Precious

Max and I watched Oprah and Tyler Perry's production of "Precious," which, as I understand it, was based on a novel entitled Push by Sapphire. What a story! This film tells what is right and wrong with our current sociological system. Unfortunately, much of what is wrong seems to be unfixable.

The story is that of a young, fat, unattractive girl, Precious, who is 16, still in middle school, molested by her mother's boyfriend, becomes pregnant twice, and is stuck in a loveless, harsh, life. Her mother, played by comedienne Mo'nique, is cruel and abusive, and spends most of hertime in front of the television, cheating welfare by shuffling Precious's daughter to and from her home and her mother's home. The child is Down's Syndrome, which we discover in a shocking way about half through the film.

How Precious extricates herself from her abusive home is an uplifting story and gives us all hope; the tragedy is that she will be extricating herself from an abusive home to a home where she will live in poverty with two children who will most likely also live in poverty throughout their lives. Precious cannot be blamed for her plight, because she did not choose to become pregnant, and had few, if any choices about what to do with the babies she would deliver. In fact, she was expelled from school because she was pregnant, effectively cutting off her only hope for a better life. Because of a caring educator, however, Precious finds and succeeds in an alternative school for girls who have been expelled from or have dropped out of school. The story of her journey, including stints with her social worker (played convincingly by Mariah Carey) are worth the watch and worth the tears that you will shed as you empathize with this young woman.

I continue to wonder what our society can do with all these babies that are being born to young, unmarried, uneducated girls. The idea of abortion is anathema to many for many reasons, although young, white, wealthy women are generally able to access abortion services quickly and quietly. Additionally, it seems as if adoption is not an acceptable alternative for many young, pregnant girls, although I don't know why. But it seems to me that the place to stop these pregnancies, although not available to Precious, whose pregnancy was a result of of rape rather than consensual sexual action, is before they happen.

What can we do to convince girls that getting pregnant and having a baby is tantamount to life-long poverty, children who tend to use drugs and alcohol at earlier ages, children who are more likely to underachieve or drop out of school, children who are more likely to have sex at earlier ages, and children who themselves will live in poverty? I don't have any answers other than education and birth control. But until we figure this out, our society will have to support more and more children whose family structure sets them up for failure, and that starts when teen-aged, single girls have babies. It simply has to stop.

So while I cheered for Precious as she started her new life journey, I was realistic enough to know that she, like many other young girls, was moving from the rock to the hard place.