DATE: Thursday, June 26, 1997 TAG: 9706260384 SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 66 lines
It is the most private of issues but one of vital public concern. Such is the nature of out-of-wedlock births.
The emotion- and value-charged issue poses a dilemma for cities across Hampton Roads and Virginia.
In the coming year, Norfolk will dedicate about $76,000 in forthcoming state welfare reform funds to try to reduce such pregnancies.
The decision was not easy. It was reached Tuesday night by a divided City Council after heated debate.
Not that anyone minimized the problem. Norfolk led Virginia with 10,936 out-of-wedlock deliveries from 1991 to 1995. The city's rate of such births has more than doubled over the past two decades, rising from 20 percent of all births in 1975 to 46.6 percent in 1995.
Some consider such births, which are associated with poverty, a lack of education and child-health concerns, to be a serious threat to the city's financial and social well-being.
But the City Council split over the appropriateness of government programs to stem personal matters.
About 70 percent of unwed mothers in Norfolk are 20 or older.
``Don't we have enough going on rather than to get into somebody's bedroom?'' Councilman Paul R. Riddick asked. ``All you sanctimonious people can go ahead with it.''
The 4-3 vote reflected the reluctance of some council members to intrude.
But the majority of the council decided that the threat was too important to ignore.
``We have 10,000 children coming into the system we're going to have to raise,'' Councilwoman Daun S. Hester said. ``It is a minimal amount of money, but it is something.''
Cities across Hampton Roads and the state are trying to get a handle on the issue. In Portsmouth, for instance, more than half of all births from 1991 to 1995 were out of wedlock; in Suffolk, more than 45 percent of births were to unwed mothers during the same time. More than 20 percent of all births were to unwed mothers in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.
All of the cities in South Hampton Roads have held or are planning town meetings to discuss prevention strategies.
Norfolk's goal is to get the community involved in solving the problem.
``One thing this council is about is community welfare,'' said Mayor Paul D. Fraim.
Councilman W. Randy Wright said he could support the initiative only if efforts were focused on teen-agers. Teen-agers make up about 30 percent of unwed mothers, city Health Department records show. Councilman Herbert M. Collins Sr. said the emphasis should be put on preventing drug and alcohol abuse.
Riddick, Wright and Collins voted against the resolution.
The Norfolk campaign will be tied into a state program named ``Partners in Prevention.'' The available money is part of about $3 million the city will receive this year from Virginia's welfare-reform program, called VIEW, or Virginia's Incentive for Employment, not Welfare. The money is designed primarily to help people on welfare land jobs.
Valerie Stallings, Norfolk's director of public health, said community meetings would be held this summer to discuss how to spend the $76,000.
She said she envisions the money being funneled into community groups interested in developing programs to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies or to assist young women who become pregnant or are struggling as young single mothers. Getting fathers to take more responsibility also is considered an important issue. KEYWORDS: ILLEGITIMATE BABIES NORFOLK CITY COUNCIL
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