Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 18, 1993 TAG: 9311170030
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Beth MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The next they seem so focused, so mature. They have plans - to get public-housing apartments of their own, to work in fast-food restaurants, to maybe one day earn advanced degrees.
Tasha wants to learn to cut hair. Shannon wants to study sociology at Virginia Western Community College.
"We always say: When we get older, we gonna get our sociology degree and do hair, and we gonna buy a house together for us and our babies," says Tasha Walker, 17.
The two are best friends, inseparable. They ride together to school every day at Roanoke's Alternative Education Center, where they're both sophomores.
"There's a store at the bottom of the hill by my house. And when I gotta go, I go all the way up the street and get Tasha first. Then I walk all the way back down, and we go to the store," says Shannon Huff, 16. "We go everywhere together."
It was inevitable, they say, that when Tasha turned up pregnant seven months ago, Shannon would soon follow. "If she was pregnant and I wasn't, I knew I'd have to be," says Shannon, who's expecting in January, a month after Tasha.
Both say they weren't planning to get pregnant - they just didn't do anything to prevent it.
Both have up-and-down relationships with the fathers of their babies. Both still live with their mothers - who were teen mothers themselves at age 16.
And both say that getting pregnant is the best thing they've ever done.
The two girls like to compare ultrasound pictures, touch each other's bellies and talk about their not-too-distant due dates - when they plan to be each other's labor coach.
"To me, a child is the best thing in the world," Tasha says. "I think a baby's gonna be fun. Me and my baby will be able to grow up together and have the kind of relationship my mom and me never had." nn
Twenty years ago, Tasha and Shannon would have been ostracized. They likely would have left school as soon as they began showing - the subject of whispers and awkward stares.
Now there's little stigma attached to teen pregnancy. When a student at Alternative Ed finds out she's pregnant, "everybody's proud and happy," says teacher/counselor Janet Claytor. "They're excited, and other people are complimentary. It's celebrated in a low-key way."
Teen pregnancy is a status symbol in some circles; the hotter the guy, the more prestigious the pregnancy.
Claytor remembers the child of the guy who was killed in a drug-related shootout. "The girl who had his baby is proud of it; that baby is prized," she says.
"Some girls die to be pregnant by certain guys," Shannon adds. One guy who's fathered six kids is still actively sought out by girls - "cause he's outta school, he's real cute and he dresses fine."
Angela Brown, an 18-year-old with four kids, claims she doesn't know anyone her age who doesn't already have kids or isn't pregnant now. "All my friends have kids," she says. "More teen-agers got children than grown-ups."
Roanoke social worker Beth Evans sums up the sociology of teen pregnancy this way:
"They're good girls before they have sex. They're bad girls when they have sex. And they're good girls again when they're mothers.
"To me that sets off a light bulb," Evans says. "These girls are rewarded for being mothers. They're finally getting attention, some of them for the first time in their lives."
Evans' job is to see that the pregnant girls on her caseload stay in school and make all their prenatal appointments. She picks up students from home and school regularly, chauffeuring them to the OB/GYN clinic and other appointments, and sometimes even filling in as labor coach.
"It's gotten to the point where it's a status symbol," Evans says. "Sometimes we can't have two girls in the same van because their babies have the same father."
The mentality is hard to fight. Claytor worries about the students who don't have babies but are surrounded by peers who do. One student in particular, a 10th-grader, has a teen mom for a sister - but insists she doesn't want to be one herself.
"Now we need to just umbrella her and do whatever we can to make sure that doesn't happen. This girl is smart; she could make it on any college campus.
"But she's just a little girl. Sometimes I catch her still sucking her thumb."
When Roanoke counselor Patty Bundy started her doctoral dissertation research on teen pregnancy a few years ago, she was surprised by how much influence peers - not just families - have on the acceptability of teen pregnancy.
"We used to look at variables like, `Was the teen's mom pregnant? Is it second generation?'
"Now it's the older sisters and peers that are the influencing factors," Bundy says.
Shannon and Tasha are not typical pregnant teens, Claytor says. They're better than most.
"They're very responsible. They keep their appointments. They come to school and take care of business.
"They are carrying themselves with dignity - in a classy way. No cursing or being loud and disrespectful. And they'll be good mothers, too, I know that."
Shannon and Tasha know it'll be a struggle, raising kids. "After everything I been through . . . We took care of three of Momma's boyfriend's kids. My momma struggled all her life," Shannon says. "I guess every woman struggles.
"ADC, it'll help. But don't nobody wanna be on welfare. I wanna take care of my baby myself."
Neither is enrolled in childbirth education classes, and neither seems nervous about labor and delivery. Both are adamant that their babies have the father's last name - though neither expects the guys to lend much support.
"I expect him just to be a father, to have some kind of relationship," Shannon says of her baby's father, who already has three babies - each of them by different mothers.
"I don't expect too much," Tasha says. "For him to go out and get me some diapers sometimes maybe . . . "
For now, the two girls seem content just to be with each other - sharing the attention, supporting each other, comparing notes.
"You know what they be saying about the glow, the pregnancy glow?" Shannon asks. "Well I wasn't seeing it at all.
"And then last night, I looked in the mirror and finally I saw it.
"And I said to myself, ` Damn, I'm pretty.' "
COMING NEXT\ WHO'S PAYING ATTENTION TO THE KIDS?
Roanoke Health Department Director Don Stern: "If parents don't have time to talk about sex, and schools don't have time to talk about sex, and our churches and doctors don't have time to talk about sex, who's paying attention to our kids?"
by CNB