I wasn’t prepared for what Catherine was about to tell me.
“I’m going to try to get pregnant next week,” she blurted out without any context.
Catherine just turned 19 years old. She still lives at home with a controlling mother. Her father killed himself when she was young. She doesn’t yet know how to drive and has to beg for rides to and from a menial job. She’s never had any romantic relationships, but she’s recently started slipping away from home to meet men for sex.
Just last week, she told me about how one such man — who she met online — picked her up and took her to a camper about an hour away from her. (She told her mother she was at a friend’s house.) They had sex for a couple of days, then he abruptly brought her back home — and then he disappeared from her life.
Now, she’s met another man online and she plans to meet him Sunday night. She’s never seen him in real life, but she’s planning to make sure he gets her pregnant. And she looked shocked when I told her that this plan was stupid and selfish.

Politicians have no right dictating the menu of your kid’s Happy Meal
Do tales of ‘Black Friday violence’ reflect reality or just our bias?
Be very afraid of men (or women) who question your patriotism
Shame of not being perfect comes with every new thing I try to do
AUDIO: Now is a time to take risk, not the time to be stopped by fear
Flashy ‘stimulus’ projects conceal truth that the state destroys wealth
Concerns about digital future leave me mourning analog past
Well-meaning parents stifle kids by trying to make their decisions