Weathering a Crisis in the Family : Teen-Age Daughter’s Pregnancy Triggers Storm of Emotions but Forges Strong New Bonds

When she was born, her father was in the delivery room, prepared to bring her into the world himself if the doctor didn’t arrive in time--and he almost didn’t.

And when she gives birth two months from now--just after celebrating her 16th birthday--he’ll be in the delivery room with her again because he doesn’t want his child to be alone or frightened. He wants her to feel the miracle of childbirth as he did when she was born.

Her mother will be there, too, with the same yearning to see her give birth with a sense of joy rather than apprehension about the hardships ahead.

The fact that this bright, pretty, strong-willed girl who got pregnant the first time she fell in love has such support from both parents is a kind of miracle.

In the beginning, Ruth and Jim were so shocked and angry they almost pushed their daughter, Jennifer, out of their lives. Today, they’re not only attending childbirth classes with her, they’re also preparing a room for Jennifer and the baby in their home.

The Orange County couple talked in separate interviews about how they reached the decision to help raise their first grandchild--and Jennifer shared her feelings about her parents--on the condition that their real names not be used.

Jennifer was eight weeks pregnant when she brought her 19-year-old boyfriend, Scott, home with her to break the news.

Jim was at work, but they found Ruth in the kitchen.

“Mom, I have to talk to you,” Jennifer said as Scott stood awkwardly beside her.

Ruth could see it in their faces.

“You’re pregnant,” she said.

“We want to keep the baby, mom. We’re going to get married,” Jennifer told her.

“NO!” Ruth thought. But she said, “Fine. Go pack your stuff and live with Scott and carry out your fairy tale.”

Jim came home as soon as Ruth called and burst through Jennifer’s bedroom door yelling, “I can’t believe you guys did this. You don’t think! How can you be so stupid?”

Jennifer had been crying, but now she said defiantly: “Look, I know we’ve got ourselves into a situation, and if you want to put us down for it, you can get out of my room right now because I feel bad enough as it is.”

That night, Jennifer stuffed two grocery bags with clothes and went to live with her boyfriend.

But even then she knew Scott wasn’t up to taking responsibility for her and the baby. A high-school dropout who had been on and off drugs, he wasn’t able to hold a job or save money. So when her father called a few days later and asked her to return home, she went, even though she didn’t believe that she was really wanted.

More than a week went by before Jennifer and her parents could talk. First there were raw emotions to get through.

Ruth, an outspoken liberal, expresses her feelings freely; Jim, a white-collar conservative, is more reserved. In this crisis, as in others they’ve faced together, they had trouble bridging their differences at first.

“I just felt angry, and I couldn’t get over it,” Ruth recalled in a quiet voice. “I was angry at her and angry at Jim because he didn’t kill Scott. I was a total basket case. I couldn’t be logical. I couldn’t sit and talk like an adult. I was either crying or screaming.

“Jim and I would try and talk and all he could say was, ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she screwed up her life.’ ”

But Jim was the first to let go of his anger.

“At first, I felt Jennifer had let us down, so there was a lot of hostility toward her,” he said. “But at the same time I was telling myself she’s only 15 years old and she really is a child, and she’s probably the person who is the most confused and hurt. After taking a big dip, my parental feelings started to come back.”

He realized that what he wanted most was to keep his family together.

“This really forced us to close the doors and shut the windows and get everything out on the table. We had a lot of really intense emotions in our house. Ruth had to get her feelings out. Jennifer had to get to a point where she felt loved and wanted again. We had to make sure her brother Jeff was OK--he was picked on at school a bit and that was a delicate situation. I spent a lot of time trying to listen to what was going on and figure out what was best for everyone.”

He and Ruth agreed that marriage was out. And when they thought about what would be best for Jennifer--and the surest way to minimize the impact of the pregnancy on their 19-year marriage as well as their 12-year-old son’s life--they saw just one option: abortion.

But for Jennifer that was never a possibility.

“I’m very much against abortion,” she said, wiping a strand of long blond hair away from her eyes. “I don’t even eat meat; I couldn’t think of killing my own kid. Not only was I against it because of my morals, but because my parents were going to make me do it.”

They kept saying, “You have no choice.” Her answer was always: “If I had an abortion, it would only be because you made me have one, and then I would hate myself forever, and I would hate you guys, and I’m not going to do that.”

Her anti-abortion feelings were also behind her decision not to take birth control pills when she became sexually active with Scott. She said she considered the pill “a daily abortion.” She told her mom that Scott had used condoms but that didn’t stop Ruth from feeling that Jennifer had behaved “like a Third-World Bohemian who hadn’t had any education concerning birth control.”

Ruth had to put such feelings aside because a decision about abortion had to be made quickly. She and Jim finally agreed that it should be Jennifer’s choice.

“I still feel abortion was the best solution for me,” Ruth explained, “but for Jennifer, no. She made that very clear.”

Jim said: “When we saw our logical explanation wasn’t going anywhere, Ruth and I realized Jennifer’s well-being was really the important thing, and part of her well-being was her philosophy of life, which did not include the thought of abortion. I don’t think there’s any doubt that if she had an abortion, it would kill her emotionally.”

Next they considered adoption.

“I thought there would be no way I could ever keep the baby,” said Jennifer, a quiet, introspective girl who has the peaceful air of a ‘60s flower child. “I knew there was no way I could do it by myself, and I thought I would end up being by myself because there was no way Scott could support me, and I was convinced that my parents hated me.”

Jim says he and Ruth knew that Jennifer was also deeply opposed to adoption, and, again, they didn’t want to force her into a decision she might later regret. So they put that option aside, too.

“Then we had three or four days of intense dialogue,” Ruth said. “We were finally beginning to be really truthful with each other--about relationships, children, love. About her future and the situation she was in. And I came to realize it wasn’t just her situation, it was our situation.

“I can understand parents saying, ‘It’s your problem. You’ve ruined your life and you’re not going to ruin ours,’ because that was one of my first thoughts. But there was no way I could turn my back on her.

“I finally told her I would stand by her no matter what. And I felt so much better when I said that because I knew it was coming from inside, not just out of a sense of obligation. It was like a deep, inner bond that couldn’t be broken. That bond produced a lot of openness in both of us and a lot of dialogue.”

Jennifer recalled: “Mom would come into my room and I’d be crying, and instead of getting mad, she’d say, ‘Do you want to talk?’ When I needed someone, she was there. I couldn’t believe it was her.”

Jim and Ruth took the next step without reservations. Jim told Jennifer: “You’ve got a long way to go to grow up, and there are still a lot of things that have to be done in your life, like education and learning to drive and learning what being a mother is all about. We’ve accepted that you’re pregnant. We’ve accepted that you’re going to have the baby. Now we’re going to accept helping you take care of the baby.”

Then came a series of practical decisions. Ruth helped Jennifer find a doctor. Jim helped her find a school for teen-age mothers that allows students to bring their babies along. They enrolled in a childbirth class.

And meanwhile, Ruth and Jim let Jennifer know how they felt about Scott and prayed that he would get out of the picture. Jennifer had continued to see him between their frequent fights and reconciliations. But about two months ago, he started taking drugs again, and Jennifer decided that it was time for a longer separation.

“I can’t deal with Scott right now because he’s so insecure and irresponsible and scared of my family,” said Jennifer, who carries her baby so unself-consciously that her mother sometimes has to remind her to cover her stomach.

“I’ve been really depressed since we broke up because I miss him, but it’s so much better than fighting with him constantly.”

The fights with her parents stopped when they decided to support her, and Jennifer said she has grown closer to both her mom and dad during her pregnancy.

She said of her mother: “I trust her judgment and advice a lot better now. Before when she would talk to me about Scott, I would just tune her out and say, ‘You don’t know the good stuff about him.’ Now when she talks to me about him, I really listen. She’s always been a wonderful friend, but now she’s my best friend in the whole world, definitely.”

Ruth said she blamed herself at first for not being more attentive to Jennifer’s needs. If she wasn’t before, she is now. “I intuitively know when things are on the down slide, maybe because I’m more tuned in, more protective.”

So is Jim, as Jennifer explains: “Our relationship is a million times better. He’s a lot more affectionate. And when we talk, he really listens to what I’m saying and takes it under consideration. Before I could tell he had his opinion and didn’t really care.

“I see him more as a family person now. Before, he was someone who went to work every day, and that’s all I saw about him.”

Jim said his priorities have changed dramatically.

Two years ago, Jennifer went through a crisis with drugs and ended up in a rehabilitation program involving the entire family. During group therapy sessions, Jim became aware that because he and his daughter are so different, he had put her at arm’s length, letting her become a loner in her own home. When she got pregnant, he realized that he was still doing that, though he’d tried to change.

“I’d say, ‘Are you OK?’ and she’d say, ‘Yeah,’ and I knew she wasn’t, but I’d accept a simple answer instead of a real answer because then I didn’t have to do anything.

“Now if something’s not right, I’ll say, ‘Jennifer, want to talk about it?’ And she’ll say ‘No,’ and I’ll say, ‘OK if I hang around a little bit?’ ”

He’ll sit on the couch with his arm around her, and sometimes she’ll cry on his shoulder.

“There’s more listening and being receptive and letting her know I love her. I’m not taking the easy way out anymore,” he said.

Jim, who says he takes his work less seriously now, spends more time not only with Jennifer, but also with his son. He’s on the board of directors of Jeff’s baseball team and goes to every practice--and he’s found “I can talk to Jeff much easier now than I could before.”

Although they never lose sight of the difficulties ahead, both Ruth and Jim are determined to help Jennifer look toward her future with optimism.

Jim explained: “I want to provide her with everything she can get now so that her future is good, which means finishing high school, not having to go to work, having the security of a home and family as a resource. We want to make sure she develops into a happy, whole person. I haven’t had a daughter grow up on me yet, and I want to make sure that happens right. She’s got to be strong going into this.”

And he and Ruth feel that coaching Jennifer through childbirth is one way they can help her gain a sense of her own strength.

“Having the baby has to be positive so Jennifer’s life is positive from that point on,” Jim said. “If she can go into it and know that there are people supporting her 100% and get just a hair of the feeling I had when she was born, I think she’ll be much closer to her child. The fact that she did it will be like winning a medal--she’ll see that she’s strong and capable. Birth is a miracle, and she’ll be part of that miracle. All these things will help make her and the baby’s life better.”

It’s time for the kids to go off to college--and for some parents to face an empty nest. Are you struggling with the adjustment? Or perhaps you’ve been through it and can offer insights. Send your comments to “Relationships,” Orange County View, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Please include a phone number.

TEEN PREGNANCIES ORANGE COUNTY FACTS: * One in 10 adolescent girls (ages 10 to 17) had a baby in 1988. Of the estimated 119,663 females 10 to 17 years old in Orange County, 1,244 of them gave birth. The children born to adolescent mothers 10 to 17 will fill more than 100 kindergarten classes in 1991. * 49 children were born to girls under the age of 15 in 1988. At the same time that 10- to 14-year-olds declined significantly as a percentage of the Orange County childbearing population (19.5% in 1970 to 5.5% in 1988), the number of babies born to these young girls increased from 24 in 1970 to 49 in 1988. * In 1988, teen births were reported in every high school district in the county. Santa Ana Unified ranked first, with 339 reported births; Anaheim Union was second with 264 teen-age births. Laguna Beach Unified and Los Alamitos Unified both ranked last, with only two reported teen-age births. HIGHLIGHTS OF CALIFORNIA STATISTICS: * Every day an estimated 385 California teen-age girls (ages 11 to 19) discover they are pregnant. Almost 140 a day deliver a baby. * One in 10 did not receive prenatal care or did not begin care until the third trimester. Poorer outcomes for babies, particularly low birth weight, are associated with lack of prenatal care. Also, the younger the mother, the more likely that her baby will have a low birth weight. * California has the second highest pregnancy rate in the country. For 15- to 19-year-olds, the rate is 143 per 1,000, about one-third higher than the national rate of 109 per 1,000. * In 1985, California’s public costs for families in which first births occurred while the mother was a teen-ager were $3.08 billion.

The cost of one teen pregnancy ranged from $13,000 to $18,000 of taxpayers’ dollars a year. Most of these costs were for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medi-Cal and food stamps. NATIONAL STATISTICS: * The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the Western industrialized world.

Nationally 1.1 million teen-age girls become pregnant each year. One-fifth of these pregnancies occur within the first six months after initiation to sex. * Pregnancy is the leading reason girls drop out of high school. Nearly 40,000 quit school each year because they are pregnant. * Teen-age mothers in the United States generally do not give their babies up for adoption. It is estimated that nine out of 10 teen mothers keep their babies. * Teen-age mothers often believe that community awareness and the political, emotional and moral sensitivity of these issues are serious barriers in facing societal conditions.

Nationally, the suicide rate for pregnant teens is seven times higher than that among other girls their age. Sources: Coalition Concerned with Adolescent Pregnancy; Orange County Health Care Agency’s program of Understanding Pregnancy and Parenting-Better Efforts to Assist Teens (UPP BEAT); Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting in California: “A Strategic Plan for Action,” by C. Brindis and R. Jeremy. University of California, San Francisco, 1988; Center for Population Options. ESTIMATED FERTILITY RATES BY MOTHER’S AGE In 1988, there were an estimated 119,663 females from 10 to 17 years of age living in Orange County. Of this population, 1,244 gave birth. Additionally, there were 49 births to girls under the age of 15. While these numbers are statistically small, they represent a significant increase. Traditionally, childbearing age is considered to be from 15 to 44.9 years old. Within the past 10 years, social statisticians have had to add 10- to 14-year-olds to obtain the total number of females of childbearing age. Fertility Rate per 1000

Mother’s Age 1980 1985 1986 1987 1988 10 to 14 0.437 0.622 0.754 0.710 0.686 15 to 17 19.349 19.815 20.473 22.864 24.757

* Teen fertility rate represents only births, not pregnancies, because reliable abortion data is not available. Source: Orange County Health Care Agency NUMBER OF BIRTHS TO O.C. MINORS (AGES 10-17) BY YEAR The number of births to adolescents in Orange County is steadily increasing. The most disturbing figures involve an increase in births to girls under age 15. From 1980 to 1988, the population size of 10- to 14-year-olds decreased by 5.5%. However, the birth rate for that same age group increased nearly 48%. Should the trend continue, an estimated 60 adolescents will give birth this year.

Ages Ages Year 10 - 14 15 - 17 1980 33 1,028 1985 44 966 1986 40 976 1987 47 1,048 1988 49 1,195

Source: Orange County Health Care Agency MOTHER’S AGE BY ETHNICITY FOR O.C. BIRTHS: 1980 Mother’s Age: 10 to 14 Ethnicity: White: 36.4 Black: 9.1 Hispanic: 51.5 Asian: 3.0 All Others: 0 Mother’s Age: 15 to 17 Ethnicity: White: 40.6 Black: 3.1 Hispanic: 52.5 Asian: 1.5 Southeast Asian: .6 Other: 1.4 Unknown: .3 1988 Mother’s Age: 10 to 14 Ethnicity: White: 12.24 Black: 6.12 Hispanic: 77.6 Asian: 2.02 Southeast Asian: 2.02 Other: 0 Unknown: 0 Mother’s Age: 15 to 17 Ethnicity: White: 23.7 Black: 3.0 Hispanic: 68.0 Asian: 2.1 Southeast Asian: 2.6 Other: .6 Unknown: 0 Source: Orange County Health Care Agency WHERE TO GET INFORMATION: The following list of Orange County teen-age pregnancy resource groups and referral agencies is not intended to be a complete guide to providers of youth and family services. To obtain a complete countywide listing of agencies and support groups, write the Coalition Concerned with Adolescent Pregnancy (CCAP), 822 Town and Country Road, Orange 92668, or call CCAP at (714) 972-4859. Community Clinic of Orange County/UCI 2000 W. Walnut St., Santa Ana 92703 (714) 634-6201 * General medical and family-planning services. Fees based on a sliding scale with $15 minimum per visit. Childbirth information is free to medical clinic patients. Most languages spoken. Orange County Health Care Agency 3115 Red Hill Ave., Costa Mesa 92626 (714) 834-7700 * Comprehensive prenatal and reproductive health-care education, including childbirth, child development, nutrition, and other family-health issues. Information about Medi-Cal and WIC nutrition program. Fees based on sliding scale, free to low-income families. Most languages spoken. Other clinic locations: Buena Park (714) 670-1742 Costa Mesa (714) 548-9386 Westminster (714) 898-7929 Planned Parenthood of Orange County 1801 N. Broadway, Santa Ana 92706 (714) 973-1733 * Birth control clinic, pregnancy testing, and basic gynecological care. Individual, group and family counseling for teen-age parents and their families. Focus on self-esteem, peer pressure, communication and prevention. Most languages spoken. Other clinic locations: Costa Mesa (714) 751-6717 Garden Grove (714) 891-0955 Mission Viejo (714) 768-3643 Upland (714) 985-0065 School-Based Programs: * Several Orange County school districts offer programs to pregnant teen-agers and student mothers. In most programs, students receive academic, prenatal, parenting and vocational education. On-site child care, counseling, local transportation and referrals are available through graduation. Contact school districts to inquire what programs are available. Source: Various agencies Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times