Ever wondered what people might think of you or
treat you if you told them that you're going to be a mother? Not just a
mother who is in her early to mid 20s, graduated from high school (or college),
get married (or not), and becomes pregnant. I mean a mother who is a teenager
who has not graduated from middle or high school. Well there was a girl who
went through that experience in high school, but here is the catch she wanted
everyone to believe something that wasn't true.
The Pregnancy Project is
a memoir written by a teenage girl name Gaby Rodriguez with Jenna Glatzer.
Now, you're probably wondering why some teenage
girl is writing a book with the word pregnancy in the title. Well it is
not some fairytale story; it is Gaby's own story on how she faked her
own pregnancy for a school project when she was a senior (12th grade) in high
school!
Just to let you know, Gaby did not fake her
own pregnancy for attention, sympathy, or because it was expected of her to get
pregnant, she faked it for two reasons. First, she wanted to know how people
would treat her at school, her family, and her boyfriend's family. Gaby wanted
to take notes on what the people who meant to her the most would say so she
could give her speech to her entire school about what they have said about her.
Second, Gaby wanted to prove her point how stereotypes can be hurtful to other
people.
I came across this book randomly at the library not
too long ago at the library. I thought it was a book that was written by one of
the teenage girls from Gloucester, Massachusetts who joined a girls' only
"club" at her high school (17 girls joined to be exact) back in 2008,
this group was called The Pregnancy Pact. Why? The girls wanted to
get pregnant at the same time and raise their babies together because they
thought life would be awesome if their children were raised together.
Anyways, I thought Gaby Rodriguez did a great job
describing her family background on how was raised by a single mother who
became a teenage mom herself and never went to high school. Also, Gaby's mother
was not the only one in the family who went though a teenage pregnancy; Gaby
had siblings that went though child labor when they were teenagers. I do
recommend this book to boys and girls who are thinking about becoming sexually
active because it does give you a glimpse of what people would think of you and
how they would be affected by their pregnancy. So parents, you may read
this book too but I do hope you will allow your teenagers to read it as well.
I know teen pregnancy is a tough topic to discuss,
but I can tell you that Miss Gaby Rodriguez wants to spread the awareness of
teen pregnancy and also share her story of her experience of what she went
though she wasn't really pregnant.
Trivia Question:
1) When Gaby was planning her fake pregnancy for
her school project, she told only three people, whom did she tell?
2) Gaby was raised in a huge family; seven siblings to be exact, out of
how many of the seven siblings became a teen parent?
***while on the subject of teen pregnancy, I posted a link to a website about The Pregnancy Pact at the Massachusetts high school***
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-pregnancy-pact-shocks-mass-town-19-06-2008/
Rodriguez, Gaby, and Jenna Glatzer. The Pregnancy Project A Memoir. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2012. Print.
CBSNews. "Teens' Pregnancy Pact Shocks Mass. Town." CBS News. CBS Interactive, 19 June 2008. Web. 13 Feb. 2017.
Both The Pregnancy Project and The Pregnancy Pact have been turned into a movie.
I want to put citations in my blogs to show credit to the author(s) and editor(s) who published the book. The description above are my words.
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