Helping Girls Graduate Into Motherhood : Retiring Teen Parent Program Founder Gets Much-Deserved Thanks for Loving Care

Among last week’s numerous end-of-school ceremonies throughout Orange County, the one for the Teen Parent Program in the Santa Ana Unified School District stood out.

The festive gathering gave deserved recognition to 20 young women who earned high school diplomas despite becoming pregnant. Some were in the final stages of pregnancy; a number brought their children with them. All owed a debt to Harriet Dohrmann.

Dohrmann founded the program in 1971 and has shepherded 325 girls through it since then. She is 71 years old, a grandmother of three, and retired last week from the program. One 19-year-old with two children of her own and five years in Dohrmann’s program called her “a friend, a counselor, a teacher.”

We all would prefer to see women become adults before becoming mothers. Sadly, that too often is not the case. When Dohrmann began her special brand of education, the program had three students. Now there are 100. But she and the district wisely recognized that their students had a right to an education; indeed, it was necessary for them to get jobs and in many cases to learn how to be better mothers.

So besides typing and English, Dohrmann and her fellow teachers stressed nutrition and parenting skills. For years she cooked breakfast and lunch for the girls. And last week, besides the carnation and poem each graduate received, there was also a hug from Dohrmann.

County officials said the teen pregnancy rate in Orange County has doubled since 1980, and county nonprofit education groups said pregnancy is the main reason girls drop out of high school. Most school districts have some assistance for teen parents, with Santa Ana’s among the largest.

The young women need the extra effort Dohrmann and her colleagues gave them, and she deserves the thanks they gave her.