[Infidel_Kastro]

The vicious cycle of teen pregnancy

04:54 PM CST on Monday, November 29, 2004


By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News


Amanda Davis sneaked into her mother's room as she slept.

Worried and distraught, the 12-year-old took charge. She pricked her mother's finger.

"What are you doing?" demanded diabetic Susie Aaron as she awoke, startled.

"I'm taking your blood sugar to make sure you don't go into a coma," replied Amanda, her words thick with a childhood lisp.

Multiple pregnancies often occur as result of hopeless feeling
Even before Amanda had children of her own, she was a caregiver. She searched for her mother when she didn't come home and got herself ready for school. But as the child of a teenage mother, she was fighting destiny. She risked dropping out of school, living in poverty and becoming a teenage mother herself.

Six years later, those predictions all came true in a spectacular way when Amanda gave birth to quadruplets last September. Today, the 19-year-old mom is expected to deliver a fifth child, a boy she plans to name Matthew.

Amanda's children face the same cruel odds unless they are able shatter the sequence relived in their family for three generations, say those who study the long-term effects of teen pregnancy.

The futures of Abby, Lexi, Ryan and Zach Calabrese, as well as the new baby, depend on Amanda's choices during the next few years.

Her options are limited, and poverty stands in their way.

She does not have a job, a high school diploma or a husband. For now, she is supported by a government system not designed to handle an anomaly like a teenage mother of quadruplets.


"She's in a rough place," said Maureen A. Pirog, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. "You're left with a social safety net that's very temporary. Given that these kids are so young, it will be tough."


Looking into Amanda's past reveals some of the powerful forces that experts say perpetuate the cycle of teenage pregnancy.

Amanda's mother was 18 and a high school dropout when Amanda was born. She and was living in her mother's house with Amanda's father at the time. A son named Jason arrived 18 months later.

The couple divorced when Amanda was a toddler. After that, the children saw her father occasionally as they grew up. Their mother often left them with relatives. The steady hand in Amanda's childhood was her grandmother, Connie Franklin, a woman known to everyone as Granny.

"My mom used to go out and stay gone for two or three days with a guy she met," Amanda recalled. "Then she'd come home long enough to sleep and go out again. She always left us with other people."

Amanda was molested by a friend staying with her aunt and uncle when she was 6 and 7 years old. She finally told her mother when she was 8. She still has nightmares.

Amanda has lived 15 of her 19 years with Granny, who is now helping her raise the quadruplets. Most of that time her mother lived there, too.

"I played a pretty good-size role in raising her," Granny said. "Every once in awhile, Amanda will tell me she doesn't know what she'd do without me. Not just since the babies were born. She told me before, too."

Amanda's father, Tommy Davis, 44, said he was on the road driving a truck and only saw his children on the weekends after the divorce. He is now in the Hood County Jail for a DWI conviction.

Amanda last saw her dad the day after the babies were born. He saw her on the news and came by the hospital.

"She was a good kid growing up," he said from jail. "She wasn't no trouble."

Amanda was a caregiver by nature.

"We always said Amanda raised Susie. Susie didn't raise Amanda," said Granny, 61. "She's more responsible than her mother has ever been."

Since Susie moved to Denver two years ago, she's finally grown up, her mother and daughter said. She's in a healthy relationship and has a job as manager of an apartment complex.

"I got married when I was 16. When I got my divorce, I went wild," said Susie, who turned 38 this month. "I never had my teenage years. I learned from my mistakes."

The summer before Amanda started high school, she went from sleepovers with what she called "goody-two-shoe friends" to parties with drugs and alcohol.

She started smoking, dyed her hair pink and hung out at the bowling alley. She dropped out of school in the 10th grade.

Amanda's 18-year-old brother, who had learning disabilities and behavioral problems, also dropped out of school. He spent time in jail after running away and stealing a car as a juvenile.

Amanda set her own limits.

"I've never wanted to do any major drugs because of what my mom went through," Amanda said. "And I've drank, but I've never drank so much I was out of control because I saw what my mom went though."

Granny traces Amanda's first pregnancy to her loneliness and vulnerability after her mother moved to Denver. Amanda met Jimmy Calabrese not long after. She was 17. He was 27 and married. He's the father of the quadruplets, as well as the new baby.

"Amanda's teenage pregnancy didn't come from poverty. It came from her mother," Granny said with a sigh. "He found her at a vulnerable time in her life when her mom was gone. She had quit school. He knew how to flirt with her and make her feel gorgeous. She had lost weight, and she was looking good."

Scraping by
Poverty is an obstacle for Amanda; her children threaten to keep her poor.

"The cycle of teen pregnancy is in part a cycle of poverty," said Jennifer Manlove, who researches teen pregnancy for Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group. "Simply delaying it [pregnancy] doesn't mean it will help unless you have better education, a job and are married when you have children."For now, Amanda's family survives on government assistance for low birth-weight babies. The $562 for each child has paid the bills each month. A social worker's evaluation noting improved health and development could stop those checks.
That's when Amanda's struggle to make ends meet really begins.

Cash assistance is hard to come by in Texas because of the stringent requirements. Time limits are set on that assistance based on a person's situation. Recipients must have a job to qualify, with some exceptions, such as a single parent having a child younger than 1 year old.

The federal government sets the poverty level for a family the size of Amanda's at $25,210. If she got a 40-hour a week minimum wage job, she would make $10,712 per year, which would make her ineligible for cash assistance.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is not designed for families like Amanda's, said Shawn Fremstad, deputy director of welfare reform for the Center on Budget and Policy, a liberal think tank in Washington.

"The typical family is two kids on TANF. All they need is some temporary support, so they can pay the rent and meet basic needs like food while they look for work," Mr. Fremstad said. "By and large, we've got a system that's set up to deal with the easier cases."

With five children, Amanda can receive $500 a month in food stamps indefinitely, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.

Right now, she gets help with groceries from the Women, Infants and Children program. It provides monthly stipends of about $34 per person for children up to age 6 and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers. After that, the children could be eligible for free or reduced lunch programs at school.

She could also apply for public housing assistance. In McKinney, there are already 1,000 people on the waiting list. She and the children are also on Medicaid.

Amanda wants her children to have a better life, but has not figured out a way to balance five children, a job and childcare costs.

"I don't know that there is anything I can do. I can't do anything really but stay home and take care of them," Amanda said. "I just hope they break the cycle."

Dr. Pirog, who has studied teenage paternity, child support, welfare reform and poverty, said Amanda can take steps to better provide for her children.

"My advice, if I were giving advice, would be to establish paternity and ask for child support," she said. "Then she needs to get her GED."

So far, Amanda hasn't asked Jimmy for money.

"If things don't change, I will," she said. Amanda says she will not demand child support if Jimmy becomes involved in their children's lives. So far, months go by between his visits.

Jimmy says work kept him from visiting, though he didn't come over more often after he quit his job as a tow truck driver. He paid an electricity bill for a month and bought a pack of diapers, but has not contributed financially on a regular basis.

Amanda says she is committed to her children and will be a good mother. She plans to talk to her kids about life. Not just the sex talk, but the consequences of drugs and having sex early.

"I want them to be married when they have kids. But I don't want them to get married young," Amanda said. "I want them to finish high school and go to college and then get married."

This is exactly what she should do, said Bill Albert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Good parenting can save children from the pitfalls that befell their parents.

"What a teen parent needs to tell their children and their peers is 'I love these children dearly, but upon reflection, knowing what I know, it would have been better if I'd waited,'" Mr. Albert said.

"It's not just about sex and body parts and tab A and slot B. It's 'Where do you want to go in life and how will you get there?' Very few children say 'I want to be poor. I want to live in poverty.' It's about hopes and dreams and what it takes to get there."

[EdGreene]

Originally Posted by Infidel_Kastro

The vicious cycle of teen pregnancy

."

This thread ought to have been called "The vicious cycle of busybodies who can't stop moralizing about every damn thing", you being the busybody.

[Infidel_Kastro]

Originally Posted by EdGreene

This thread ought to have been called "The vicious cycle of busybodies who can't stop moralizing about every damn thing", you being the busybody.

Actually, the title is directly from the Dallas Morning News, not what I titled it, so be careful falling off your high horse.
But hey, who cares right, just our tax money at work.....

[DiSaidSo]

Wow, IK. I didn't know you wrote for the DMN!!

[Infidel_Kastro]

Originally Posted by DiSaidSo

Wow, IK. I didn't know you wrote for the DMN!!

I am an mystery, wrapped in a paradox, housed in an enigma.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by Infidel_Kastro

I am an mystery, wrapped in a paradox, housed in an enigma.

I thought you just parroted Mulder!

[Infidel_Kastro]

Originally Posted by Mulder

I thought you just parroted Mulder!

Nope. You're a lawyer, wrapped in legal briefs, housed in a gated community.

No, this particular topic pisses me off because I believe in helping our children, but not our children's children, because children should not be having children.

[Infidel_Kastro]

My first concern is with the health and welfare of the babies involved, not to mention they impending one. She is fortunate that she is at least receiving some assistance, although not for very long.
The thing that set me off is that she has no real inention of getting the Dad to take responsibility. (This is actually part 2. Part 1 was printed on Sat. and she said that she would ask for child support if things didn't change, although she contradicts herself in this story).
I think that if possible, the State needs to step in and establish paternity in order to get the father to at least contribute something.
Regardless of the cycles, having quads is one thing, getting pregnant again AFTER that, knwing what its like to already have 4 kids, is just plain freaking irresponsible.

[DiSaidSo]

Where was she supposed to learn responsibility? She wasn't in school and her mom lives in Denver! Granny seems to be a HUGE help, but Granny probably doesn't read up on the latest birth control methods. You know who should've been the responsible one in this situation? That schmuck assfreak of a dad. A pack of diapers? OH GEE THANKS! That guy needs to be beaten severely about the head and neck region. After he gives her some child support, of course.

[Infidel_Kastro]

Originally Posted by DiSaidSo

Where was she supposed to learn responsibility? She wasn't in school and her mom lives in Denver! Granny seems to be a HUGE help, but Granny probably doesn't read up on the latest birth control methods. You know who should've been the responsible one in this situation? That schmuck assfreak of a dad. A pack of diapers? OH GEE THANKS! That guy needs to be beaten severely about the head and neck region. After he gives her some child support, of course.

You know, if he was really what you referred him as, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant.
*ducks and waits for Candy to come and smack him*

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by EdGreene

This thread ought to have been called "The vicious cycle of busybodies who can't stop moralizing about every damn thing", you being the busybody.

The irony here is the perverted sense of morality the liberal has. On the one hand, Ed rightly acuses Fundies of basing their morality on outdated and antiquated dicates from the Bible, but on the other he can't recognize the exact same tendancy in him to follow the liberal party line instead of his own conscience.

Ed has no problem with a doctor grabbing the legs of an unborn baby, yanking it halfway out the rear of a woman, driving a spike through its head, then sucking out the brains, waiting for the heart to stop pumping so he can legally remove the dead baby (this legal, of course, because of liberal judges that think like Ed). But he sees no problem with the morality of young women popping out babies they can't support, in many instances popping them out because they receive more welfare for each baby! Even Clinton, another liberal, understood the immorality as well as the stupidity of such a system. Ed cannot see it because he has been given his "moral" position by liberal rhetoric the same as the Fundies have been "given" their moral position by the Bible.

People like you and I, IK, think for ourselves. We follow our conscience and our sense of right and wrong--we don't have "preconceived" notions of morality. I'm sure you, like I, could care less if these young girls want to screw every guy in town--I won't judge their morality on their sexuality (after all, what man wouldn't do the same?) so long as they aren't hurting anyone else. But disreprecting the rest of society by having babies they know they can't support, whether by accident or intentional, is immoral in any rational person's eyes. But Ed is not rational--like most liberals, his morality is fed to him.

[Mulderator]

BTW--just about every conservative would support paying woman not to have children! We pay every woman $1,000 a year to age 35 (or more--include it with taxes like the Earned Income Credit) to have that implant that works for about six months, paid for by the government. You get two of them a year, include the name of the facility on your tax return and request the credit.

Now liberals, on the other hand, would be screaming bloody murder--racisms, fascims, sexism, poorism, elitism, sexualism, maybe a new "ism", "birthcontrolism" would be invented to label the heartless conservative. These Moore-Ons see no problem in having six children and no job--they just keep giving more money for every baby that's popped out. And to pay for it--they tax the two-child hard working family (the "rich")! That's the perverted morality of the liberal!

[Infidel_Kastro]

I've been advocating similar ideas for quite some time, not necessarily as drastic as paying for a woman to get an implanted birth control device, but with every welfare check you get some birth control. If you get pregnant, you lose money from welfare, consider it "pay or play". As much as everyone can undersatnd the need to try to help the babies once they come, the idea is PREVENTION.!!!!!!

[AKA Arizona]

The word I'm looking for is abstinence, we are not dogs or some other animal that can not control its mating habits. Teach your children to abstaine from sex until they are married.............

[AcaCandy]

Originally Posted by AKA Arizona

The word I'm looking for is abstinence, we are not dogs or some other animal that can not control its mating habits. Teach your children to abstaine from sex until they are married.............

I think neutering should be an acceptable option