Penalizing the Wrong Thing

It seems that the only people still struggling with institutional expressions of moral courage are the Catholics.

This tends to cause kerfuffles, because moral courage always involves sacrifice and risk. Pissing people off is not a certain sign of being right, but it is a not-uncommon result of the exercise of moral discipline (self-discipline or imposed discipline).

One recent kerfuffle was caused by a Montana Catholic school's decision to fire an unmarried teacher who became pregnant.  The evidence of her having violated their moral turpitude clause was plain for all to see, and so they acted on it.

The temptation, of course, is to say that the school was in the wrong because they were being mean, judgy McJudgersons.  This is a response that implicitly condemns any exercise of institutional moral discernment, that makes all moral decisions not immediately and forensically related to work performance private, individual ones.  This is the default practice of virtually every institution in the country, even those that are explicitly religiously affiliated.  (The UMC has a hard time firing pastors for moral turpitude, much less secretaries or daycare workers, and churches whose well-liked pastors have been terminated for having multiple affairs with many different congregants bear resentment against the mean, judgy denomination for decades.  Firing pastors for incompetence is a near impossibility, but that's another story.)

I honestly don't think that argument is a helpful one, even if I am sympathetic with the underlying concern--that firing this woman is the wrong response.

Cathleen Kaveny has written this lovely and careful piece responding to the issue and has offered a better line of thought.

In it, she highlights a crucial problem with the exercise of moral turpitude clauses: only women can be found guilty.

This isn't really true, and Kaveny doesn't make the mistake of putting it that way.

It is functionally true, however.   The Catholic church--themselves almost the last remaining institution with a moral backbone--have retreated from virtually every issue but that which makes them the most unpopular: sexuality.  And in that realm, since the beginning of time, there has only been one gender whose very body bears the incontrovertible evidence of sexual sin.

Only women can get pregnant.

And pregnancy is the only "proof" that cannot be hidden or ignored.  Men can be forced to take paternity tests, of course, though few institutions have gotten around to remembering that and fewer still manage to overcome their general reluctance to give a man a reason to file a lawsuit.  (Do women file fewer lawsuits?  Probably.  There is certainly less institutional fear of those who might.)

But a big, fat belly thrusts itself into our communal consciousness just as surely as it thrusts itself into a room before its duck-waddling bearer can catch up with it.  Institutions can no more forgo institutional responses to the inconvenient facts of women's reproduction than seventy-year-old men and women can forgo rubbing pregnant women's distended bellies.

So sweet Miss Susie walks into school one September with a big, big belly, and the school cannot ignore that problem, the way they can ignore the Lamborghini Mr. Michael very sensibly keeps at home or the bruises Mr. John's wife is careful to hide or the income Miss Janie doesn't report and tithe or whatever else violates their moral convictions.

And, of course, Miss Susie's paramour suffers nothing, unless they were caught, as Dr. Kaveny puts it, canoodling in the broom closet at school.

So the burden of these punishments are shared unfairly, and the community learns the wrong thing: it is pregnancy that is punished, not extra-marital sexuality as such.  Getting caught--and only women can get caught--is the problem.  Pregnancy is the problem.

This ought not be.  Pregnancy is not a problem.  It's not evidence of sin.  It's evidence of life.  It's evidence that God continues to give the gift of children to us, even in the midst of--even by means of!--our sinful condition.

This is exactly the mistake that Isaac's school's Health program makes, and it suffers from the same pedagogical idiocy: it teaches that pregnancy is the problem to be avoided.

One exercise in particular jerked my chain.

Isaac was required to calculate the financial burden a child imposes its first two years of life.

I thought we were having a great moment of communication, until I realized what was going on.

"Hey, Mom, how much do Amos's diapers cost?"
"Well, we use some cloth, so it's hard to say exactly, but it's about $35 a month for the disposables."
"When did he switch to regular milk?  And is formula more expensive than milk?"
"Oh, yes, formula is, like, twenty-five dollars a week, if you're formula-feeding full time, and that's if you're lucky enough not to need the special needs stuff.  You switch to milk at one year, but the amount they still need isn't exactly trivial."
"What are other things babies need?"
"Um . . . wait a minute . . . why are you asking?  Is there an urgent need here that I should be aware of?"
"Health class."
"Oh.  Oh.  Mmm."

The assignment was designed to discourage teen childbearing, but it did so by presenting a baby as a costly, burdensome thing.  It was one of the few assignments that spoke a language teens can understand, and it was all oriented toward making a baby seem like a bad thing.

Isaac didn't understand why I started throwing a temper tantrum at the end of his assignment.

"Okay, son, what's the total cost you've come up with?"
"$13, 850.  But the website says that I didn't include living quarters or travel expenses, which I would need because I'd be on my own."
"What?"
"I'd need to get my own place."
"ARE YOU FARGLING KIDDING ME?!?!"
"I mean, you know, some parents would . . ."
:hostile stare:
"So, uh, that's, uh, why I didn't even think to include the cost of the apartment, because, uh, I knew you and Dad would . . . uh . . . be . . . so, $13K.  Pretty pricey."
"Okay.  So.  You're in your car.  You're on a date.  Your girlfriend is with you.  It's dark out, and the windows in the back seat are tinted."
"Um, Mom, I don't like where this is going. . ."
"Do you really think to yourself, 'Gosh, I'd like to, but this could cost me $13K'?  Is that really going to stop you?"
"Well . . . it . . . maybe . . ."
"No.  It won't.  The only time you're going to think about $13K is when the little test strip comes back with two pink lines on it, and you think, 'Gosh, I could spend $300 now, or $13K later.'"
"I would never!"
"Well, you might now.  Now that they've frakking given you a reason to!!!!!"

It focused on disincentivizing child-bearing (or, really, child-rearing), not teen sexuality.  Having a baby is costly.  Having sex isn't.

And, as if to drive the point home, there was no corresponding financial activity related to STDs.  No calculating how much getting HPV or HIV or gonorrhea or chlamydia costs you.  Oh, they mention STDs.  The medical aspects.  But not the financial costs.

The part that is simply and entirely costly and painful and burdensome is noted, but the burden is not demonstrated in the terms teens understand.  (They understand money, because they all want iPhones and candy bars and cars with full gas tanks.  That's why the price-out-a-baby exercise works.  They do not understand sickness and death.  They think only old people get sick and die.  "You can get this disease, and it's really bad, so use a condom.")

But the child that might result is reduced to a single, uncomplicated, and entirely negative quality--its costliness.

And so they teach my son that getting pregnant is a bad thing and worth avoiding and preventing and "fixing" if you get unlucky.  They don't teach him that teen sexuality is a dubious pleasure at best and worth forgoing.

They also didn't bother to teach him that his parents are actually good people to consult when he is confronted with such issues, but I suppose that cannot be remedied.

Let this serve as your notice, though: Parents whose children must take school-based health classes, do not neglect to correct all the misapprehensions your children will pick up in those classes, but especially, most especially, the one that you are not going to be on their side if they "get caught."

Let them know that getting pregnant is not the bad thing, the thing to be avoided, the thing worth punishing.

Let them know that there's a difference between a serious thing--which having a child most assuredly is--and a bad thing--which having a child most assuredly is not.

Let them know you love them.  And that they will screw up.  And that you will still love them.