Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311050309
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They were pretty faces. Sad faces. Brave faces - those photographs of girls who exemplify a discouraging statistic: One out of every 10 Roanoke female teens gets pregnant each year.
Thus does Roanoke own the dubious distinction of having the highest teen- pregnancy rate in Virginia. The city's rate was twice as high the state's in 1991 for all teens (ages 10-19) and for those in the 15-19 age group. Moreover, the city's rate continues to rise while the state's has begun leveling off.
Maybe confronting real girls who are pregnant or already moms will help motivate more people in the community to care about this alarming issue.
It is one thing to know, statistically, that pregnant teen-agers are most likely to drop out of school, to grow up unskilled, to raise their children in poverty, to require government support - to the tune, nationwide, of about $25 billion a year in food stamps, Medicaid, welfare payments, etc.
It's another thing to get acquainted with Becky Carter,16, who had to drop out of Patrick Henry High School when she became pregnant to try to find work and care for her baby.
It's one thing to be told that 40 percent of all 15-year-olds are already sexually active; that the younger the age when a girl gets pregnant, the more likely she will deliver smaller, sickly babies; that nearly one in every three girls who get pregnant before age 16 will give birth to a second child within two years; that many perpetuate a cycle of unwed pregnancies running in families across generations.
It's another thing to read about 18-year-old Angela Brown, who began having sex at age 12, whose own mother was a teen mom, and who now has four children - each with a different father.
As Beth Macy's articles on Sunday underscored, there is little agreement among social workers, educators and other concerned citizens about precisely what's causing Roanoke's teen-pregnancy problem to be worse than in other Virginia cities, and what should be done about it. Oh, there's a welter of opinions: Media excesses in glorifying sex; declining families; poor self- esteem; not enough money spent on prevention; not enough parental involvement; too much sex education; too little sex education.
Meanwhile, teen pregnancy - in Roanoke as elsewhere - remains a root cause of many other social problems that are putting incredible strains on public budgets, schools, hospitals and prisons.
Why can't Roanoke tackle this tangle of problems with the same intensity of effort, the same vision, that some are now trying to give to economic development? Isn't it time to face up to the seriousness of these statistics? To leave behind blame-casting and the old conservative-vs.-liberal arguments (just say no, just wear a condom) and to reasonably discuss ways to improve a community-resource system that is failing hundreds of young people?
Failing, to be sure, one in every 10 teen-age girls . . . .
by CNB