Teen Moms : ABC Course Keeps Pregnant Girls in High School
Like other teen-agers, 16-year-old Veronica Licon is worried about her weight. She also worries about stretch marks.
A 10th-grader, Veronica is pregnant, one of 70 pregnant girls and young mothers in an ABC Unified School District program that for 16 years has been helping teen-age mothers finish high school and become competent parents.
Veronica, whose baby is due in June, is new to the Teen Mother program, housed on the campus of Tracy High School in Cerritos. As a newcomer, Veronica has been assigned a “buddy,” Gina Gutierrez, to ease her entry into the group.
Gina, 18, whose baby is imminent, stays close to Veronica as the new girl studies and chats with the others. When the newcomer takes the cheese out of a sandwich she is about to bite, Gina is on her like a hawk.
“Eat the cheese,” Gina tells her. Veronica resists. “I don’t want to gain, I don’t want stretch marks.” But Gina is adamant. “It’s good for your baby. It contains calcium for strong bones and teeth.”
As program founder Jeanne Lindsay says, “We teachers could all leave and the most important part of the program would still be there--the support the girls give each other.” Lindsay left her teaching job earlier this year to run a small press that specializes in books about teen parenting.
About half the girls in the ABC program have transferred from other schools, all but a few from schools in the district. Legally, they could remain in their own high schools or junior highs while waiting for their babies to be born. But most say they prefer being with other pregnant teen-agers or new mothers in a program designed especially for them. Over the years, the program has enrolled more than 1,000 pregnant girls and new mothers between the ages of 12 and 20. Girls can remain in the program for a semester after they give birth.
Many girls opt for the program because they do not want to put up with nasty remarks from their nonpregnant peers. “We won’t call you a slut because you’re pregnant,” said Sherry Burns, 18. Sherry, who is the mother of 5-month-old Brandon, plans to return to Artesia High School at the end of the current semester.
Nationwide, the majority of girls who have babies before age 18 never finish high school. According to recent figures published by the Children’s Defense Fund, a national child advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., about 55% of white teen mothers fail to graduate. Black teen mothers do better; about two-thirds eventually get diplomas. But only 27% of Latino girls who become pregnant in their teens finish high school.
According to Lindsay, two-thirds of the girls in the Teen Mother program graduate. The program also brings a surprisingly large number of dropouts back to school. Almost 20% of the participants had dropped out of school before they became pregnant. “Pregnancy seems to give these girls a reason to go back to school and work toward obtaining a high school diploma and job-entry skills,” Lindsay said.
One such returnee is Sandra Lauro, 16. Sandra quit school in the 10th grade. She returned when she was expecting Paulina, now 2 1/2 months old. “Once I got pregnant, I decided to come back,” she recalled. “What could I do for my baby without an education?” Sandra plans to study cosmetology at Cerritos Community College after she gets her diploma.
On a typical day, the Teen Mother program looks like a cross between an obstetrician’s office and a progressive school for girls.
Adolescents bend awkwardly over math and history books. The girls vary widely in age, socioeconomic background and academic ability. The babies of most of the new mothers in the group are being cared for at the nearby Tracy Infant Center, a day care facility for the infants of school-age mothers in the district, or elsewhere. But there are always a few newborns in the classroom, sleeping next to their mothers or cradled in their laps. Girls walk into the mini-kitchen to help themselves to milk, pizza bagels or other healthy snacks from the refrigerator. While the girls themselves admit they love junk food, good nutrition is a priority of the program.
The Tracy Infant Center is a major draw for participants. Girls whose babies are enrolled in the center can keep them there until the child is 2 1/2 years old if the mother remains in school and even after she graduates if she attends college or has a job. Transportation is another plus of the program. A special van will pick up students and their babies at their doors each morning and drop them off after school.
As teacher Pat Alviso explains, the program has been tailored to the very specific needs of teen-age mothers and mothers-to-be. In gym class, instead of playing volleyball or other sports, the pregnant students earn their physical education credit doing stretches and other prenatal exercises and learning how to breathe when they go into labor. They earn science credit while studying fetal development and the physiology of pregnancy.
Health Lessons Given
In addition to whatever academic courses the girls need for graduation, the program also includes lessons on prenatal health, parenting and the options that are open to pregnant teen-agers, including abortion and adoption. Alviso tries to visit each potential participant at home before she joins the program.
“Do you know you don’t have to stay pregnant?” Alviso asks, referring girls who want to learn more about abortion to Planned Parenthood. She also raises the possibility of adoption. “Do you know you can release your baby?” she asks, careful to avoid the phrase “give up your baby,” with its implication of abandonment.
Almost all the girls choose to keep their babies. Many are Roman Catholic and do not believe in abortion. “I wished it would disappear but I wouldn’t kill it myself,” one girl in the program said of her unborn child. Although the staff makes sure the girls are informed about the possibility, adoptions are rare, in part, the staff says, because the girls see their peers coping relatively well with their new babies. “She seems happy,” one pregnant girl said of one of the new mothers in the program.
Over the years, only 30 to 40 girls have released their babies for adoption, Lindsay said. In the current group, one girl is considering adoption.
Proud of Photos
Between lessons, the program’s new mothers produce photos of their babies at the slightest provocation. Pregnant girls show each other the blurry images generated during ultrasound examinations of their unborn offspring. “My fetus is cuter than yours,” Jennifer Zampa, 17, teased classmate Debbie Williams, also 17.
Over and over again, the young women say the best thing about the program is being part of a community of others like themselves, morning sickness and all. “I like the people who come here,” said Velvet Tosta, 16, the mother of 8-month-old Dezarie. “I can talk to them. They have the same problems I do.”
Everybody connected with the program understands, for example, that fatigue is a common side effect of pregnancy. As a result, most of the pregnant girls do not start school until 9:30 a.m. Nobody is surprised by how often the bathroom is in use.
“I don’t think I could have done it alone,” Gina said. “There are so many other people here who are in the same situation.”
Nicola Frazier, 16, who will deliver in a few weeks, agreed. “When you see somebody sitting in the corner crying,” Nicola said, “you know why.”
Advise One Another
The girls regularly turn to each other and the staff for advice as they deal with the unfamiliar world of having and raising babies. They chide each other for smoking, using drugs or other practices that might hurt their unborn babies.
They discuss problems that most teen-agers never have to think about: whether they will be thin enough after their babies are born to look pretty in their prom dresses and strategies to keep their own mothers from taking over the raising of their children. The larger ones advise the smaller ones to use a shoelace to fasten jeans that can no longer be zipped up.
The unmarried mothers can discuss concerns such as what to tell their children about absent fathers. “Why make a kid feel like his father was a louse?” Lindsay recalled being told by one young mother. “If his dad’s a louse, that makes him half-louse.” Instead, she told her son, “Your father wasn’t as lucky as I am--he didn’t get to live with you.”
Although the married students seem a little more confident than the others, Lindsay has special concerns about them. Married teen-age mothers are more likely than their unmarried peers to have a second child in the near future, she points out. They are also more likely to drop out of school.
According to Lindsay, the program has had many successes. Several alumnae have gone on to college. One is now an accountant. More often, Lindsay said, former students send evidence, often in the form of notes on Christmas cards, that they have healthy “coping families.”
Most Have No Regrets
Almost to a girl the young mothers now in the program say they have no regrets. But occasionally one of the pregnant girls speaks wistfully about ordinary adolescence, something they no longer have. Therese Albert, 15, is only 4 months pregnant and her unborn child is not yet a tangible consolation for all an untimely pregnancy has cost her. Therese recalls how bad she felt when her pregnancy kept her from trying out for a dance group at her old junior high. She admits she is envious of the nonpregnant girls she sees at the mall “in their little clothes.”
“I wish it had never happened, but there’s nothing I can do about it now,” Therese said.
Many of the girls say they wish they had known more about contraception at an earlier age. “I was 3 months pregnant when my mother told me about birth control,” one youngster recalled. “If she had told me before, I wouldn’t have become pregnant.”
Teacher Alviso said that about 10% of the program’s current students are headed toward college. Sherry wants to be an architect. Shanne Crawford, 17, whose baby is due in 3 weeks, wants to go to law school. Shanne, who says she has no plans to marry, hopes to go to Harvard, like her brother--”with her baby in her backpack,” a classmate notes.
Like many of the other young women in the program, Shanne chooses to see the child she is about to have as an incentive, not a setback. She intends to succeed, she said, “because I want my baby to have everything. “
