Religion

Even if a girl was married, which a few were, she was not allowed to attend school if she was visibly pregnant. No alternative was offered. If you showed, you were out. And that was in a public school. The same rule applied to women who were teachers. You were not allowed to teach if you were visibly pregnant.

It was bizarre. I remember thinking that even then as a high school kid. What did they think? That seeing a pregnant person would make people want to get pregnant? That it would encourage sexual activity among the students?

The reality was that some high school kids, even in the early 1960s, were sexually active. Pregnancy was the worst possible outcome in those kids minds, I can guarantee, since I was one of the sexually active teenagers. Preventing that outcome was paramount on our minds. Some of us were successful in preventing a pregnancy. Others were not so successful, and we had a few pregnancies at our small high school. A few pre-graduation marriages, too.

But, to ban pregnant young women from finishing high school? What a strange thing. Keeping pregnant teachers from teaching? How bizarre is that?

Those rules disappeared at the end of that decade at that school, thank goodness. I guess some Catholic schools haven't gotten past the early 60s, though.