Kids raising kids - Teen birth rate in county going down, but remain high
Despite drop in births among area teens, Yakima County rate remains one of highest in the state. But local programs give young mothers support to keep their lives on track.Yakima Herald-Republic
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YAKIMA, Wash. -- Nationwide, teen birth rates dropped to historic lows in 2010, while statewide the rate has been slowly declining for several years.
But in Yakima County, despite a recent dramatic year-on-year decrease, the teen birth rate is still more than twice the national average.
According to the state Department of Health, about 79 in every 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 in Yakima County gave birth in 2010, compared with 34 girls in 1,000 nationally and 42 in 1,000 statewide. The Yakima County rate is down from 94 in 2009, but it still is the third-highest in the state.
Recent national studies credit strong pregnancy prevention campaigns aimed at teens with the decline, along with increased use of contraception. But locally, educators and providers say they don't know exactly what's keeping the numbers high.
"There are probably as many reasons as there are pregnancies," said Terri Phillips, who teaches teen parenting classes at Stanton Academy, the Yakima School District's alternative high school. Both Stanton and Davis High School participate in the GRADS program (Graduation, Reality And Dual-Role Skills teen parent program), which aims to keep pregnant and parenting teens in school and on track to pursue their higher education and career goals. There are 50 students total.
Programs like GRADS have become more common in recent years, with providers like Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital engaged in outreach and education. But educators and health care professionals say Yakima's demographics play a big role in perpetuating the high teen birth rate.
"Poverty is huge," said Mary McCracken, executive director of Life Choices, a Yakima early pregnancy clinic that provides prenatal education, pregnancy testing and medical consultations. "If you have generational poverty, we know that teen moms often grow up to have children who become teen parents."
Having a baby also drastically reduces a teen's chances of graduating from high school, which feeds into the cycle of poverty.
For teens from fractured families, McCracken added, "an infant often represents hope for a better future."
"Very idealistic and young thinking; we think of adolescence as going all the way up into the 20s now," she said.
Thinking about consequences
The teenage mindset is a hard obstacle to overcome, providers say. Teens' brains are still developing, which impacts their decision-making skills.
"In the teenage brain, they don't think ahead. They don't think of the consequences; they just think in the moment," said Lori Gibbons, Memorial's community education and outreach coordinator.
Those consequences aren't always readily apparent. Teens from families who rely on state assistance and medical coupons might assume those same programs will pay for them and their baby, Gibbons said.
Some girls can think of a baby almost "like an accessory," says Lisa Bartheld, a social worker and counselor in Memorial's Maternal Health office who works with teen moms.
"They think, 'I can have a baby and be cute and dress my baby cute and get all the things that go with it,' ... and then learning the hard way that it's not that fun," Bartheld said. "Babies throw up on you; babies get sick."
Pop culture feeds into that mindset, too. Shows like "Teen Mom" and "16 and Pregnant" on MTV may play a role in making teen pregnancy seem more accepted or glamorous.
Phillips' class at Stanton sometimes watches those shows.
"The moms will say, 'They didn't make it look hard enough; that's not real,'" Phillips said. "Reality is not having any money, not having a car ... They'd like other people to know what the reality is."
Rate higher among Hispanics
Though Yakima County's teen birth rate for 2010 seems dauntingly high at 79 per 1,000, it's better than the Valley has seen for at least the past decade: Teen births averaged nearly 95 per 1,000 girls from 2001 to 2009, spiking to 100.4 in 2003. The county had the highest rate in the state in 2007 at 97 births per thousand girls.
In Yakima County and nationwide, Hispanic teens are far more likely to experience pregnancies than white teens.
Countywide data isn't yet available for 2011, but at Memorial last year, about 60 percent of the births in girls ages 13 to 19 were Hispanic. About 30 percent were teens who identified as white and 7 percent American Indian.
"Coming from the Latino culture ... part of the issue is the lack of communication related to sexuality, sexual health," said Bertha Lopez, manager of health education and outreach at Memorial.
In Mexico, she said, "There's a large belief that women would reach marriage without engaging in sexual interaction," and so parents don't talk to their kids about sex. In the U.S., however, "teens are exposed to it but there is no conversation at home."
At Stanton, Phillips teaches young moms how to discipline their children from an early age. The kids come to school with the moms and stay in child care, where each teen parent is required to work at least one class period during the day.
"My parents really didn't discipline me, and weren't really there for me. I guess that's why I could say I got pregnant," said 19-year-old Christina Vela, whose daughter will turn 4 next month. "As teen parents, we don't really know as much, so going into this class I learned a lot."
The classes also encourage teens to wait before becoming pregnant again.
Providers say the stigma against teen parents has lessened some -- they're no longer shipped off to a distant aunt's house for nine months -- but public opinion is still stacked against them, and that adds to the stress.
But for Bartheld in the Maternal Health office, teen moms are the best population to work with.
"They still really need somebody to be supportive and to educate, and to help them be a good parent and become successful themselves," she said. "We really like to encourage them in our program."
* Molly Rosbach can be reached at 509-577-7628 or mrosbach@yakimaherald.com.
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