2006年NPR美国国家公共电台一月-As an Adult, Woman Still Judged by Teen M

Teenage girls who have babies. First, there are fewer of them than there are used to be. This is especially striking among black teenagers. Their pregnancy 1 rate is down 45% over a decade. Also young girls who have babies are overwhelmingly poor, at least a third of them are the daughters of teenage mothers. And although teenagers who have children are more likely to drop out of school, a black teenage mother is more likely to complete high school than a white one. Now, with all those facts in mind, Commentator 2 Desiree Cooper would like to tell the story of one woman who had a baby when she was in high school.

By any measure, Nelly Johnson can be proud of her life. She graduated with honors from NYU and at 29 earned her Masters in social work from the University of Michigan. But there is one thing that people insist on making her feel ashamed of - the fact that she had a baby when she was 15. "I ve achieved so much, " said Johnson, "but no matter what I do or how old I am, it seems that people would forever see me as a teen mother. " I wanted to ask Johnson what did she expect? Applause? To foolishly risk her future. Shame on her. On the other hand, how long should we punish teen moms in order to make examples of them? If it's teaching a tough lesson that we want, Johnson like many other teen moms has had some hard knocks. When she got pregnant as a high school freshman 3, her family convinced her to keep the baby. But she nearly died in childbirth. Her daughter was 12 days old and still nameless before Johnson was well enough to see her. "She was a jewel", said Johnson, "and so I named her Diamond. " Johnson said she was ostracised by church and family members who behaved as if she were contagious 4. When she wanted to run for home-coming court in a senior year, the school wouldn't let her because she was a mother of a two-year-old. Although she said teen fathers don't get the same kind of treatment. Johnson's family urged her to leave Diamond behind when she attended NYU. She did so reluctantly, not wanted to slough 5 off her responsibility on others. A classmate cried when she found out that Johnson had a toddler at home. "She thought I was just like the other students", said Johnson, " she'd only read about people like me. When she volunteered to counsel pregnant girls at a Community Center, she got a similar reaction. She said, " they thought I was lying. People had told them that they could succeed, but they'd never seen anyone do it". Johnson decided 6 right then to become a social worker to support girls who find themselves pregnant and saddled by stigma 7. In a junior year, she moved off campus and brought Diamond to New York where the two continued their education together. As she donned to cap and gown to get a Master's Degree in December, the achievement was bittersweet. "Just recently, a co-worker found out I had a teenage daughter and she yelled at me, ' what were you thinking? ", said Johnson, " I was a teenage mom 13 years ago. I'm not one now. When will I be able to stop living beneath such low expectations? " When I listen to Johnson's story, I can't help but think that the problems of teen mothers might also have something to do with our unwillingness 8 to forget them. We can continue to deride 9 them for their mistakes, or we can help them overcome the past and show them by example what love is really all about.

NEW WORDS:

childbirth 分娩
ostracize 10 排斥
contagious 传染性的
slough off 抛弃,丢弃
toddler 初学走路的孩子
saddle n.马鞍 v.承受
stigma 污名
don if you don clothing, you put it on.