HAMDEN, Conn.

HIGH-SCHOOL GIRLS should be saving money for college, not spending it on diapers and baby clothes.

But as the explosive story of an alleged “pregnancy pact” among Gloucester High School girls shows, many teens are drawn more strongly to motherhood than to academic and career achievement.

At the Massachusetts high school, 17 girls have become pregnant this year, more than four times last year’s tally. Initially reported as a pact to become pregnant, it appears what really happened is that after becoming pregnant, the girls agreed to help each other as they went through pregnancy, childbirth and raising their infants. It’s unfortunate that much of the coverage of this story is focused on the issue of the pact rather than the far more significant story of the increasing phenomenon of children having children. After 15 years of a gradual decline in teen pregnancy, the trend has reversed. It rose by 3 percent last year.

Why are we seeing this reversal?

Every day teens receive thousands of messages from peers and the media, and most of those messages tell teen girls that they are sexual objects, that men control money and power, and that the way to gain access to material wealth and standing is to give men access to their bodies.

At the same time, the media constantly cast teen pregnancy in a sympathetic light: Witness the upbeat stories about 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, who recently had a baby girl. See the movie Juno. Open any magazine popular with young women and see the fawning coverage given to every pregnant celebrity. Read the newspaper stories profiling teen mothers, such as a recent front-page article in the Hartford Courant about a teen mother graduating from high school.

It is a mistake to treat the consequences of poor decisions as heroics. As a society we must change the messages we are sending to young girls. They need to understand the full story.

Because young men are often unwilling to commit to established relationships, teen girls use pregnancy and motherhood to try to create a bond with the baby’s father and a long-term relationship and legal obligation on the part of the man. But young men often fail to maintain such relationships or live up to these responsibilities. More than half of child-support orders involving unmarried parents are ignored, and a quarter are only partially met. Unfortunately, teen girls do not become aware of these facts until it’s too late.

The facts paint a clear, if depressing picture. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy:

• The chances of a child growing up in poverty are nine times higher if the mother gave birth as a teen, was unmarried, and did not receive a high school diploma or GED. If none of these three factors occurs, the chances are just 7.5 percent. If all three occur, it soars to 64 percent.

• The children of teen mothers are at increased risk for a number of economic, social and health problems. For instance, the children of teen mothers are more likely to be born prematurely and at low birthweight, and are twice as likely to suffer abuse and neglect as are children of older mothers.

• Children of mothers age 17 and younger are more likely than those born to mothers age 20 to 21 to be impulsive or overactive, and to suffer from anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem or sadness.

• The sons of teen mothers are twice as likely to end up in prison as the sons of mothers age 20 to 21.

• Children of teen mothers are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade, are less likely to complete high school, and perform at a lower level on standardized tests than the children of older mothers.

• The daughters of teen mothers are three times more likely to become teen mothers themselves than are the daughters of mothers aged 20 to 21.

As a college health professional, I can state unequivocally that the great majority of women on college campuses around the country are sexually active and that nearly all of them use a reliable means of contraception. What is the difference, then, between the typical female college student and the intentionally pregnant high school students in Gloucester and elsewhere?

It is a difference in expectations: The college women who are pursuing their dreams, often at great expense to themselves and their families, are acutely aware of the impact that an unplanned pregnancy would have on their goals and ambitions. They have every intention of embracing motherhood at its proper time, but that time is still in the future for them.

I am willing to bet that few if any of the intentionally pregnant high school students in Gloucester have any college ambitions or hopes. I would even say that lack of intent to pursue a college education is a significant predictor of teen pregnancy.

A lack of college dreams indicates low feelings of self-worth and a lack of hope for the future. Some girls in this situation offer themselves the gift of a baby in order to compensate for their mistaken belief that they have no other way to gain standing in the world. Because they believe the world does not need them (or only needs them for sex), they create a being who has a total need for them.

Women who defer motherhood in favor of a college education face a far brighter future, and that’s the message society needs to start sending to high school girls.

Phillip Brewer, M.D., is the medical director for student health services at Quinnipiac University, in Hamden.