Recent news about teen pregnancy in Gloucester, Massachusetts, highlighted in Time Magazine, has been spreading like wildfire, controversial not only because the news involved 17 girls in one high school, but because many of them made a pact to get pregnant together on purpose.

Although this story evokes a number of different responses, the main question on my mind is: what went wrong? What failures were there in parents talking to their teens, in schools educating their students, and in community resources reaching out to young adults? Honestly - how many people weren’t paying attention in order for this to happen?

On the girls’ part, they appear to be classic millennials who seemingly lack direction and ambition. Is this a reflection of the economic situation (which, in Gloucester, due to an ever-decreasing fishing industry, is especially bad)? Perhaps these girls couldn’t see a lot of options for their future, found nothing to engage them, and considered this to be their way out. Many of these girls in telling their story believe that pregnancy won’t just bring them unconditional love, but it will make them whole. In fact, they’re so sheltered that they didn’t even think about what pregnancy would mean, about their lives falling apart around it. Rather than thinking through the consequences, these girls instead act impulsively, all too likely believing that their parents would be there to back them up and figure out the details. However, unlike teen rebellions of the past, which involved tattoos, body piercings, and gothic hair, this one has lifelong irreversible consequences.

Not to mention the “me too” aspect of this phenomenon. Who knows how many girls are still trying to catch up and join the Gloucester group or join a local group of their own. The Time story following the girls reported the disappointment of those who found out that they weren’t pregnant. This pact, then, is not just the epitome of myopic thinking, but the ultimate clique.

Welcome to the ultimate extension of the “Jamie Lynn Spears Syndrome.” Young girls today see their idols in Hollywood flaunting pregnancies, from the teenage Jamie Lynn and 23-year-old Ashlee Simpson to other young stars like Nicole Ritchie and Jessica Alba. Jamie Lynn, in fact, just recently had her baby at the age of 17 (older than many of these girls will be when their babies are due). And while these stars make pregnancy and, in some cases, even single-motherhood, look fun and glamorous, this sends the wrong message to the young girls who look up to them. Besides that, it’s one thing if you’re Spears and, though very young, have millions of dollars behind you to buy the big house, hire nannies, and ensure that you and your child will be financially set. But how many of these girls from Gloucester will be able to finish high school? How many who would have attended college now won’t get the chance? How many will lose the chance to have a career, be single moms or get married and then divorced, or rely completely on their own parents to help them raise their children? And how many will end up on welfare and find themselves living below the poverty line? In this case, the decision to get pregnant was neither “fun” nor “glamorous,” but instead both outrageous and incredibly short-sighted.

It’s not even as if these girls are trying to keep it all quiet. This is taking place in a small town community where the girls plan to have their babies, keep them, and brag about it. They have entered into a social pact rather than attempting to maintain some sense of privacy. In many ways, this is the social version of school violence. These girls are imploding their own lives and the lives of those around them. And, set in a high school where daycare is provided for teen moms, this pact sends just as bad of a message to our kids as pregnant teens in Hollywood. How many other communities of young girls around the country will do the same thing? The ability of kids to spawn imitation amongst other kids has always been surprisingly limitless. Apparently we are only a year away from seeing these 17 young girls and their babies on the cover of People magazine?

Additionally, how can it be that so many parents didn’t catch on to this happening? Where did all of this babymaking take place? And what about a similar pact among the boys, or did they even know? I am, of course, operating under the assumption that there weren’t 17 sets of parents who were in favor of their 15 and 16-year-old girls getting pregnant (one of them by a 24-year-old homeless man, another shock in an already almost unbelievable story). And then there are the schools. As schools across the country get more conservative, kids having adequate access to conversations about either birth control or abstinence becomes a concern. With schools more and more reluctant to engage in these discussions, this story reflects the lack of information being given to today’s teens. These policies mean that our kids miss the messaging of either “don’t have sex before marriage” or, “if you do, you had better be using protection.”

For all of these reasons, this incident is both sad and astounding. For parents, what we need to do is make sure that we are opening the appropriate dialogue with our own children and communicating values to both our daughters and our sons so that they have the ability to recognize this as a truly terrible idea. Our kids must not only have information, but be able to think of the long-term consequences of their actions, as these girls clearly did not. The rest of us should look at this and realize that it’s ubiquitous; we are not immune to this in our suburban, urban, or small town lives. It could happen anywhere.

As for the 17 girls, they have a hard road ahead of them. It’s too bad that NBC’s new show, The Baby Borrowers, isn’t airing until next week. Hopefully all of these girls will be tuning in to see teenagers who are handed babies and find themselves completely overwhelmed. It’s a good lesson, which for this group, comes too late. Which is exactly why every single one of us should be sitting down with our tweens and teens to discuss this incident tonight.

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