Yesterday, on Father's Day appropriately, Senator Barack Obama addressed a congregation in Chicago about the importance of young men supporting their families and taking the responsibility to raise the children they have.  Suggesting that too many fathers are absent from their children's lives, the Democratic Presidential candidate said this:

"We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child -- it's the courage to raise one."

Might I suggest that what would be even more courageous would be rewinding the clock a bit, say nine months or so earlier? Responsibility, it seems to me, begins long before sex, pregnancy, and birth.  What makes you a man is having the courage to wait to become a father until he is really ready to raise a child.  For some that means not having sex at all; for many it means making sure you and your partner use condoms and birth control every single time.

Don't get me wrong; I think the Senator's thoughts about responsible fatherhood are right on target.  Where I grew up, a situation like mine--living with both mom and dad--made me a part of the "weird" family.  We usually ate dinner together, and my dad would come fetch me from doing ultra-cool things with my pre-teen friends to do so.  And research without question shows that kids generally do better when both parents are around.

But why is it that when it comes to male involvement and responsible fatherhood programs, there is so little focus on encouraging men to be responsible by preventing an unplanned pregnancy--before a child or even a pregnancy is involved?  While there are numerous attorneys general and child support enforcement officials all over the country doing great work to make sure men take responsibility for their actions and support the lives they helped create, I suspect their jobs would be a whole lot easier if we devoted more attention to making sure they don't become daddies in the first place.

In an effort to get the word out about the StayTV Mash Up contest, I came across a really great web resource, Teens Today With Vanessa Van Petten.  Vanessa, a self-described "Gen Y'er", is an author, teen mentor, and general proponent of getting teens informed about the risk of teen pregnancy - you can see why we like her!  We also love her site and she was gracious enough to give us a little shout out...so, to return the favor, get yourself to Teens Today and read her latest entry about how parents can talk to teens about sex, love, and relationships.  And, if you can't bear to navigate away from Pregnant Pause for even a second, here is a clip of the vlog (video blog) that accompanies the post:

When it comes to teen and unplanned pregnancy, 2007 was in many ways the perfect storm.  After all, 2007 saw the release of the movies Knocked Up,  Waitress, and Juno.  It was the year that brought the first increase in the teen birth rate in 15 years.  And it was the year of breathless, 24/7, coverage of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears' baby bump to be. 

Cultural warriors and pop culture devotees have taken to their respective corners in interpreting the meaning of all this mishegoss.  We revisit all this due to the DVD release tomorrow of the Academy Award winning, indie-licious Juno. 

Generally speaking, the cultural warriors have been quick to pounce on the happily-ever-after nature of the movie--less than 3% of teen moms actually put their baby up for adoption, and exactly how many boys actually hang around in real life, critics wonder. As Laura Sessions Stepp of the Washington Post noted in a recent column, "Hollywood's attitude these days toward being young, single and pregnant by mistake: It's no big deal."

Pop culture devotees have been more sanguine.  This review from the Rotten Tomatoes website is typical: "Coming-of-age meets coming-to-term, in a film that is refreshingly frank about sex and love, pokes fun at the clashes between age and class, and, even more subversively...celebrates the pregnant possibilities of the non-nuclear family."

So, are both sides right?  Is this movie item number one on the teachable moments list or movie bad example?  Or are both sides missing the entertainment forest for the life lesson trees?   Your thoughts?

Richard Russo, the world's greatest living novelist (sorry, it's a measurable fact, not an opinion), recently penned an op-ed piece for The Washington Post.  In the piece Russo imagined what might be in a novel he would write about the Eliot Spitzer train wreck.  In the piece Russo says:

Fictive Eliot will do exactly what the real Eliot has done, only my guy almost never imagines getting caught.  And when he does occasionally consider the possibility, he trusts that there will be ample warning that disaster is imminent.  For the most part, things in his life have happened slowly, especially the good things, and he trusts that bad things will evolve similarly.  He will swerve at the last moment (emphasis mine).  The possibility of a head-on collision, swift and devastating, simply never occurs to him."

I love this article from Slate -- simply because it has the temerity to suggest that the well being of a child might be at least as important as the desires of an adult.  When it comes to getting pregnant and having a baby, it's NOT all about me (what I want, me, my life and me), it's all about we (what is best for a family?).  Emily: you are my new hero.  Be strong. 

There are at least 6 dead trees on my desk as I gear up for my first blog entry.  I am nervous.  I am excited.  I don't know what to write about so...I will tell you why the dead trees -- I mean, the massive reports -- I have in front of me are distressing.  All are from very well regarded groups.  All are scholarly, loaded with graphs, bloviating at full throttle with phrases like "priorities for public policy should be based on the following core principles..."   ALL talk about the problem of poverty in America, especially child poverty, along with some specific parts of the grim picture, including dropping out of high school.