Gerry Garibaldi, Teen Pregnancy and Hope Cottage

We don't normally post on Monday, but every now and then you feel compelled to comment. 

Over the weekend, the Dallas Morning News carried a reprint of an article by Gerry Garibaldi.  The article originally ran in the City Journal, a quarterly magazine that covers urban affairs.  The article is entitled "Nobody Gets Married Anymore, Mister".  For many years, Garibaldi was a screenwriter in Hollywood and is currently a teacher in an urban Connecticut high school.  He points out that all the money in the world can't help what he sees as the main problem in our high schools.

"Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch."

Which makes me glad  Hope Cottage offers free to area high schools and youth groups Teen Education in the form of ABCs of Adoption and TMAP (Teen Mentoring and Prevention).  With these two programs, we talk to teens about choices and how to avoid those life changing choices.  We talk about statistics affiliated with being a teen parent:  child most likely to be raised in poverty... mother mst likely to drop out of school... child most likely to drop out of school.  By the end of this calendar year more than 1,000 teenagers in the metroplex will have been through this training.  1,000 students that hopefully won't end up like Nicole and Jasmine. 

If you are interested in having Hope Cottage present one of our Teen Ed programs, contact Susan at 214.526.8721, ext 215.  There is no cost for the programs.

Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.



If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.


If you are a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.