Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 7, 1993 TAG: 9403180038
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Anger, yes. Lots of it. A good bit of it is justifiable, almost all of it understandable. And one the infuriating things is the seeming lack of embarrassment, much less regret, among the teens who are the topic of the series.
There should be some embarrassment discernible in irresponsible parents whose children are becoming parents because they haven't taught them to be what they themselves are not - responsible adults. There should be embarrassment in irresponsible girls who have heard the right messages at home, but have chosen to listen to other voices instead. There should be embarrassment in irresponsible boys - and men, some in their 20s or 30s - who look for sex with young teens, priding themselves in some cases on the number of illegitimate children they help create and then ignore.
These people ought to be embarrassed, but they don't seem to be. Which makes others angry. So what's next?
Edlich is right when he warns not to let controversy eat up energy that is better spent on finding solutions to one of the city's biggest problems. So - how about getting angry enough to do something?
Heaping scorn on teen mothers hardly seems an effective response. Most of these girls fail to demand the financial and emotional support that they have a right to expect from fathers of their children. A few are actually handing over their children's welfare money to these bums. Such lack of self-respect isn't going to be remedied by cries of "Shame!"
What reveals itself in the sad picture of a pregnant 14-year-old riding her bike, a 17-year-old up all night with a sick child and facing a test at school the next day, a 16-year-old pregnant with her second child, is that these youngsters have lacked either the expectation that they might have and deserve a better life, or the understanding that the path they have taken makes a better life far less likely, not only for them, but for their children.
The community can clamp its hands over its eyes and whine it doesn't want to hear about this. Or it can come together to find ways to fight these teens' pathetic and misguided notion that a baby offers the security and love they have missed in their own lives.
Amid the frustration and anger over these realities, there are people trying to understand them and change them, including: the city schools' Maternal and Infant Education Center that provides not only day care for babies but parenting classes for their child-mothers; the Junior League's Teen Outreach Program that teaches self-esteem through community service; Planned Parenthood, which offers an array of reproductive-health services; the Better Beginnings Coalition that makes available a community network of speakers and support programs in the schools; the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership that offers teen health services at Patrick Henry High School and William Ruffner Middle School and, yes, provides birth-control prescriptions.
A disturbing need. But more disturbing, still, is that some girls don't have the need because they'd just as soon have the baby.
The city now is launching a teen pregnancy task force to work out a coordinated strategy to fight this social illness. An overdue response, this should be followed up quickly with action - while the community is fighting mad.
by CNB