Kudos to Walmart

Walmart's Robin Morse

Thanks to Walmart for selling hope and opportunity to teen moms. In a series of ads in the Portland, Oregon area, Manager Robin Morse tells us that as a single, 19-year-old mom, she took a job at a Walmart electronics department. She worked her way up the ladder becoming Manager of the Walmart in Hood River, a town of 7000 50 miles east of Portland. She met her future husband there.

Robin, an attractive blond, puts a face on the thousands of single young women who succeed in motherhood and careers. I'm hoping that Robin's story inspires pregnant teens to see beyond the dramatics of 16 and Pregnant and the doom and gloom scenario played by "experts" like Dr. Phil and decide to keep their babies.

There's a certain irony in Walmart becoming the symbol of opportunity. In my day, dime stores, the forerunners of Walmart, were the symbols of dead end jobs and despair. The Dr. Phil then was Ann Landers, advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ann Landers

Over half a century ago, Ann spoke at my high school, Hyde Park, as part of a tour of Chicago high schools. She immortalizing her words later in her 1963 book,  Ann Landers Talks to Teen-Agers About Sex. Having sex, she warned us would lead to pregnancy.  And pregnancy would lead to dropping out of school and spending our lives working at the trinket counter at Woolworth’s, the largest of the ubiquitous five and tens. 

Jane in 1959

(Teen pregnancy was rampant in the 50’s and scare tactics didn’t make a dent in it. The solution, several decades away, was sex education and the availability of birth control. Unfortunately, some Republican politicians are trying to turn back the clock by restricting sex ed to sermons on abstinence and de-funding Planned Parenthood.)

I’m one of those liberal who sneered at Walmart, joining critics who accused it of destroying small businesses and ruining towns across America. Walmart is planning to open 17 stores in the Portland area. It’s likely that the ad was intended to counter negative publicity about a class action lawsuit alleging discrimination based on gender rather than to inspire teen moms.

Nonetheless, I want to drive to Hood River and give Robin a big hug. While I’m there, I’ll buy a trinket.

As for Ann Landers, she later teamed up with the National Council for Adoption opposing allowing adult adoptees access to their records. Ann urged adoptees not to search for their birth families and accept the fact “that the woman who raised you is your mother."

Click here to watch Walmart's ad with Robin Morse.