Teenage Pregnancy

Keshia stopped attending her high school in October. The mile-long walk to school was too strenuous for the 14-year-old Lower Bucks County girl, who is eight months pregnant. Now she's battling with school officials to provide a tutor. Stacey, 18, still attends her Upper Bucks high school, although it took her months to find day care for her 7-month-old son, Chuckie. Her classmates, slow to accept her motherhood, haven't made things easier. "They give me a lot of hassle about it," she said.

Recently our attention has been directed toward teen-age pregnancy, single parenting and the vanishing black family. I believe that making a cultural change through the combined efforts of all cultures could lead to the elimination of such problems. Culture has been defined as "the learned portion of human behavior, the patterned ways of thinking and doing that man himself has developed, learned from others and made a part of his environment. " There exists amid the black culture, and other cultures as well, the problem of teen-age pregnancy.

Remember when Andy Rooney was silenced for saying the wrong thing on 60 Minutes? The same thing is happening to a commentator on Spanish-language television. The space every writer needs in which to probe delicate issues is again being shrunk, though most people outside Hispanic circles in the Northeast don't know about it. Carlos Alberto Montaner, author of many books about Latin America, appears in a one-minute segment at the end of Portada, a weekly news-magazine-style show broadcast by the Spanish-language network Univision.

Claude Lewis harshly criticizes CBS's protrayal of the black teenage pregnancy problem (Op-ed, April 19) as unfair, arguing that the issue of teenage pregnancy among whites was not also presented. Bill Moyers' special was not titled "Teenage Pregnancy in America" but "The Vanishing Family - Crises in Black America. " One should remember that it was not that long ago that the media were criticized by blacks for ignoring the black side of an issue. Now it is being called racist for the special attention it has given to a threat to America's black community.

When teenage girls have sex, they think they can't get pregnant. . . . I know . . . I got pregnant. I had a daughter when I was 13, and having a baby is no joy ride. So wrote Annette Nesmith, 15, a ninth grader at Thomas FitzSimons Junior High School, in the essay "Coping With Teen Pregnancy. " Nesmith read her essay yesterday at the School Administration Building, where she and three other Philadelphia teenagers were named winners of the "Solutions to Combating Teenage Pregnancy" essay contest.

The pregnancy of Sarah Palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter is a private matter and ought to be kept that way. But that doesn't mean America should shy away from a needed discussion of teenage pregnancy. The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world, with 450,000 teens giving birth annually. One out of three American girls gets pregnant by age 20. After giving birth, many teenage mothers struggle in school and later in life - along with their children, often living in poverty.

Everybody would agree that the current epidemic of teenage pregnancy is cause for profound concern. But how to tackle such a widespread social problem is open for debate. The most common diagnosis is that "ignorance" causes pregnancy. Given the prevalence of such a naive attitude, it is not surprising that teens are becoming pregnant in ever-increasing numbers. The problem is not "ignorance" about birth control. It is the dramatic rise in the number of teens engaging in premarital sex. In the '70s, when more teens were using contraceptives than ever, there was a 45 percent increase in adolescent sexual activity.

Dottie Schell assumed that with all the publicity teen pregnancy has received, she'd have no trouble getting Chester County social workers together to discuss the problem. She was wrong. Schell sent out 57 notices of an informal get-together to school guidance counselors, school nurses, hospital public relations officers and social agencies, but just nine people showed up at Monday's idea-sharing in Exton at COAD, the Chester County Council on Addictive Diseases. Schell, Maternity Services Specialist for the Family Planning Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania Inc., was there to talk about TAPP, the state-funded Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting Program established in 1986.

Nearly everyone involved in communications is well aware of television's dominant role in the media. Indeed, CBS's Bill Moyers pointed out that television is more influential in our society than our schools. But television is both a marvel and a monster. It has been a dismal failure when it comes to fairness and precision. Two recent and blatant examples occurred on CBS's 60 Minutes, and Bill Moyers' Journal, which last month did a "special" on "The Vanishing Family - Crisis in Black America," which inadequately dealt with teenage pregnancy.

The pregnancy of Sarah Palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter is a private matter and ought to be kept that way. But that doesn't mean America should shy away from a needed discussion of teenage pregnancy. The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world, with 450,000 teens giving birth annually. One out of three American girls gets pregnant by age 20. After giving birth, many teenage mothers struggle in school and later in life - along with their children, often living in poverty.

In homes with teenage girls across America yesterday morning, the big story was that teen TV star Jamie Lynn Spears is three months pregnant. The 16-year-old sister of pop singer and celebrity train-wreck Britney Spears has her own Nickelodeon show, Zoey 101, about a smart, resourceful girl attending a well-to-do boarding school on the California coast. Dealing with a teenage pregnancy has not been among the story lines of Zoey 101, though that is the plot of the new movie Juno, which many are saying has Academy Award potential.

'The Pill' and the changes it brought to society I find ironic the examples that Dr. Jose A. Bufill uses to support his condemnation of the Pill: abortion, teenage pregnancy, unwed mothers, fatherless families (Commentary, May 2). All situations that could have been avoided by use of the pill. There is no denying divorce rates and the deterioration of the family, but there are so many other causes to point to: greed, materialism, lack of proper preparation and education, poverty, the impossibility of providing for a family without two full-time wage earners, and so many other evils and problems of modern society.

The reason we have made so little progress in reducing teen pregnancy, says author Maggie Gallagher, is that we haven't perceived the problem correctly. The problem, in her view, is not that teenagers don't know enough about condoms, or that young girls don't realize that having a baby is going to cut into the time they can spend with their friends at the mall - although these have been the underlying assumptions of many campaigns to reduce teen pregnancy. The problem, she says, is that teenage boys and girls "haven't been told about the emotional, spiritual, financial and erotic benefits of marriage.

Recent news concerning teen pregnancy in America is both good and bad. It's good that, according to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overall teenage pregnancy has been lowered by about 15 percent since 1992. Also good is the fact that the drop reflects a large decrease in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and probably premarital sex as well, among African American females. Births among black teenagers between 15 and 19 are down by 21 percent to their lowest level in decades, says the CDC report.

One of the most encouraging - and perplexing - trends in American society at present is the decline in teenage pregnancy. It's encouraging because of the large body of evidence that teenage girls who have babies reduce their own life prospects, and their children's. It's perplexing because no one is quite sure why the decline is occurring. Researchers have been unable to find a direct consistent link between teen pregnancy and sex education campaigns, school-based clinics, or any other specific policy intervention.

The doctor of a missing 12-year-old who was nine months pregnant when she disappeared Dec. 16 said yesterday that maternity at such a young age is "atypical," requires special medical attention and often results in complications. Trenton obstetrician Delores Williams said she had last examined Celina Mays on Dec. 13 and estimated her baby's weight at about seven pounds. "She's just a baby to me . . . She had gotten really big and looked very pregnant. I think that took her by surprise," Williams said, noting that she had only twice delivered babies to 12-year-olds.

At first, the news sounded great. A federal study on teen pregnancies in Tillamook County, Ore., claimed that in a four-year period, the teen pregnancy rate dropped a dramatic 75 percent. President Clinton touted the decline in fall campaign speeches and credited a bevy of Clintonian-sounding programs implemented in the county, such as "Touch Talks," which teaches teens "refusal and communications skill," for this amazing success story. The release of the study, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, couldn't have been better timed - right at the apex of the presidential campaign when the President was emphasizing his commitment to "family values.

Teenage pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births are helping keep America's infant mortality rate above that of other industrialized countries, researchers reported yesterday. Although America's overall infant mortality rate dipped to just below eight deaths per thousand live births last year, the country ranks behind at least a score of countries worldwide, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. "The decline in the infant mortality rate would have been greater if not for a rising number of out-of-wedlock births," said Gopal Singh, the study's lead researcher.

The Inquirer asked area youths to respond to the question, "What happens to a pregnant teen in the real world?" More than 350 answered. Here are some of the compelling responses: LOOK WHAT TV OFFERS Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth trying to find a solution for the problem of teen pregnancy. People are always complaining that teens are having babies at enormous rates, but they choose to go criticize the teens themselves. But the real problem is: Advertisements on television.