Bristol Palin went on television recently in a bold move. She called a press conference without her mother's knowledge. The interviewer asked her probing questions and Bristol gave honest, thoughtful answers. She admitted that abstinence among teen-agers is not working and is a naïve position to take, as teens are definitely interested in sex. She shared that she's glad to be a new mother for all the joys motherhood brings but she'd rather have entered motherhood ten years later, when she had a career, a home and a marriage. She also admitted that she now realizes that she cannot just be concerned about herself, as she's responsible for another human being. In essence, she has really cut short her adolecence, a time of making choices and learning by taking risks and developing personal skills, boundaries and strengths.
Research has shown that teen-age pregnancy is fraught with emotional roots and stresses. Teens need and want someone to love them, to care about them, to give them attention. They think that their babies will give that to them. Then there are always the group that believes they'll get money to support themselves and their children. Then there are those who have children to make up for all the connections and attention they didn't get in their own childhoods. We certainly have a current example of that with the woman who just had eight babies after IVF treatments. She's a single mother also.
During the interview, I watched Bristol and saw what I thought was probably a common enough occurrence in the Palin family. When grandmother Sarah entered the set with Bristol's baby, all the attention went to Sarah; I watched Bristol as she witnessed this. She actually looked pained and excluded by her mothers presence. Sarah energetically took up all the "air" in the room, immediately got the interviewer's attention and kept it.
I am just witnessing and speculating. Bristol is the first born and probably did not get enough of the attention she needed in her childhood. She got more than her mother's attention with her pregnancy- she got the whole worlds by accident, by design?
Clearly I believe what I've been saying for years. The kind of attention we get in our childhoods lives with us forever; in fact, the kind of attention that our parents get in their childhood lives with us forever. I am seeing this more and more all around me. Sarah Palin, former Miss Wasilla, Beauty Queen, obviously needs lots of attention and gets it. This need is problematic for her eldest daughter, Bristol. However, Bristol now appears to be growing into her own brand of motherhood/adulthood. She wants to work on the issue of teen-age pregnancy. By calling her own press conference to state her newly acquired wisdom, which differs from her families', Bristol is certainly showing up as her own person.
That's what growth is all about: using our life experiences to gain knowledge and go on to share the lessons.
Alice Aspen March, Expert on Impact of Attention, TheAttentionFactor(R).
Speaker, Published Author, Workshop Leader, Exec. Dir. of Non-Profit, FACT: impact of TV on Children and Families; kept Fred Rogers Neighborhood on the air as Chair of KCET Community Advisory Board, Co-Produced Emmy-nominated, Latch-Key Kids, narrated by Christopher Reeve; appointed by Calif. State Senate to two State Commissions.
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