ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190023
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARTHA EZZARD
NOTHING SEEMS as foolish to me as politicians, mostly the men in the very dark suits, seriously touting the ``great reforms'' in the new welfare law that are supposed to prevent teen pregnancy - make pregnant teens live at home and don't give them any more money if they have a second baby.
Foolish because studies show repeatedly those measures have little to do with the root causes. Now a new study published by Radcliffe College, ``The Girls Project: Listening to Girls,'' confirms the three reasons more younger teens are getting pregnant.
First, being identified as sexual beings permeates their childhood. Our popular culture sends them straight from dolls to sex.
Second, devoid of loving adults around them, they have babies to have something to love and to love them back.
Third, they fear they will lose their boyfriends, the only ones ``standing up for them,'' if they don't engage in sex.
What was different about this two-year study of 250 at-risk teens was that it involved young girls themselves in its design and analysis. The girls came from poverty neighborhoods and a mixture of ethnic backgrounds - 36 percent white, 31 percent black. The research was conducted by a Boston nonprofit group, Women for Economic Justice. The findings confirm prior research by the Guttmacher Institute.
Never once in this study did one of the 250 girls, most between ages 11 and 15, mention the desire for money, dropping out of school or leaving home as reasons for their premature sexual activity. They got pregnant because older men have contests in their neighborhoods to see who can ``hit first on the 13-year-old in the tight pants'' and because they were looking for meaningful personal attachments.
Policy makers who have framed reform with punitive approaches have simply found it easy to blame young girls for cultural ills only adults can cure. Most maddening of all is the call for two-parent families and making illegitimacy unacceptable. We can all agree with that, but what kind of answer is it for girls who are without those influences in their lives here and now?
In Georgia, where the current federal sanctions are already law, Department of Human Resources data reflect that since January of 1994, more pregnant girls have had to get exemptions from the ``live at home'' sanction because of abusive environments than have been sent back home. Exemptions were granted for 391, while 381 were sanctioned. That's out of a teen-mom welfare population of 3,900.
What politicians should be focusing on is giving more support to local groups that provide after-school activities and adult mentoring.
Some of the best community-based efforts in Georgia are being nurtured not by government but by local organizations and by the Georgia Campaign to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy, a new initiative headed by Jane Fonda.
Government sponsored or not, such positive efforts point adolescent girls to alternative paths. That's not hard to understand outside the political arena. And it's not punitive either.
Martha Ezzard is a member of The Atlanta Journal editorial board.
Cox News Service
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB