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| THINKING POSITIVELY | |
 July 14, 1999 
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ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: It seems only yesterday that newsmagazines and news programs were full of stories about babies having babies. We looked at the faces of young American females, 15, 16, sometimes even younger -- White, Hispanic, African American, and at their swollen bellies and shook our heads. Some looked and sound shell-shocked, some defiant. We could only imagine the years ahead. Full of diapers, not diplomas. Probably welfare. What could any of us say that would divert them from the path of premature motherhood? Predictably, there was much finger pointing. Conservatives blamed the pregnancies on too few family values and too many feminist-abetted freedoms. Too much talk of sex. Nonsense, the liberals shouted back: There isn't too much talk of sex, there's too little. We needed more talk of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. Guess what? Something worked, and here are the headlines to prove it. What a stunner to wake up to the recent stories and statistics like these. The birth rate among girls ages 15 to 19 dropped 16 percent from 1991 to 1997. In one year alone, 1996-1997, the rate dropped 4 percent. And the birth rate for unmarried, African-American women is at a 40-year low, with the sharpest drop among 15- 17-year-olds, whose birth ate has gone down 20 percent since 1990. So what has worked? In truth, no one really knows, and predictably enough, adults on both sides of the debate have lined up to take some credit. Probably those on both sides do deserve some. More talk about the need for families and fathers on the one hand, and more talk about the need for sex education and contraception on the other, have no doubt both helped. But since teenage pregnancy rates have been dropping throughout the decade, the new federal welfare reform law can't probably take too much credit, since it didn't go into effect until 1996. Regardless, what's under here is a sea change in young people themselves. Number one, they're having less sex and number two, when and if they do have it, they're using protection. Depo-Provera, the injectable contraception that hit the market in the early 1990's, is a piece of the story. So is condom use, up all through the '90's. AIDS certainly did cast its shadow. But there's something else, something more positive going on, something more exuberant and joyous, at least from where I sit as a mid-life woman who dreams of full lives for all of these gangly-poised, shy-bold, earnest and irreverent young girls I see around me in the boutiques and movie theaters and malls. Apparently, they themselves are feeling hopeful, full of a sense of possibility and of responsibility -- to look out for themselves, not to get sick or trapped, their dreams thwarted by an early pregnancy. Even inner city girls, buoyed, no doubt, by the good economy, are full of ambitions, according to those who counsel them, and there's a lot of positive peer pressure at work now, pressure that says getting knocked up isn't cool. So, even as we mourn for some of our teenagers and try to figure out
what's wrong with others, in these warming days it might be nice to
celebrate for a moment the optimistic and responsible young females
who are making their way in the world. |
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