After spending almost two years studying more than 50 at-risk local teen girls, I am only beginning to understand how poverty, culture, ethnicity, single-parent families, foster care and dysfunctional families affect the behavior and futures of these girls — and, more importantly, how this community can and must respond to the needs of these young girls if we are to prevent teen pregnancy among those least able to raise a child.
This two-year study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with a $100,000 grant for an innovative pilot project. The Amarillo project, titled “It’s Just Your Future,” was to determine if incentives could delay pregnancy among at-risk girls, and motivate them to develop career plans. Incentives got at-risk girls to participate in the program, so they heard what we had to say, but what we learned was not what we expected.
We thought insufficient sex education was the problem, but we soon learned differently. While many girls said they benefited from having more comprehensive sex education, what they needed was hope — hope they would not always live in poverty, hope they could live differently from their mothers and in the case of foster girls, hope they would ever have a secure life. Foster girls have the highest rate of teen pregnancy of all teen groups.
We found teen pregnancy is directly related to parenting, or the lack thereof. What does this mean? How can a single mother, who works two jobs, really give her children direction and supervision? The time between 3 p.m. and the arrival of the mother from work provides “opportunity for kids to sexually explore.”
How can a single mom know when ACT and SAT tests are being offered or help her daughter to develop a career plan and encourage her to go to college? Parents who have never gone to college know little or nothing about the myriad information required, or much less how to complete it. The same is true of most undocumented, immigrant, refugee and foster parents.
There also are social and ethnic obstacles for these girls. Many undocumented parents have never attended any kind of school, elementary or otherwise, so they don’t even understand the advantages of a college education. It also is true many immigrant and refugee parents are not aware of college. They only know they can make $10 an hour at one of the meat slaughtering/packing houses, and they think that is wonderful.
Most of the mothers were teen mothers themselves. That’s what their daughters see. This is all their daughters have seen from a young age. If it was “bad” or “wrong” to be a teen mother, their mothers wouldn’t have been teen mothers, they think.
Without mentors and exposure to another way of living, girls repeat what they see their mothers do. In the words of Children’s Defense Fund CEO Marian Wright Edelman, “Lack of belief in change poses the greatest problem for at-risk girls ... you can’t be what you cannot see.”
Incentives were provided at every meeting, plus cash incentives for grades.
However, it was taking them to see “Texas,” having a weekend at Ceta Canyon, touring the Garden Center, providing memberships at the YMCA, and exposing them to different kinds of food that had the greatest impact on them. It expanded their horizons.
They gained a great deal of hope from hearing the wonderful Amarillo College recruiters tell them anyone can attend college, even girls with no family financial assistance could attend with Pell Grants and other scholarships.
Listening to stories of successful Amarillo women, of all ethnic backgrounds, tell their rags-to-riches sagas also had an impact.
Speakers made every effort to convince the girls they, too, could overcome poverty and inadequate parents, if they committed themselves.
We had nine seniors in the group, and seven are enrolled in Amarillo College as of today.
We had to “hold their hands” every step of the way, and it worked! Without personal, individual assistance, they couldn’t have done it.
We think the only way to break the current cycle of poverty and teen pregnancy is to have responsible adults “shepherd” these young women to successful lives.
It isn’t hard to identify at-risk girls in our high schools: counselors and teachers know exactly who they are.
School counselors and school nurses should have a list of available mentors to call when they think a girl needs one.
Mentors can come from churches, women’s clubs and sororities. Mentors are especially needed if our state continues to deny contraceptives to poor girls and women.
Claudia Stravato is project director of “It’s Just Your Future.” She lives in Amarillo.