Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 20, 1995 TAG: 9503210024
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ANGIE has lived so many places in her 20 years, she can't count them all. In a group home, with a variety of friends and relatives, on the streets ...
For the past six months, she's lived in the YWCA's emergency-housing quarters for teen moms, pregnant teens and non-teen mothers. Without it, she says, "I'd probably be living friend to friend.''
Without it, she'd be homeless - and five-months pregnant.
Angie pays $140 a month for the use of her small dorm-like room, which she's filled with stuffed animals, Cherokee Indian wood-carvings, V.C. Andrews books and copies of Baby magazine.
The room also smells of cigarettes, residue from a nasty habit she's managed to cut from two packs a day to one - despite doctors' insistence that pregnant women not smoke, and YWCA resident coordinator Joyce Bonds' stern warnings against it.
Angie smokes, she says, out of boredom and nervousness. She's bored when she's not at her job at D&P Deli, where she waits tables and washes dishes. And she's nervous most of the time, especially when she thinks about the baby's father, a married Christiansburg subcontractor.
She'd been on birth control, Norplant, for four years, but had it removed after gaining 40 pounds. "Then I just didn't get around to getting the pills," she says. "And I figured, just this once."
She says the father told her he was divorced when they met. They've only seen each other once since she told him she was pregnant - and that was by accident.
"He was happy he made a baby; he thought it made him a man," she says. "But I think he should have to do something, at least buy your child a bag of diapers."
Angie worries about the day in August when she plans to move into public housing with her newborn baby, her scant belongings and her history of emotional scars.
Her mother abandoned her when she was 4. Her grandmother, who raised her, died when she was 13 - the same year her mother passed away.
"That was just the year for death,'' Angie says matter-of-factly. She doesn't want her last name used in this story because it might upset her father, who lives in Roanoke and visits her frequently.
Angie figures she'll be on AFDC and in public housing by the time her baby's a month old, though she insists welfare did not motivate her to become pregnant. "I just wanna use it so I can go back to school" and become a nurse.
The experiences of her peers, however, have proved otherwise. "I'm like the oldest one of my friends'' to get pregnant, she says. "Everyone's having 'em now at 15, 16, 17 ... and they're all in public housing and on welfare.''
YWCA director Harriet Lewis worries about the day when Angie doesn't have Joyce Bonds looking over her shoulder, playing the surrogate mom.
"Angie's smart, she's street-smart. But I worry that when she leaves here there will be no one to remind her, 'Angie, did you go to your doctor appointment?' We're worried whether the baby will get the care.''
She worries, too, about all the other potential Angies out there - the unsupervised, unstructured young people who, lacking healthy outlets for creativity and success, may turn to drugs, crime, truancy or sex. She's trying to address some of those youngsters through a program called Youth Club, which reaches 48 Ruffner Middle School girls this year.
The after-school program concentrates on assertiveness, grooming, career awareness, even how to avoid hanging out with the "wrong" crowd. "It's keeping them busy and skills training - so they can deal with situations that may lead to early sexual activity," Lewis says. "Abstinence is our main focus."
Lewis believes Roanokers should not look to the city manager's Teen Pregnancy Task Force for answers. Rather, they should look within.
"There's this tendency to think, once you've discussed a problem, that somebody has taken care of it, and 'let's move on with the next one,' " she says. "But there's a lot more to do here, and the doing will require real sacrifice - of both time and money."
Volunteer with a youth group. Befriend your neighbor's kids. Coach a rec team. Get your church to start a teen-mother mentorship program. Become a Big Brother or Big Sister.
Lewis is a charismatic speaker when she talks about Roanokers' need to launch a grass-roots movement tackling teen pregnancy: "We want leadership to come up with all the solutions, but one of the things Martin Luther King provided was a sense of believing in our own ability to make change. He gave us the sense that we have the power.
"We're looking now for someone else to be the leader, when the leader is really us!"
Hannah Glisson likes to recite the oft-quoted African proverb in her call for community action: "It takes an entire village to raise a child."
The problem, though, is the village; it's not there any more. "It used to be if you were walking down the street and saw your neighbor's kid throwing rocks, you'd tell him to stop. But does that happen today?
"No - because he might throw a rock at you."
Glisson, a church worker whose teen-age daughter gave birth in 1993, founded a support group called Unexpected Grandparents later that year, which still meets occasionally. She blames the sex-saturated media, the disintegration of the extended family and the prevalence of latchkey children for the teen-pregnancy crisis.
President Clinton calls teen-age pregnancy the country's "most serious social problem." And politicians battling to reform welfare recite these numbers:
Nearly half of the nation's current AFDC caseload began their families as teenagers.
And nearly half of the nation's unwed teen-age mothers go on AFDC within four years of giving birth.
Taxpayers are angry about those numbers, counselor Deneen Evans concedes. But instead of condemning the pregnant teens, they should work to prevent future pregnancies, she says. For those who are already pregnant or parenting, programs should stress keeping the teen mothers in school, prenatal care, day care, parenting skills, and both abstinence and birth-control education.
A counselor at the school teen-health centers, Evans launched a support group for teen moms at Patrick Henry High School to tackle those topics. Last week's session featured a Roanoke Memorial Hospital nutritionist who talked about breast-feeding and infant nutrition.
Teens such as senior Fawn Watson, who is pregnant with her second child, shared stories about childbirth and infant care. Watson has lived with the father of her unborn child, a 38-year-old auto mechanic, since May. She says the father of her first baby abandoned her and moved to Florida.
The youngest member of the group is a 14-year-old freshman who lost her virginity at 12 and became pregnant at 13. Due in June, she lives in a foster home and says she dreams of becoming a cheerleader, going to college and owning a women's clothing store.
She's hopeful that the 16-year-old father, a school drop-out who works, will help out financially. "He did buy me some new shoes," she offers, pointing to her shiny white Filas.
Evans isn't pleased about any of these scenarios, she says. But ignoring the plights of the women only makes them worse.
Evans herself works to prevent such scenarios - both on the job and off. A rec-league coach in her spare time, she keeps 10 Ruffner Middle School girls busy playing basketball year-round, even inviting them to her home after practices.
"My philosophy is the busier you keep them with positive activities, the less time they have to get into high-risk activities," she says. "Basically I wear 'em out."
Evans echoes Lewis' challenge: "If you have time to give, don't just complain about teen pregnancy, do something."
Keywords:
TEEN PREGNANCY
by CNB