WHEN CHILDREN WANT CHILDREN An Inside Look...

WHEN CHILDREN WANT CHILDREN An Inside Look at the Crisis of Teenage Parenthood by Leon Dash (Penguin: $11.95, 270 pp., illustrated). Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Leon Dash spent a year in one of the poorest slums of Washington, D. C., interviewing teenage mothers and their families. He discovered their experiences contradicted widely held beliefs about teen pregnancy. Girls who became pregnant did so not out of ignorance of contraception or a desire to increase their welfare checks but to defy their parents, demonstrate their fertility or keep up with friends who had children. Dash found many of his subjects suffered from the effects of poverty, despair and sexual abuse. But he also traced the acceptance of illegitimate children among African Americans to the experiences of their ancestors as sharecroppers in the rural South, where women with children were regarded as valuable partners. Dash’s often impassioned report offers a much-needed reality check on the stereotypes touted in election year speeches.