Friday, February 05, 2010

What's missing from coverage of 11-year-old mom?

Girl, 11, Gives Birth to Baby Boy in Northeast Hospital

An 11-year-old girl in the Northeast recently gave birth to a baby boy, the girl’s family told Fox News.

"My daughter and (her) baby are fine, and the baby is absolutely beautiful," said the mother of the 11-year-old girl. The girl and her family are not being named in order to protect the new parent's privacy.


NOWHERE does the article address who the father is, or how old he is, or what sort of lack of freaky dynamics led to this pregnancy. It's as if she just produced a fetus all on her own.

That's not how pregnancy happens.

Is the father an age mate? If so, how are the families going to manage this? Is the father an older man? If so, is he being prosecuted for statutory rape? Was the girl raped? A victim of incest? If so, what of the criminal investigation?

There is so much that's being ignored here that needs to be addressed.

8 comments:

OperationCounterstrike said...

And how, pray, should the newspapers go about finding out this information, if the family declines to make it public???

Christina Dunigan said...

OC, if the questions had been asked, the reporters would have had SOMETHING to report, even if it was only that investigators concluded that there was/was not statutory rape involved.

But it doesn't look like anybody covering the story even bothered to ask. IS THIS BEING INVESTIGATED? Whether or not, there's still more to the story.

WKen said...

Truthfully, whether it's public or not, the question should be asked.

Given that this girl was pregnant, the authorities should be looking into whether there's statutory rape and/or child neglect going on here.

Foxfier said...

At age 11, there's either rape or neglect....

Good grief, at 11 I couldn't care less about boys.

Kathy said...

GG,

I'm almost certain that this would be investigated; but not in a public way. Yes, the questions should have been asked and answered, but considering the child's age, it will be kept quiet to protect her privacy.

One L&D nurse I know worked in an inner-city high-risk hospital, where having laboring women who were drug addicts or under-age were unfortunately quite common. Once I asked her (because she never mentioned it) whether child protective services, etc., ever got involved; and she said, that in many, or perhaps even most cases, one state agency or another was called in. It was quite routine, which is sad.

L. said...

Wait, let me get this straight -- you are complaining that FOX NEWS' coverage was missing something? I guess you must not watch much Fox!

[In the interest of full disclosure, I work for another unit of Murdoch's News Corp., and my stories sometimes appear on the Fox Business Web site -- to my chagrin.]

Foxfier said...

Because of course we all must be utter robots that obsessively defend every aspect of Fox if we will even so much as link a story from them; imagine what sort of fanatics we would be if we said they were just the least c**ppy of the lot...

L. said...

Foxfier, did I say that? I don't believe I said that.

Believe it or not, I am quite conservative when it comes to money, so I am probably on par with a lot of Fox viewers on many subjects. I just think its coverage could be better!