While some teenage girls are stepping off of their school bus balancing their books in their hands, others are balancing their babies.
It is a growing paradox in Alachua County and is also becoming a national issue: teenage pregnancy. Currently, there is much conversation on the topic of teenage mothers and their increasing numbers.
However, there is not always discussion on how the demands of parenthood paired with the demands of teenage life concerns can be a mixture that produces mental issues in some cases.
“Teenagers haven’t completed their own mental tasks,” said Theresa Rodriguez, the supervisor of the counseling services program for the Healthy Start program at the Alachua County Health Department. “They are still trying to find their own roles in life, their independence. It is a challenge for some of them to put aside their own needs.”
Some outcomes of this tug-of-war between a teenage mother’s personal needs and those of the baby can be neglect, lackadaisical parenting and in other cases postpartum depression.
“You often see babies in inappropriate situations,” said Rodriguez. “They get left with the neighbor and things like that. It’s difficult for them to postpone their own emotional needs and sometimes they don’t. They continue life as if the baby wasn’t there.”
The Alachua County ACCEPT program located on the W. Travis Loften High School campus is providing services to help lessen the mental stress of balancing a baby and achieving personally.
The ACCEPT program is an acronym for Alachua County Continuing Education for Pregnant and Parenting Teens. It is a district program that gives prenatal education, parenting support and on-site daycare and childcare services to teen parents who choose to attend W. Travis Loften High School, located at 3000 E. University Ave.
“It is an issue, it is a problem,” said Angela Monroe, a teacher and the director of the childcare center at the high school. “It is prevalent and just not good for Alachua County.”
Still, there are questions as to why teen pregnancy is so prevalent locally and nationally and what should be done to combat the rising numbers. Alachua County has had an increase in its average number of births to mothers aged 15 to 17, according to the Florida Department of Health 2008 reports.
“The rate in Florida was 0.7 and Alachua is 1.1 is above the state average,” said Peggy Exumrnba, a Community Health Nursing Consultant at the Healthy Start program at the Alachua County Health Department. “We don’t have a handle on it yet is my point.”
Many teenage girls are giving birth because they are not educated on the real life effects of having a child and the toll of caring for another human being. Others are giving birth to fill a void created through absentee parents and a lacking in parental supervision.
“Helping young ladies develop strong self esteem and know what they want as individuals,” said Exum. “It’s about making showing them how to make positive decisions as individuals.”
But there is a plan to get a handle of the situation. There are initiatives to educate young women on the consequences of their decisions. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy is actively pursuing their goal of reducing the teen pregnancy rate by another one-third between 2006 and 2015.
Their national efforts are focused on improving the lives of the next generation by encouraging stable and two-parent home environments. They are also geared towards taking a different approach to the issue that does not involve conflict, advocates listening to the teens and being factually informed.
However, there is still no sure-fire way to fix Alachua County or America’s teen pregnancy trend. This is a matter that affects all ethnicities, races, and economic classes. Even though some minorities are more publicized for teen pregnancy than others, there is no large statistical difference between the amounts of girls becoming pregnant.
“Serving teenagers is hard. They drop out of treatment quickly not wanting more adults in their life telling them what to do,” said Rodriguez. “If only they could appreciate how lonely it really is. It’s not glamorous.”
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