First in a series
Children are having babies.
Telegram photo / Joel Hodges |
Tamya Brackett, 16, soon will join the ranks of teen mothers in North Carolina. In 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, North Carolina saw 19,548 girls from 10 to 19 years old become pregnant.
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It's a common phrase now when talking about the problem of teen pregnancy and how expectant mothers seem to be younger and younger, said Bill Albert, chief program officer at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in Washington.
If only it were an exaggeration, he said.
"If we have gotten to the place where it is not surprising for a 12-year-old or a 14-year-old to be a parent, we are in a very bad place. That essentially signals that we have given up on this very important issue – some would say the most important issue – of family formation," Albert said.
Educating children and adults and making sure they do not become apathetic about teen pregnancy is the purpose behind May being Teen Pregnancy Prevention Awareness month, said Doris Stith, executive director of Community Enrichment Organization in Princeville. The program helps educate and get proper care for expectant teen mothers.
A steady decline over the last 15 years in local, state and national numbers shows that efforts have been working to help decrease the teen pregnancies, but there still is much work to do, Stith said.
"What we have tried to do is make sure the information gets out there, the consequences of risky behavior, the consequences of sex at a too early age with no regard to the consequence of a child. ... We are dealing with mending a lot of bad decisions," Stith said.
The overall news is quite good, Albert said. The national teen pregnancy rate peaked in 1990 and has declined 39 percent since then. However, there was a 3 percent increase between 2005 and 2006 that in part may be due to a complacency among policy makers and organizations.
"People think that we can solve social problems like we can eradicate polio, and it just doesn't work that way. There are more teenagers every single day. This is a moving target, so we have to continually remind people that this is an ongoing effort," Albert said.
In 2006, North Carolina had 19,548 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 become pregnant, the N.C. Division of Public Health reports. Of those, 156 were from Edgecombe County and 225 were from Nash County. Four of those in each county were girls between 10 and 14.
Edgecombe was down from 174 teen pregnancies in the same age range in 2005, while Nash was up from 203 teen pregnancies. Of those, 4 girls in Edgecombe and 7 in Nash were between 10 and 14. Numbers usually vary from year to year.
As high as these statistics seem, they are an improvement over the numbers in the early 1990s when teen pregnancy reached its peak, Stith said.
"We still have a lot of improvement to do, but the numbers are decreasing. If I can get it below 100, I will be not satisfied, but I will be happy because it would show that we are trending toward improvement and families are doing better," Stith said.
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They may seem like just statistics, but these numbers represent far-reaching consequences, Albert said. Teen pregnancy has a direct link to critical social issues such as poverty, income disparity, child wellbeing, out-of-wedlock births and education.
In 2004, teen childbearing in the United States cost taxpayers at least $9.1 billion, an average of $1,430 per teen mother annually, Albert said. Whether people want to think about it, they are in some way affected by teen pregnancy.
However, many of the very problems teen pregnancy has been linked to as a cause are also the same risk factors that contributed to the pregnancy, said Denise Harrison-Johnson, the teen parent support group facilitator for the Community Enrichment Organization.
For instance, children of teen parents are at high risk for falling into the same situation when they become teenagers, Harrison-Johnson said.
"We have young grandmothers now. We have grandmothers who had this teen mom when she was 13 years old. ... It is a pattern," Harrison-Johnson said. "Years ago the great-grandmother was old, but now, even the greatgrandmother is young, and even the great-grandmother may have had her baby at an early age."
There is no set formula to see who has the greatest chance of becoming a teen mother, Albert said. Many teen parents grow up in the environments where poverty, unsafe neighborhoods and unstable homes are the norm. Others are from the nuclear family that seems to have it all together. Three out of 10 girls in the United States become pregnant by age 20.
"When you have a number that is that large, it suggests that teen pregnancy is not a problem that is exclusive to any one racial or ethnic group or income level. It is a very widespread problem," Albert said.
However, there are disparities. For example, Hispanics currently have the highest teen pregnancy and birth rates among all racial and ethnic groups, Albert said. The rates have declined over the years, but not as quickly as with white and black teens.
"We haven't done a very good job in developing prevention messages specifically for the Latino community," Albert said.
Harrison-Johnson recognizes the social implications of teen pregnancy, but the issue is more than just numbers.
Through the teen parent support group, she is working with 18 expectant teens. These are young girls who crave love, attention and acceptance and have looked for it in sexual activity far too early.
"They want someone that cares about them, and having a baby, that baby is dependent on them. They feel needed," Harrison-Johnson said.
Tamya Brackett, 16, thought she was in love with the father of her unborn child, which is due Thursday, and that was enough of an excuse to have unprotected sex. Tamya found out she was pregnant from her mom, Latara Brackett, who recognized the indicators before her daughter did.
"I was scared and crying, but now I just deal with it," she said.
The sophomore at Tarboro High School has been working with Harrison-Johnson to learn better parenting skills and make arrangements for the future, including being a mother and staying in school. She knows the future is going to be hard, but she is determined to face it and give her child a good life.
"I am going to be a good mom and just do what I have to do to take care of my child. I am going to graduate," Brackett said.
