I've often had the same thought as Nancy Williams, in her recent post about the possibility of educating teen moms about "sequencing." It seems to me that encouraging teens to leave their babies to get that high school diploma is encouraging teens to remain children, rather than encouraging them to become adults, responsible for mothering thein infants. This can only be exacerbated by new federal welfare policies attempting to deny financial support to teen moms and to force them to live with their parents. I remember reading an article a couple years back in _Mothering_, I think, where a 20-year-old African-American woman was working as a counselor to teen moms (which she had been, but married her baby's father at the time). She stressed that the most important thing for people working with teens was to stop treating them like kids and start realizing that as parents, they are now adults. She felt the medical personnel were especially bad about this and often gave teens the "Scarlet Letter treatment" to boot. Of course the biggest obstacle to teaching the value of "sequencing" to kids is probably the fact that so few "adult" women consider it of value themselves. I wonder how many of a given teen's high school teachers or counselors themselves stayed home for a time to nurse and nurture their infants? If formula and day care was "good enough" for their babies, will they be likely to react sympathetically to a teen asking to be excused from class to nurse or pump, or asking to homeschool for the duration of her high school career so as to be with baby? As a married woman almost 30 years old, I myself occasionally get those negative vibes from some family members and acquaintances. No easy answers... Penny Piercy, LLLL, MOM (Patrick 2 1/2) from Bloomington, IN