Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-799-5126
bdietsc@WestEd.org

When I was first asked to write this article on teen pregnancy prevention in the new millennium, I felt honored. Yet whenever I sat down to produce, I was stymied. It has taken me weeks to understand that my writer’s block has developed because the topic deeply depresses me. I am filled with fear and sadness whenever I think of the plight of the poor — particularly the children — in the next fifty years.

Welfare Reform in my affluent home state of Connecticut has already seriously impacted our fragile teen pregnancy prevention target population. We now see the children who are most at risk — poverty-stricken youngsters who are doing poorly in school and in whose homes domestic violence erupts regularly — having to face even greater stresses and increased alienation. They are not managing their hardships very well.

They are quicker to anger, much quicker to fight, even the girls. Increased fighting at school results in greater numbers of arrests during this era of "zero tolerance." With more arrests, there is an increase in the number of youth serving probation. Future teen pregnancy prevention programs will be called upon even more often to help arrested/incarcerated youth and their families during these painful times. Greater resources will be required to meet the increased need for coordinated, non-duplicated service delivery between juvenile court and long-term teen pregnancy prevention programs.

With former welfare dependent families now facing the increased poverty imposed by low-paying, service sector employment, our teen pregnancy prevention target population runs out of food far more frequently than in the past. It is difficult for youngsters to believe that they are important and worthwhile when they have to ask for food for their families. In the future, comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention programs will have to allocate greater resources for the provision of basic necessities.

When having to ask for food on a regular basis, it’s difficult for poverty-stricken children to believe that they can go on to college. Where will the time or the money for college come from when there is not even enough money for food? In a welfare-to-work family, hope for the future is almost impossible for the eldest son or daughter who is charged with primary parenting responsibilities. In the future, if these trends continue, it will be even more difficult to inspire poverty-stricken youth to delay parenting-too-young, since in fact, they are already parenting their own siblings.

A child’s daily performance, just as an adult’s, is directly related to her/his home life. Having a part-time, highly stressed, tired parent and increased family poverty breeds discontent and negativity among the children most at risk of becoming teen parents. Constant family crises resulting from increased economic stresses leave disadvantaged children feeling insecure and alienated. These are just some of the hardships that poverty-stricken children are asked to carry while they simultaneously perform in an academic setting. School systems with high concentrations of disadvantaged youth are barely able to educate these children in 1999! What will happen a few years from now when poor families are even more vulnerable? Holistic teen pregnancy prevention programs will have to find the increased resources needed to assure that indigent children learn and progress in spite of multiple, overwhelming hardships.

Helping each child create the hope needed to postpone early sexual activity will be even more difficult in the future. Even today, we see our most at-risk youth — the disadvantaged who are also doing poorly in school — pulled away from school and program activities in order to either provide child care for their younger siblings or to work and help support their struggling families. In the future, this social dynamic will be even stronger. Families cannot survive on the limited wages of a cafeteria worker or a store clerk. The teenagers of the working poor will also have to work to help support their families. Teen pregnancy prevention programs will have to intensify their efforts to help youth plan and maintain a path which moves them forward while allowing them to also meet their family responsibilities. These programs may also be called upon to provide support and help for these families well beyond the time of a participant’s high school graduation to assure lifelong success. Added resources will be required to assure that the least likely to succeed overcome the academic, psychological, social and economic barriers required to postpone premature parenting and break out of poverty via advanced education.

All in all, the promising new millennium looks dismal and bleak for America’s most defenseless human beings — our poverty-stricken children and youth. The only hope that I can see is the creation of strong, comprehensive, holistic, long-term, prevention programs which recruit and enroll young children immediately upon their exiting Head Start. Pre-teens and teenagers need adult guidance and supervision. Left unsupervised or in the care of slightly older siblings, today’s young Welfare Reform pre-teens are engaging in far more serious risk taking behaviors than children did in the past. If current indicators maintain their course, future prevention programs will be needed everywhere in high risk neighborhoods to meet the tide of negativity and discontent that will be found amidst the millennium’s poverty-stricken children.

I fear for America’s poverty-stricken children of the future. I cringe when I hear of orphanages as a solution to weakened families. I cry when I see former welfare moms now have to call the police because they can no longer afford to mother a disruptive child. So, these now neglected, troubled children are sent to detention homes.

The chasm between the "haves" and the "have nots" widens in the new millennium, the future for most poverty-stricken children represents a huge black hole with nothing left to lose. Solid, daily, neighborhood-based teen pregnancy prevention programs which provide a parallel family structure and multiple prevention and support services will be one of the few options of potential hope available for these fragile, vulnerable youth who are most at risk of becoming young parents.