Teen Talk: “Defining Up” Expectations of Teens

Collette Caprara / September 07, 2010

A recent comment by actress Jennifer Aniston that “women are more and more realizing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child” might seem to indicate that deviancy has irrevocably been “defined down” and that a culture of permissiveness has been permanently entrenched in our nation’s society.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the percentage of teens who believe that it’s okay for an unmarried female to have a child has increased to nearly 64 percent (among males) and to more than 70 percent (among females.

Yet throughout the country there are oases of excellence that provide evidence to the contrary.

One example is Teen Talk, a program for at-risk adolescent girls that was initiated by a community-based project in Milwaukee called the Family House. Though the Family House was primarily and originally established to provide hospice care for the low-income elderly, the project evolved to meet needs of others in the community, including the youths who would gather on the front steps in after-school hours. (more…)