2008.11.20
Pregnancies ensnare teens
Too many Roanoke teenage girls find pregnancy intoxicating.
Last year, the city recorded the second-highest teen pregnancy rate in Virginia.
These girls bask in the attention showered on pending motherhood. They're giddy at the arrival of the baby and the accompanying afterglow.
But a year down the road, reality can feel like a bad hangover.
Don't take my word for it. Ask 36-year-old Leah Baker, whose life changed drastically when she became pregnant at 17.
Ask her about supporting her special needs daughter on $300 a month. Ask her about living in a Section 8 house with no insulation, about sleeping on a sofa bed with her baby daughter in front of a gas heater.
Ask her about not receiving child support for 10 years. About food stamps, long government-assistance lines and paying $20 a can for the special formula her daughter required. Ask her about sometimes running short of money and having no formula.
Ask her.
"I wish I would have waited, if I had been a little bit older and a little bit wiser," Baker said Tuesday evening in her cozy and gaily decorated apartment in Southwest Roanoke County.
"I had to grow up. I didn't get to live in a dorm and party. I had to grow up real fast."
Baker's journey wasn't easy, but she found her footing. At 31, she graduated from Radford University. She is raising her daughter, Ashton Trescott, now 17, and a son, 14. Divorced from her son's father, Baker works for Children's Trust, an advocacy organization. She teaches parenting classes to teens and adults.
Baker is a foot soldier in a crisis entrapping too many teen girls. What others in the fight against teen pregnancy fear is that many of the young mothers won't rebound as Baker did.
That bodes grave consequences for them -- and for us.
In 2007, 71 of every 1,000 teen girls in Roanoke had a baby, according to recently released statistics from the Virginia Department of Health. Roanoke was second to Petersburg, which had a rate of 85.5.
Women 18 and 19 years old gave birth to two-thirds of the children born to teen mothers in Roanoke. Some of them may be married and starting their families.
But another disturbing note likely factors into that trend, according to Brooks Michael, coordinator of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Project in Roanoke:
Half of all teen mothers have another baby within two years of the first baby's birth.
Having a baby when you're 15, 16, or 17 years old doesn't mean your life is over. Baker, an effusive, warm woman whose personality consumes a room, stresses that message in her teen parenting class each week.
But it certainly makes life a lot harder. Many teenage girls aren't looking that far down the road.
Michael was at a teen health center recently. After she spoke, a girl pulled her aside and was "elated" about being pregnant. The girl lives in a roach-infested apartment, Michael said.
Trish Jackson of the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership has been a social worker for 29 years. She has spent most of that time working with teens.
In recent years, she has seen girls wanting to have a baby because a friend or sister did or because a boyfriend wants them to have a child.
"Sometimes, it's like the new accessory," Jackson said of the way some young mothers think of their child. "I've got my Louis Vuitton bag and my baby on my hip. I'm good to go."
Some girls don't think they'll get pregnant, and still others are afraid to seek contraception, fearing their parents might find out they're sexually active, Jackson said.
'Never looked back'
Baker graduated from high school in Oklahoma in three years and enlisted in the Navy. As part of her naval training, she enrolled in a small college in Washington, D.C., with dreams of becoming a medical technician. Her high school sweetheart was stationed there in the Navy.
Those plans all went out the window when she found out she was pregnant.
"I cried. I cried. It was shock," she said.
The moment Ashton was born, a nurse whisked her away. A doctor came in and dispassionately told Baker that Ashton had Down syndrome. She became angry when the doctor suggested she give the child up for adoption or to foster care.
She told him that she loved her baby. "I took her home and never looked back," Baker said, retelling the story this week as Ashton sat on the sofa watching TV.
Being a single mom wasn't easy. Ashton's dad hasn't been in her life since she was 18 months old, Baker said. The young mother packed up and moved back to Oklahoma.
Ashton had other health issues. Having asthma, other respiratory illnesses, a compromised immune system and 13 sets of ear tubes, the little girl was in the hospital a lot during the first three years of her life and cheated death a few times.
"When you have a baby, you think about life," Baker said. "When you have a baby who is constantly sick, you have a doctor who says, 'We don't know if she's going to make it.' "
That's the side of teen motherhood girls don't see. They see frilly dresses and the sailor suits, not the colicky nights, the diaper rash and the empty cupboards.
Baker is part of an army of people in Roanoke who should be commended for addressing the teen pregnancy crisis.
Michael, who preaches self-esteem and works to prevent girls from becoming pregnant, will go before the city council on Dec. 15 to help it understand that teen pregnancy affects the entire community and not just the individuals directly involved.
Meanwhile, Baker will continue teaching and motivating young mothers.
"Teens just need to hear, 'This has happened. You still have dreams. You have to reach them a different way.' "
I'm a new mom at 34. It was hard for me to adjust at my age and I cannot image at half that age! I commend those who are trying to help young new moms and more commendations to those who are trying to prevent teen pregnancy. However, this is the first time I have seen such an article or editorial in this paper addressing the issue in this manner. I have seen numerous articles (on the front page no less) that have seemed to glamorize being a teen mom. I remember the article about the young athletic girl who would only take a few months off of school to have the baby and was still going to try to go to college and play sports. Gee who's taking care of the baby...her Mom. And then the article that actually included the father of the child. I believe by the time the baby was born they were no longer together, but the future was just bright as it could be...again her mother was taking care of the child.
I think more articles and television specials should show what it's really like. Many of these girls don't have a mom to take care of the baby so they can go out and continue to be a teenager.
Thank you Ms. Flowers for your contribution. I only hope the Roanoke Times will publish more like it.
Comment by New mom — November 20, 2008 @ 9:48 am
Remember when girls in school had to take care of life like dolls, as part of EDUCATION? The ball has been dropped, in educating our youth, which should be earlier as we have kids becoming mature earlier. I do not understand why, again, as in health matters, prevention, ie explaining, the repercussions, of having a teenager becoming a parent,with a life long duty to a child, from economincs to limited alone time and lack of social life. Sure Mom and Dad can take this over, completly removing the teen from responsibility, just like the gal in Florida, whose little girl is MIA, the end result is disfunction of the child, all too often. Children can make it with one parent, or growing up with Gramps, but they often feel less than normal, at sometime in their life, unless they are extreamly well adjusted.
Resposible, educated, youth, what a concept.
Comment by Dona Wheeler — November 21, 2008 @ 3:25 am
Unfortunately, many of these girls are products of teenage mothers. Their mothers were products of teenage mothers. They've seen their families living this way forever. Living off the government is an expectation.
Comment by William — November 21, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
While teenage pregnancy in the Roanoke Valley is irrefutably out of hand, I feel compelled to point out the naivety of many who look upon young mothers as "hopeless" and/or destined to be constrainted by their consequentially underprivileged lives.
I, for one, brought my own child into this world under similar circumstances as Ms. Baker - alone and with little hope for the future - although I had already surpassed society's deeming of "adult" status at the ripe age of 22. Like most young mothers, as Shanna Flowers pointed out, I was giddy with excitement for the arrival of my offspring. Like most young mothers, I was also slightly misguided in my assumptions on motherhood and had to learn decades worth of lessons in a very brief amount of time. Unlike these scores of girls Ms. Flowers describes, however, I had a solid enough foundation of values in place that I was determined to bypass the statistics of my situation and become the kind of woman my child would be proud to call "mother".
After realizing my life wouldn't turn around on its own, I decided to enroll in college and start working once again. Today, as a recent graduate of Hollins University and successful small business owner, I know that being thrust into motherhood at an early age is not necessarily a recipe for lifelong strife. Although my case is the exception rather than the rule, I think it's very presumptuous for others to point the finger directly at these young women - as if to suggest that they happened upon notions of irresponsibility solely on their own. Would it be so incredibly unreasonable to turn toward these girls' parents or caregivers for answers? After all, these young girls were children once themselves and must have acquired their belief systems from someone.
I'm sure, to many, the fact that I became pregnant at an early age serves to discredit my argument altogether; however, I couldn't disagree more. For me, it's simple - things happen, especially mistakes. My decision-making faculties were probably not at their strongest during that period in life, I can assure you. Being a young adult in today's world is undoubtedly scary and it takes a great deal of self-assurance to simply get by. But, had it not been for my upbringing - led by the world's most inspiring single mother - I wouldn't have had the courage, nor the determination, to make something of myself in spite of my circumstances.
My point is that it's easy to place blame on young women who may not come equipped with the right set of morals and values from the onset; but, that certainly doesn't mean it's the right way to rectify the overlying problem. It seems more important to tackle the root of these skewed beliefs, eliciting the type of change that makes a lasting impression - such as reaching out to these girls' parents. Where are the groups intended to educate elders on proper guidance? I don't mean to suggest that parenting groups for young mothers should cease to exist, but I definitely feel it would be equally as beneficial for parents with teenage children to have their own resources for "education".
Thank you for sharing your experience. May it open some eyes, expand some thinking and help us see what we can offer these girls---besides condemnation.--s
Comment by Olivia — November 21, 2008 @ 10:18 pm
It's a family tradition and money-making cottage industry. I doubt if it will ever slow down, and it most certainly will never stop.
Comment by Percy Kution — November 22, 2008 @ 11:28 am
Olivia,
Thank you for sharing your story. Kudos from a fellow Hollins alum!
Comment by Pottergirl — November 22, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
Olivia,
Thanks for sharing your story and congratulations on the perserverence you have had to strive to reach above statistics. I agree that sometimes things "just happen"... Ashton came into my life when I was not planning on it.... but I don't regret it...I am joyed dearly in my heart every day.... my children give me the strength and drive to aim for more, to not settle... I think so many teen moms feel alone and abandoned with no hope... but there is hope, we just have to, together as a community support, encourage, educate them and give them reason to strive above those statistics.
Comment by Leah — November 23, 2008 @ 6:57 pm