Not My Daughter, by Barbara Delinsky

The premise of this novel caught my attention, but it promised more than it delivered.  Four girls, seniors in high school in a Maine town and close friends, make a pact to become pregnant, and three of them succeed. Their decision shocks their parents and, in fact nearly everyone in town -- these girls are at the top of their class, on a track for top-rated colleges, not teen motherhood. To complicate matters, the mother of one of the girls is the principal of the high school, and she comes under attack from the school board, whose conservative members are displeased with her handling of the media storm inspired by the pregnancy pact and find her (a single mother herself) a less than upstanding role model.

The three girls, despite their ostensible intelligence, didn't seem to consider that their behaviour would disrupt their social lives at school, cause a firestorm in the community and put their parents in tenuous positions, both socially and professionally.These girls are from upper middle-class, but more important, loving and grounded families. They are not having babies to fill emotional voids. When asked why on earth they've willfully decided to get pregnant at 17, the only answer any of them can proffer is that they all like babies. None of it is believable. Their parents, friends and neighbours can't get their heads around it, and neither can we readers.

It all ends happily -- the principal keeps her job and marries the father of her daughter (and the grandfather of their new grandson).  The three girls deliver three lovely, healthy babies, although one of them has a scare during the pregnancy, wailing that it had never occurred to her that she could have anything but a perfect baby. Again, I could only shake my head and resist the urge to throttle my Kindle in lieu of the naive, irresponsible, clueless girl.

I know that pact behaviour amongst adolescents is an alarming thing, whether they're suicide pacts, pregnancy pacts, drinking & drugging pacts, or whatever. This novel brought me no closer to understanding the dynamics of teen pacts, and the happily-ever-after ending certainly whitewashed any negative effects in this case. All's well that ends well? So it would seem. What can I say? I'm just happy that none of Ms. Delinsky's feckless teenagers is my daughter.