Education

For too many kids compulsory high school attendance is a form of imprisonment. More than 20 years after leaving I'm still traumatized by my formal education. How do I know? I recently applied to take a few classes at my local junior college and I had to fight off a panic attack just sitting at my home computer logging on to their website. As an adult returning to school you might expect me to worry about my grades, about the challenge of taking classes on top of an already full and established life, or the new social situation I'll be entering. But that's not it at all. I'm afraid of becoming trapped again. 

How can I be trapped by something I've signed up for? I know it doesn't make sense. But all of my my high school memories are connected to a deep sense of imprisonment. I was a gifted kid with a B+ average taking the most challenging classes they would let me. But I maintained that gpa without ever doing homework at home or studying...anything. I refused to do work at home as my only avenue of rebellion against teachers wasting so much of my time at school. I was deeply profoundly bored. 

People say trite things about kids who are bored, but I wasn't allowed to relieve my own boredom. I was trapped. I was forced to spend all day with people I didn't know who didn't care to know me. I lived by a bell schedule that told me when I could eat and when I could pee. I was doing nothing that was either meaningful or productive for the world. I passed the dreaded exit exams in my freshman year, one of only four freshmen to pass the writing test. Every day that I was compelled to attend after that was a day I felt imprisoned. 

It was too horrific for me to stay. Halfway through my junior year I dropped out and homeschooled myself to get a real diploma. I only had five classes left to take to get it so I graduated early. At the same time I took a full time job as office manager for two businesses starting up in the same space and got to learn the printing industry. Learning in the real world doing real productive and meaningful things was like coming out of a coma. I was engaged and excited. The real world is a much better place to learn than this artificial environment we've created to formally educate our children. 

I've become very involved in public education as the mother of 4 daughters. Our educational system has a lot of real problems that will take a lot of creativity to solve. Educators are beginning to ask how people would change the system  and this one thing stands out for me. We need to remove the 'compulsory' element of our public education system and create an 'opportunity' educational structure. If we want children to learn we must sell them on the subject we're presenting. We know that forcing them to learn by rote does not result in a retained education. They have to want to learn. We must promote based on mastery and build real world incentives into the system at every level. And we must get the kids who feel trapped out of the classroom and into apprenticeship learning opportunities. 

You may argue that if education isn't compulsory parents won't make their children attend! This is why real world incentives are essential. Many parents will send their kids simply for the free childcare, and others for the free lunch. But these parents drop their kids off and have no further involvement in the process. Parental involvement is one of the biggest factors in student success.   If there are real parent incentives for being involved in the education of their children, the education the children get will be more meaningful and effective. 

These rewards can be additional educational opportunities like trips to national parks or museums framed as 'vacations.' Or digital rewards like ebooks, music, and movies curated to expand engagement with the arts. It can be a system to reward diligence by providing students with the tools to develop their talents with options like musical instruments, art supplies, or sports gear. Advancing in core subjects can be rewarded with opportunities to take fun classes. The prison like bell schedule can be eliminated and the centralization of education broken up as each child navigates their own path through the educational opportunities presented in their region. The most productive and retained learning experiences my children have had have been out of school visiting museums and historic places. Anything we can do to take education on location, we should be doing. 

No, I don't expect anyone to give my proposal serious thought. It would create massive chaos within the existing structure. It's so fundamental a change I'm sure there are readers already writing their rebuttals before I reach the end of my argument. 'The system shouldn't have to change to accommodate a few gifted kids. They'll be alright regardless.' But there are so many impoverished kids that are also struggling, also dropping out, and also determined never to be trapped again by formal education. They too, feel imprisoned by it. Their schools even have metal detectors at the doors and police patrolling the halls. They are becoming more averse to education with each passing day. Our school system is shutting down the natural curiosity born in every child by forcing them to learn in one proscribed way on one expected timeline. 

I am daring to imagine something completely different. I'm imagining a crazy complicated system that we now have the technology to make simple if we had the will. I'm imagining a course of education that begins with the health of newborns and the simultaneous education of their parents and exends fluidly through childhood into adulthood along a variety of pathways to employment. I'm imagining a complete shift in the way we view education from teaching a set curriculum on a set schedule to teaching how to learn and coaching students down the path of lifelong learning that will prepare them to meet the challenges of the future. 

It has massive consequences, but it all begins with changing one word. Start changing it in your head and see what possibilities open up, how it demands we make school better suit the students. America should be the land of opportunity, not compulsion. Especially for our children.