Family planning Quote by David Simon
““It isn't about the welfare check. It never was. It isn't about sexual permissiveness, or personal morality, or failures in parenting, or lack of family planning. All of these are inherent in the disaster, but the purposefulness with which babies make babies in places like West Baltimore goes far beyond accident and chance, circumstance and misunderstanding. It's about more than the sexual drives of adolescents, too, though that might be hard to believe in a country where sex alone is enough of an argument to make anyone do just about anything. In Baltimore, a city with the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, the epidemic is, at root, about human expectation, or more precisely, the absence of expectation.””
About This Quote
Source Television series: The Wire, Season 5, 2008
Teen pregnancy in Baltimore stems from a lack of societal expectations, not just personal choices.
In simple terms: Missing expectations drive high teen pregnancy rates.
Key Takeaway
Raise community expectations for youth.
Themes
public health
social policy
urban decay
Mood
somber
analytical
Type
explanatory
critical
When to use this quote
- schools
- community centers
- policy making
- family counseling
Key Concepts
Structural inequality
intergenerational cycles
Questions to Reflect On
- What expectations are missing for teens?
- How can communities rebuild hopeful futures?
A Different Perspective
Focusing solely on expectations may overlook economic factors.
![“But ripped out of context, ["Who am I to judge?" phrase] has become an all-purpose filter through which everything else - including the pope's multiple reaffirmations of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning - gets airbrushed out of the picture.” quote by George Weigel](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b1d/george-weigel-9372_appropriate_but-ripped-out-of-context-who-am-i-to-ju_146817.jpg)
![“The next most dangerous thing [after nuclear proliferation] is probably... global warming, and then, right behind that are overpopulation -- we need to get serious about family planning-and trying to alleviate poverty, to get clean, renewable energy, probably with solar panels to the billion and a…” quote by Ted Turner](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/dcf/ted-turner-2784_about-family_the-next-most-dangerous-thing-after-nucl_200482.jpg)
