Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 13, 1994 TAG: 9402100077
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
To criminal-justice workers, he's a juvenile delinquent with a rap sheet for car theft, assault and possession of narcotics.
And to his old buddies - with whom he used to drink, smoke pot, sell drugs, carry guns and steal - he's boring.
Sixteen-year-old Aaron Gray is constantly fighting the old temptations of the streets, a life he traded for mixing formula and changing diapers when his daughter, Ashley, was born nine months ago.
"A lotta people look at me as being responsible," Gray says. "And a lotta people look at me like I'm a damn fool - for being responsible.
"They're like, `You're stupid. Ain't it boring? Don't you hate it?' And yeah, I do hate it sometimes, but I love my child more."
To Sharlene Hodges, the Roanoke city social worker who has pushed, prodded and praised Gray and his girlfriend for the past year - helping them find jobs, helping them deal with Ashley's colic, trying to show them the world beyond the streets - Aaron Gray is "the teen father of the '90s."
He bathes and baby-sits his daughter. He rocks her to sleep at night and washes her clothes. He was there at the hospital when she entered the world, and he plans to be there for her until he leaves it.
With his double-pierced ear and his dysfunctional past, Aaron Gray may be a far cry from Mr. Mom. But compared to most of his teen-father peers, he's a standout.
"A lot of these guys, they don't even check to see if they've had a boy or a girl," Hodges says. "You hear them bragging, `I've got four babies.' . . . But you're lucky if you can get them to buy one box of Pampers."
Out of the 51 teen moms in the Social Services' pregnant teen/teen parent program, for instance, only eight of the babies' fathers maintain any contact at all with them.
Some of the moms have been beaten up - just for asking for diapers. Some, Hodges says, are forced to trade sex with the father for money to support their babies.
"One of my friends has a girl pregnant right now; he's 17," Aaron says of a drug-dealer friend. "By the time that baby's old enough to walk, he could be dead."
Darryl Rose was a Patrick Henry High School senior when he got his girlfriend pregnant two years ago. He says his daughter, Jasmine, has motivated him to get off of the streets and work full time at Arby's.
"I feel like it's my first step into manhood," Rose says of his fatherly responsibilities, which include near-daily visitations with his daughter and $200 a month in informal child support.
A Lincoln Terrace resident, Rose is the oldest member of a new support group for teens run by the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority, called Fathers Involved. When the group started, Rose took it upon himself to convince the younger fathers not to drop out of school.
"Most of the guys, they do drop out," he says. "They feel like it's cool to have a child, like `I'm a parent myself,' and they're too grown for their britches.
"Then they drop out to hang out and do nothing - except get in trouble."
Judge Philip Trompeter says it all boils down to a "flip attitude" among teen fathers. Not a docket goes by in his Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court that he doesn't see that attitude played out:
Fathers who come to court for drug-trafficking offenses with pants sagging below their butts, shirts untucked. Mothers who bring their children to court to glimpse their fathers "like it's some kind of visitation."
"If we can't reach these so-called `hot' fathers who are living on the edge by trafficking - if they're in jail, or dead - our society is gonna pay," Trompeter says.
"Their attitude toward life, sexuality and children is that, `This is cool and cute, and I don't have to worry about it; it's a trophy,' and I don't know how to solve that problem. The fallout is what's coming before me."
Trompeter tries to reverse that flip attitude toward fatherhood - by ordering that child-support payments be paid for the children receiving AFDC and by sentencing the deadbeat dads who won't pay to community-service work or jail.
But his hands are typically tied until the fathers turn 18 - at which time child-support enforcement investigators initiate child-support orders. By that time, it's sometimes too late - the guys can't be located, or they're already in jail for other offenses.
"One guy told me he wants to have 13 kids - so he can match his dad," says Brenda Davis, a counselor at the Roanoke Juvenile Detention Home. "They're just so hurt and confused. Most of them, they've had no contact with their fathers. . . . Over half of our kids, their fathers are in prison themselves."
To the teen-father population Davis deals with, fatherhood means: "Buying Pampers, formula, maybe a pair of shoes. You ask them about contact with the baby, and it's like, `I've gotta be out making money' - usually by dealing drugs."
When the fathers do reach 18, child-support enforcement officials say it's still a struggle to locate them to administer payment orders. The mother may refuse to tell who the father is, or she may not know. She often can't furnish workers with the father's address, date of birth or Social Security number.
And Roanoke's 19 enforcement investigators are overworked, with an average of 1,000 cases per worker.
"One of the things Clinton is talking about [with welfare reform] is requiring the cooperation of all hospitals in establishing paternity, which is something we're already doing here in Virginia," says Wayne Chapman, district manager of the Roanoke area child-support enforcement office.
For instance, Community Hospital helps the office establish paternity for an average of 30 illegitimate births per month. With teens, child support can then be pursued when the father turns 18.
"We like to [establish paternity voluntarily] right then because the child's just born, and the daddy's happy - before they've gotten mad at each other and gone their separate ways," explains Donna Gilbert, supervisor of the court establishment unit.
Still, last year paternity was established for just 11 Roanoke minors. Four have since been ordered to pay child support. And only one of those four has actually followed the court order - "which is not out of kilter with who pays child support in general," Gilbert says.
One possible explanation for the low number of paternity-establishment cases among minors is the growing number of teen births fathered by adults. A 1990 study showed that men older than high school age account for 77 percent of all births among high school girls. In a 1992 study of 500 adolescent mothers, Washington researchers Debra Boyer and David Fine found that two-thirds of them had been sexually victimized in the past by men whose ages averaged 27 years.
"What you should really be writing about here is statutory rape," snaps Deneen Evans, a counselor for the new school-based health clinics at Ruffner Middle and Patrick Henry High schools. "I wish I could get these parents to file charges, but that rarely happens."
Older males prey on younger girls, Evans theorizes, because they think they're free from sexually transmitted diseases. Social worker Hodges agrees, recalling one teen client whose baby was fathered by a 50-year-old.
"Older men think it's a status thing - that they're lucky enough to get a virgin," Hodges adds. "A lotta these teens actually believe the men will leave their wives." nn
Aaron Gray, the 16-year-old father, lives with his mother, sister, girlfriend and daughter in a Southwest Roanoke duplex. The family receives no public assistance other than monthly Women Infants and Children stipends for baby formula and food.
Gray baby-sits for Ashley while his girlfriend works in a restaurant - though the couple plans to switch roles soon, a transition that Gray fears won't be easy. "Until I'm 18, I'll be lucky to find a part-time job at Burger King," he says. "I just wish I had a real job and could be a real daddy instead of being a dumb street punk daddy that can't support my own baby."
Finding work has become easier, though, with the help of Hodges, who assists the partners of her teen-mom clients in finding work. She shows them how to fill out applications and how to dress. She drives them to interviews and cheers them up when they don't get called back.
"Sharlene helped me to get my first job" at Chi-Chi's, where Gray used to work before quitting to baby-sit. "She got me to start to look at life from a different point of view. She's always telling me how good things can be when all I've ever known is how bad things can be."
Hodges says it's tough for teen dads to find work in Roanoke, especially if they're black.
"Sometimes it takes me months to get them just a part-time job," she says. "I try to explain to these businesses that it's best to make these guys self-sufficient, and the message is finally starting to get through - but at first no one wanted to give them a break."
Competition with the drug trade makes her job even harder. "When they can make $500 to $2,000 a night selling drugs and staying at home, $4.25's not even pocket change to them.
"A lotta these guys, their role models are the posse," Hodges says, referring to gang members. "Most of them are dropouts. They've been in and out of trouble, and they know the court system better than I do. I would love to see them get their GED and job training.
"I think we need to start sentencing them to school instead of jail."
To tackle Roanoke's teen-pregnancy rate, youth workers agree, more attention has to be given to males - more prevention programs, support groups, after-school activities, emphasis on birth control accountability and access, and contact with positive role models.
"The way it is now, everything is geared toward the women," says Curtis Thompson, who leads the Fathers Involved support group. "What we have to do as a society is to get these young kids to realize it's all right, it's cool, to take responsibility for their children.
"There are so many negative stereotypes built in [to being a teen father] already, and I think part of the reason they don't respond is they're embarrassed. The perception is that males, especially black males, aren't doing jack. If you hear that often enough, it makes you even more insecure. It's like, `Forget it; I won't even try then.' "
The key is to reach the guys before they become fathers, not after, says Deneen Evans, the school counselor. "There's hardly any prevention work going on with these guys, and they have no clue," she says.
"I was talking with a girl yesterday about how hard it is for her to get to the Health Department for birth control, and I said, `Why don't you get your boyfriend to take you?'
"For most of these girls, that's not even a consideration. They don't even feel comfortable talking to the guys about it."
Evans leads weekly decision-making workshops for girls at Hurt Park, where boys frequently peek in from outside the room. "They're crying out for this stuff," she says. "They need strong males to come in and work and to be able to relate to them where they're at."
Anthony Drakeford, the Planned Parenthood/Health Department worker who is the city's only prevention counselor targeting teen males, worries that Roanoke doesn't do enough to attract and keep positive black role models. "Everybody says that once a black man makes a name for himself in this city, they leave the area.
"And just playing basketball and hearing the guys talk, they all wanna go to Charlotte, Greensboro, Maryland, D.C. All the ones with goals, they wanna leave.
"People with the power to do something, we need to quit sitting at these meetings and talking, and actually do something," he urges.
Judge Trompeter sees the alternative every day, and it all goes back to attitude, he says. If Roanoke doesn't tackle the perception among its youth that having babies is cool, it is doomed to retain its spot as the state's teen-pregnancy leader - indefinitely.
"The lesson is, if you don't break that cycle, you can't expect anything more positive than what you have now," Trompeter says. "Because those children will have no better lot than those who came before them.
"If you don't get these kids to concentrate on their futures, it's hopeless."
FOR MALES ONLY: Expectant teen dads or fathering teens who want information or support can call Anthony Drakeford at the Roanoke Health Department, 857-7630. Drakeford is also seeking adult male volunteers to work as mentors with male youth. For information on the housing-authority support group for teen dads, call Curtis Thompson at 983-9299.
BUSINESSES interested in giving teen moms and dads job experience - either as volunteers, or for hire - can call Sharlene Hodges at the Department of Social Services, 981-2911.
by CNB