Senior Project: The Pregnancy Project

1131 Words3 Pages

Brief Summary This book is a memoir of a famous senior project- The Pregnancy Project. Growing up, Gabby’s entire family had children at young ages, especially her siblings, in order to help her siblings Gabby was often left to babysit her siblings. This made her grow up not wanting kids. But during a biology class discussion about pregnancy, nature versus nature, etc, Gabby got an idea for her senior project, she decided to pretend to be pregnant. She wanted to fake a pregnancy to understand what her mom and sisters went through, during their pregnancies. Understand how teen moms, their moms, and their sisters are perceived and treated. “Maybe it would give me some understanding into why there are so many sad stories resulting from teen pregnancy …show more content…

” (pg. 77) “But on a more personal level, I also wanted to open up a discussion about stereotypes and statistics. Being a Hispanic girl from a family full of teen pregnancies meant that my odds of also becoming a teen mom were way higher than average.” (pg. 77) Gabby wanted to fake pregnancy to show that pregnant women could do anything. She planned to ONLY tell her mom and her, at the time, boyfriend. Her boyfriend didn't even tell his family as well, and went along with her at school; her favorite teacher, principal, and two close friends were the only ones who knew about the Pregnancy Project. She gave everyone who knew about her project a journal to write about everything they heard about Gaby. Right before the end of her “pregnancy”, when she was nearing her 9th month of pregnancy. She collected all of the information from the notebooks of the people she gave them to and she made a presentation. Her principal arranged an assembly where she exposed herself to the entire school, and she gave a speech as to why people shouldn't have doubted her, even if she was pregnant, she still has a chance to become something. Her family was there, …show more content…

She was proving stereotypes against pregnant teens wrong. In her speech during her assembly she said, “My name is Gaby Rodriguez. I'm seventeen years old and a soon-to-be teen mom, and I am a statistic. In reality, everybody is a statistic, but I moved from the percentage of teens who aren't pregnant to the percentage who are. There are many statistics out there, such as the ones shown on screen -like, annually, a quarter of a million births are to unmarried teen moms; one in four sexually active teens become infected with an STD; and 92.9 percent of Caucasians graduate, compared to 86.9 percent of African Americans and only 61.8 percent of Latinos. My purpose today is to tell you about my experience as a soon-to-be teen mom and the stereotypes and rumors that came along with that.” She then showed a YouTube video called “Stop Stereotypes”. Now.” It showed children being excluded and being whispered about, and possible consequences of stereotypes, etc. She continued, “Throughout life we are put into boxes to categorize how people see and know us. This is how stereotypes originate, because people would rather read the labels on the box instead of seeing what's inside. . . . People began to stereotype me as a pregnant teen who was irresponsible, going to get my way because of the baby, not willing to continue in school, and even, ‘Oh, I

More about Senior Project: The Pregnancy Project

Open Document