'It's Just Not Worth It'

By NANCY TREJOS

May 21, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Nevada Dove can’t go to work without her nephew. While talking to her co-workers, she stops mid-sentence and jumps from her seat when she hears the toddler crying.

She simultaneously pores over reports for her job at Concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles and watches the boy run around the office, wrapping his arms around people’s legs and trying to get into a bag of Chee-tos.

Dove may be the 18-month-old boy’s aunt, but she feels more like his mother, she said.

At 18, Dove said, having a baby of her own is the last thing she wants. She said she took on a major role in raising her brother’s child after the mother, his teenage girlfriend, decided not to live with him and the baby.

“I mean, he’s all cute and adorable,” Dove said as she bounced the boy on her knee on a recent day, her forehead beginning to crease. “But do you know what I had to go through this morning to dress him and bathe him and get his socks on and keep him clean? It’s not worth it.”

That’s what more teenage girls are evidently thinking, according to statistics released last month. Nationwide, the birthrate for teenagers 15 to 19 declined by 16% from 1991 to 1997, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 1997, the last year for which statistics are available, births to teenagers fell 4% from the previous year. Abortion rates have also declined, dropping 3% in 1996. In California, births to teenagers have declined 22% since 1992, state health officials reported, and birthrates are also down in Southern California counties.

Experts from universities and research and advocacy groups said that state-funded pregnancy prevention programs and media campaigns are finally taking effect, spurring more teenagers to use contraception or abstain from sex.

Painting a Bleak Picture

That may be true, said 13- to 19-year-olds interviewed in the Los Angeles area, but there is no reason to rejoice. The statistics and figures are of little comfort to girls like Dove who paint a bleak picture of friends, cousins and sisters getting pregnant. In many cases, the young mothers themselves were daughters of teenage mothers.

Some pregnancies are “going to happen regardless of how many programs you have or how many condoms you pass out,” Dove said. Indeed, 489,211 births occurred to teenagers in 1997.

Deanna French, 16, is preparing to give birth to a child this summer. She began having sex with the father of her unborn child a month into their relationship. They have since broken up. When her birth control pills ran out, she “didn’t make an effort” to get more, she said.

“I just figured, ‘Oh, whatever. Nothing’s going to happen,’ ” she said.

When she discovered that something did happen, she immediately ruled out an abortion.

And she pledges to be a good mother. “I know it’s going to put, like, a strain on me because of school and everything,” she said. “But I’ve gotten so strong.”

If one thing is making them curb their careless tendencies, several teenagers said, it’s taking a look at girls like Deanna.

“You can sit someone down and read them facts and statistics and that won’t change them,” said Christine Said, 17, a senior at Santa Monica High School.

Fabiola, 15, learned about the harsh realities of adolescent pregnancy from her own mother, who was 15 when she gave birth to the South-Central Los Angeles teenager and left the child in the care of her aunt.

“You’re supposed to be there for [your child], not leave her at someone else’s house,” Fabiola said. “That’s your child, your responsibility.”

Dove said she dreads the day that she has to explain to her nephew that his mother chose to relinquish that responsibility.

“It’s just not worth it,” she said again, more emphatically this time, even as she pulled her nephew closer and stroked his hair.

Experts say that sex and contraception are now more acceptable topics of conversation, and that is making teenagers more aware of the risks and dangers.

“Providing kids with all the information and knowledge and access to contraceptives has really had a fundamental impact,” said Gayle Wilson, director of the Center for Youth Policy and Advocacy, a nonprofit organization in Oakland.

False Sense of Security

Katherine Maier of Venice began talking to her daughter Veronica about sex when she was 10 years old. She had to, she said, because her introduction to the subject was preempted by Veronica’s friends at school.

“If their only knowledge of [sex] is from their peer groups then I think they’re at a deficit,” Maier said. “They can get false information and a false sense of security about doing things that aren’t safe.”

Abstinence is becoming a more acceptable option.

Veronica, now 14, said she plans to go that route, a decision she said she made thanks to her mother’s willingness to discuss sex openly and honestly. “I enjoy my life right now,” she said. “I don’t want to grow up quicker than I have to.”

A senior at Santa Monica High School, Eric Gonzalez, 18, chose completing his education and pursuing a career over taking the risks of having sex.

“I’m secure about myself,” said Gonzalez. “I have enough self-control that I can say no.”

From 1991 to 1997, the percentage of U.S. high school students who reported ever having sexual intercourse decreased by 11%, according to a survey conducted by the Division of Adolescent and School Health, a part of the Centers for Disease Control.

The fear of losing out on youthful pleasures is a big deterrent among many teenagers. Then there’s the fear of sexually transmitted diseases.

Maria Perez, 15, of South-Central Los Angeles, said: “You have a kid, you can take care of it. But with AIDS, you can’t get rid of it. That’s more scary than having a baby.”

Susan R. Levy, director of the University of Illinois Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, said that since the AIDS epidemic reached massive proportions in the 1980s, there has been a proliferation of information about the disease that has contributed to the drop in teenage birthrates.

“It took a long time to get the culture in this country to recognize even being able to discuss condoms,” Levy said. “The reality of AIDS really brought this into focus.”

In fact, the youth behavior survey commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control found that condom use increased by 23% among those teenagers who have sex.

These days, contraceptives are more readily available, and teenagers are more willing to use them, experts said.

Long-acting, highly effective birth control methods such as Norplant and Depo-Provera shots are increasing in popularity, said Nancy Sasaki, chief executive of Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles.

Oral contraceptives are still the most popular form of birth control among teenagers, with 50% of clients ages 13 to 19 requesting them, a Planned Parenthood official said. But 11% of the teenagers chose the Depo-Provera shot, which lasts 10 to 12 weeks.

The birthrate for young Latinas, however, is still relatively high, according to studies. The 1997 birthrate for Latinas ages 15 to 19 in Los Angeles County was 96.2 per 1,000, according to the California Department of Health Services. That compares with 69.3 for African American teenagers and 20.7 for white teenagers. Still, the annual rate among Latinas fell 8% from the previous year.

Some Influenced by Cultures

Despite the drops, teenage birthrates were especially high for teenagers of Mexican descent. In Southern California, with its large Latino population, this poses a challenge.

Researchers suggest that Latina teenagers continue to have babies at a higher rate because of a propensity toward early childbearing and a reluctance to use contraception and to seek abortions.

Immigration might also play into it, experts said, especially in states that attract large numbers of immigrants. Latina immigrants may not be able to obtain health information because of the language barrier or anxiety over their immigration status, experts said.

Julie Davidson Gomez, a project coordinator for the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, an advocacy group in San Francisco, suggested that the high birthrates might be a result of the lack of discussion of sexual issues in many Latino families.

“Latino parents are hesitant to talk about sexuality and sexual issues,” Gomez said. “While they support . . . access to health services and contraceptives, they still have apprehension about facing that in their own families.”

The tide may be turning because contraceptive use among all ethnic groups is on the rise.

California’s birthrate among teenagers, which was substantially higher than the national average in the early part of this decade, is now approaching the national average, partly a reflection of growing contraceptive use. The birthrate among those 15 to 19 years old dropped 8% in 1997, according to the California Department of Health Services. There was an 8.8% drop in Los Angeles County.

Nonetheless, California still had the 16th-highest rate in the nation in 1997, prompting state officials to pour more money into teenage pregnancy prevention programs. Many experts and state officials have credited these state-funded programs for the drop in rates.

Gov. Gray Davis’ 1999-2000 budget calls for an $8.5-million media campaign to discourage teenage pregnancy, a $3.7-million male responsibility program addressing the role of men in teenage pregnancy prevention and $20 million in community challenge grants for locally organized prevention programs.

Local school districts are doing their part as well. Seventh- and tenth-graders are introduced to issues of sexuality and family life in their health education classes.

Linda Ward Russell, coordinator for teenage parent programs for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said there is a big push for programs that teach abstinence as the only absolute pregnancy prevention.

School Success Is Best Contraceptive

Yet preventing teenage pregnancy requires more than programs that preach abstinence, Russell said. Programs should address the fact that many teenagers dropped out of school before they got pregnant because they felt no strong ties to school. “Many see motherhood as a more viable role when being a student doesn’t work,” she said.

“Success in school is probably the best contraceptive,” said Santa Monica High School’s Marilyn McGrath, who runs a parenting class at the school. While the girls attend classes, their babies play in a nearby nursery on campus.

Like the teenage mothers she teaches, McGrath has not noticed a drop in teenage pregnancies. “It’s not a big drop yet,” she said. “I haven’t felt it.”

On a recent day, 10 teenage mothers and pregnant girls, including Deanna French, sat before an eighth-grade class at John Adams Middle School. The mothers, some of them as young as 14 when they had their children, were there to talk to the younger teenagers about sex. They held their babies in their arms. One baby let out a shriek, forcing her 18-year-old mother to walk her around the classroom.

The audience of 13- and 14-year-olds sat in silence as one girl told them that she didn’t think twice about having unprotected sex.

“I didn’t care,” said Lisa Casas, an 18-year-old mother. In retrospect, she wishes she had cared.

The stories the girls told were similar. They will always love their children, they said, but they wish they would have waited. They want to be teenagers again. They want to go to the prom, but they might not get a chance to if they can’t find a baby-sitter.

Monica Alvarado, 17, said her life has changed for the worse. She said she got pregnant after she stopped using condoms with her boyfriend.

She said she cringes when her friends tell her they’re having unprotected sex. “I made a mistake, now I try to give the best advice I can,” she said. They don’t listen, she said, frustration evident in her voice.

There has been a rush in the 1990s to create programs that prevent teenage pregnancy and promote responsible behavior. .

Those programs somehow did not reach Ralph Umayan, 18, and Sheryl Edrosa, 17, who are raising their 10-month-old son together. They are living with Ralph’s family in Eagle Rock.

On weekdays, Ralph attends community college classes while Sheryl takes care of the baby and home-schools herself. Weekends are for shopping, balancing their checkbook and running errands.

Leaning against the stroller that shielded his sleeping son from the lights and the noise of the shopping mall, Umayan said he had one piece of advice for teenagers:

Wait, he said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

On the Decline

Researchers report that birthrates for teenage girls are on the decline nationally, statewide and in Southern California counties. The charts below represent birthrates per 1,000 girls ages 15 through 19.

Los Angeles

1993: 80

1994: 79

1995: 77

1996: 70

1997: 64

Orange

1993: 62

1994: 62

1995: 58

1996: 56

1997: 50