Teen-Age Fathers Face Facts of Life

Ronald Johnson shook his head and thrust a hand into the air. “I swear to you,” he said, putting the hand to his chest, “that is a true story.”

It went like this:

Shortly after his son was born, Roberto Hernandez dropped out of school and went looking for a job to help support his girlfriend and their son, both of whom lived with her parents while Hernandez lived with his. After Hernandez searched fruitlessly for months, his son suddenly fell ill. Penniless, Hernandez went to the county to apply for Medi-Cal. At length, the request was denied because it was up to the mother to apply for it.

Get a job, he was told.

Johnson found Hernandez three weeks later, working as a clerk in a butcher shop. He helped arrange medical care for the child and, among other things, persuaded Hernandez to return to a junior high school in Gardena.

Hernandez is 13 years old.

“I thought I had seen just about everything,” said Johnson, 34, rubbing his chin during an interview. ‘But the more I get into this job, the more I realize that these are not the 13-, 14- and 15-year-old kids that we were.”

75 in Program

Hernandez is the youngest of about 75 boys enrolled in Teen Fathers, an experimental, largely state-funded program run by Johnson on the campus of Leuzinger High School in Lawndale. It tries to get teen-age boys throughout the area to own up to their responsibilities as fathers, and to teach them how to do so. They also are informed of what child-related services are available while they stay in school.

Teen Fathers, part of the Early Parenting Program at the Youth and Family Center in Lawndale, is one of only two programs in California (the other is in San Francisco) that attempt to ease the problems of adolescent pregnancy and parenthood by offering counseling and job training to some of the thousands of teen-age boys who become fathers every year. Nearly all of the participants are unmarried.

Los Angeles County records about 17,000 live births to mothers age 19 and under each year. Nearly 75% of teen-age mothers are under 17, according to the county Department of Health. The department does not keep track of the number of teen-age fathers.

Each Tuesday and Thursday after school, while their peers practice fielding grounders and hitting curve balls, the boys enrolled in Teen Fathers sit in a classroom and learn how to change diapers, mix formula and remain patient when their children

refuse to stop crying.

“I still haven’t mastered changing cloth diapers,” one 16-year-old father said earnestly. “I think it’s like driving. You can watch someone do it a thousand times and it looks so easy, but once you get behind the wheel, you are totally lost.”

But more than just teaching the mechanics of diaper changing, the program also is designed to help the young fathers remain in school.

“If he quits, what happens then?” said Gayle Nathanson, Youth and Family Center executive director. “Certainly, the best he can do is obtain a minimum-wage job. The same is likely to be true next year and the year after that.”

Since beginning the program last October, Johnson, a former high school teacher and counselor, has enrolled about 100 boys, mostly from the South Bay, in Teen Fathers. The task hasn’t been easy.

Johnson cannot force a young father to participate in the program, and in some cases they deny paternity. “Ninety-nine percent” do not join willingly, but must be persuaded through dozens of telephone calls and chance meetings, Johnson said. Most of the boys are referred to him by young mothers.

Many teen-age fathers wrongly assume that Johnson and others at the center are merely acting as agents for the county district attorney’s office who only want to get them to pay child support. Some are illegal aliens afraid of deportation. Most, however, simply refuse to acknowledge that they are or will soon become fathers.

“We have to go out and literally beat the bushes for these guys,” Johnson said. “We go to the high schools, we go to every coach in every high school, to the churches and the streets. We hang cards around town.

“If I catch them when they first find out the girl is pregnant,” Johnson said, “my job is easy because they are dying to talk--to anyone.”

Many Play With Toys

To look at them, it is difficult to imagine that the boys enrolled in the program are fathers. Many of them play with toys. Some read comic books while waiting to pick up their sons and daughters at the Youth and Family Center’s day-care facility.

A few weeks ago, Johnson said, he gave a Transformer doll--a toy made popular by Saturday morning cartoons--to one of the toddlers at the day-care center. “Not two days later,” he said, “the child’s father drove up and the doll was hanging from the rear-view mirror.”

The young men who willingly enter the program usually have developed a relationship with their child, Johnson said. Others have been spurned by their girlfriends and want to be involved with the baby.

“Often, they are looking for someone to talk to because the girl’s parents have attempted to push him out of the picture and have begun to make decisions he feels he ought to make,” Johnson said. “Others remember that their fathers weren’t around when they were growing up and have told themselves that there is no way that they will do that to their kids.”

No Paternal Rights

Johnson tells the fathers that they may be accepted eventually and urges them not to give up or lose contact with the mother. But under California law, a father under 21 cannot legally assert paternity or any rights to the child.

Of the 85 pregnant girls assisted at the Youth and Family Center last year, 68 still maintained a relationship with the father. The center provides day care, parenting classes, help with school and other advice and services to young parents.

Parnell Colvin, 16, of Inglewood, joined Teen Fathers shortly after the birth of his son five months ago. He is among the very few fathers in the program who are considering marrying his child’s mother. His girlfriend, Tonya Howard, 16, says that they probably will get married in about three years, once she graduates from high school and completes beauty school.

(Although 13-year-old Hernandez’s real name was not used because of his age, other participants in the program did not object to the use of their names in this story.)

Works Part Time

Colvin is learning how to diaper his son and is in counseling with Johnson to learn how to cope with the idea of being a father. He is working part time in his uncle’s store to help support Howard and the child.

He says he never had a problem owning up to being a father. In fact, Colvin said, he was so proud of it that he informed Howard’s parents before she did. (“Me and her dad almost got into it a couple of times over that,” he said.)

“I have to admit that becoming a father was tough at first because my friends would tease me for having to spend all my time and money on the baby,” Colvin said. “They said it was stupid because I wasn’t running with them and that I was missing a lot. Sometimes I do feel that way, but now I’m learning to overlook it.”

Said Howard: “I knew my baby’s father would stand behind me. A lot of guys probably would have just gotten up and left. But there was never any question with Parnell. When things really got bad, he was the only one who was with me, regardless of what would have happened.”

Facing Difficulties

Eric Sudeth, a 20-year-old high school dropout, is having a difficult time overlooking what he is missing by being a father. Sudeth, who is unemployed, joined Teen Fathers last October, shortly after the birth of his son, Eric Jr. He is seeking counseling to work out a variety of problems with his girlfriend, Marlana Patterson, 16, a sophomore at Lennox High School.

“Over the last two years,” said Patterson, who shares a Hawthorne apartment with Sudeth, “we have broken up so many times. But since the baby came, we’ve been trying really hard to solve our problems in a more adult way.”

Still, Sudeth laments that he has been to only one party since the baby arrived and that he was virtually ignored when everyone there learned he was a father.

“If the baby wasn’t here, I think I would change a lot of things,” he said. “Like, I really want to travel. I would have a lot more money to spend just on myself. I just can’t do that now. I’m a father.”