Briana's PAA

Did the absence of my father play a role in my teenage pregnancy?

 

As a teen parent I was always made the feel and think that getting pregnant at such a young age was very shameful and completely my fault, and while I fully accept my role in getting pregnant I never felt like I should have to shoulder all the blame. I thought maybe I was a product of bad parenting, or that if I had truly learned something or anything in sex-ed that would have actually been helpful, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant as a teenager. I found an article that would help me in my quest to figure out what went wrong. The article was about young girls being at a higher risk to become pregnant due to an absent father. I didn’t think much of the article at the time but as an adult I found myself wondering how not having my father in my life very much could have had anything to do with me getting pregnant so young. At first I did not think that there could really be a connection between an absent father and a teenage pregnancy, but I felt there had to be more to it then irresponsible young people having sex and getting pregnant. I believe that teen pregnancy is not completely the fault of the pregnant teens. I also feel that there should be more education for teens that become pregnant on their options and education on the reasons teens get pregnant, thanks to my research I know that both are out there and I plan on making them more attainable if only though writing this paper.

My father and mother got divorced when I was six, we moved away from him and Butte, to live in Missoula.  I did not have a very strong relationship with my Father until adulthood even though we would go to visit him in Butte every other weekend until I was 14 or so. I never wanted to go and always fought it. I honestly do not really even have any memories of my father until I was about ten years old, the memories I do have in abundance are those of my yearning for my father to care about me.

One summer my father convinced my mother to let him take us for half the summer. It was not a well thought out plan I guess because everything started falling apart the second we got there. He had signed my siblings and I up at the YMCA for childcare. We were all in different classes due to our ages, but they couldn’t seem to keep us apart, and when they would try my little brother would cry and pee his pants. So needless to say the YMCA didn’t work out for us. So my father tried finding a nanny, she wasn’t much older than my sister at the time and we felt we knew much better than her so we continually locked her out of the house. She quit a few hours in, causing my father to leave work yet again to deal with us. I remember sneaking out onto the balcony to listen to his phone conversation with my mother that night, he was telling her how she had ruined his kids and turned them against him. He told her that he never wanted to see us again. My mother showed up a few hours later to take us all home. We did not hear from him for quite some time after that.

During a different summer my father again convinced my mother, and this time it was that he should be able to have us for the Fourth of July. We went to Canyon Ferry Lake with a bunch of his friends and their families. I spent most of the day in the camper trying to avoid my father who was getting progressively drunk. It came time to start the fireworks and I remained in the camper. I was in bed sleeping when my big sister burst in; she was sobbing and clutching at her face. She eventually was able to calm down enough to tell me that a piece of firework had gotten in her eye and our father was too drunk to be able to help her get it out. I don’t remember how old we were but I remember being scared and helpless in the situation.  My father was not very responsible, and did not seem to care about us very much until we were much older. As soon as I was able to stop visiting him I did. It was very hard not having a good father and I struggled with it for the rest of my life.

Not having a devoted father really altered what my life could and should have been like. My mother had to raise the four of us by herself, which had its consequences. One of us was always either in trouble, sick, or needing something expensive. My oldest sister graduated high school early and left the state and our lives. My next oldest sister had awful headaches and anxiety that kept her out of school and made her pretty awful to deal with. I had terrible asthma that put me in the hospital many times and made for expensive medications. My little brother started doing drugs in middle school and didn’t ever really stop. My mother dealt with a lot, she was always stressed out and we never really had money to spare. I grew up very poor and without as much attention as I probably needed.  I dropped out of high school when I was 16 and got my GED. I started making worse and worse choices from that point on.

When I was 17 I found out I was pregnant. I had gone to Planned Parenthood to find out, thinking I would not be. The nurse came back into the room to tell me the outcome of the test and I nearly fainted. The only option the nurse told me about was adoption. She did not talk to me about what I would face if I tried to keep the baby or what an abortion would be like or do to me physically and emotionally. She handed me a few pamphlets about adoption and told me I could take a few minutes to compose myself before I left. Later I battled with whether or not I could have the baby and provide it, her as it would turn out, with the life she deserved. Eventually I decided to give her up for adoption. It was the hardest thing I have ever done and I regret it daily. I often wished that I had more support, support from any one at the time so that I could have kept my daughter. I often wondered if that nurse had given me more options for resources other than adoption if I would have made a different choice. I decided to research Planned Parenthood policy to find out if they are supposed to push adoption. On the Planned Parenthood website it states, “Planned Parenthood believes every woman should have access to the full range of reproductive health care. Our primary goal is prevention — reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, especially the alarmingly high number of teenage pregnancies, in the United States. At the same time, to protect their health and the health of their families, women facing an unintended pregnancy must have access to safe, legal abortion services without interference from the government.”(Planned Parenthood).  It was interesting to me after reading that, that the nurse was so eager to push me to adoption. I could not find anything on the website about teenage girls keeping their babies so I researched some of the options in Missoula that the girls have. I found a home for pregnant and parenting teen girls called Mountain Home Montana or MHM. The home itself was donated by a woman named Bonnie Hamilton in 1999, and now is a six bedroom house that women age 16-24 can live in. The mission statement for MHM is as follows, “To provide a safe, loving home where young mothers can discover their strengths and their children can experience the joys of childhood” (MHM). I feel like there should be more homes like this all throughout the United States. I also think that teen moms should know that there are other factors that come into play concerning their pregnancies.

            During my research I found the article “Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?" written by Bruce J. Ellis.  It talks about how an absent father creates added stress to the family and can be linked to early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy. This article uses many studies done America and New Zealand to make its argument that the younger a girl is when her father leaves the picture the more likely she is to be sexually active at a young age. Ellis states, “adolescent pregnancy rates were approximately  7 times higher in the U.S. sample and 8 times higher in the New Zealand sample among early father-absent girls than among father present girls" (811).. My dad left when I was six and I did not really ever have a strong father figure again.

 An article written by Jeff Harrison titled, “UA Study Sheds Light on Relationship Between Absent Fathers and Early Puberty”, it is about another study done by Ellis and University of Canterbury and Christchurch Jacqueline M. Tither it states that the longer a girl goes without a father figure the earlier she starts to menstruate (Jeff Harrison).  Ellis also believes that changing the girl’s father figure somehow initiates a bodily change that makes young girls start puberty sooner. Ellis states, “The theory that we’re working from suggests that something about the children’s experiences in their families, and particularly about the presence of different members of the families in the home, actually alters the reproductive axis and timing of puberty” (ibid.)  These findings were even more evidence that girls need their biological fathers or at least they need a stable father figure in their lives from the beginning. I was shocked to find out that I was actually  biologically altered when my father left and maybe because of that I went through puberty early, and as a result of that I was sexually active younger than I maybe would have been otherwise.

I started to wonder what was happening to all these pregnant teens and their babies. I found that an article on studies that were 2008 called, “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions: National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity” put together by the Guttmacher Institute. It states, “In 2008, nearly 750,000 women younger than 20 became pregnant: Some 733,000 pregnancies were among teenagers (women aged 15–19), and 13,500 were among those aged 14 and younger” (U.S. Teen Pregnancies). It says, “The teenage birthrate in 2008 was 40.2 births per 1,000 women. The 2008 teenage abortion rate was 17.8 abortions per 1,000 women” (ibid.). I was shocked that the birthrate was higher than the abortion rate in teen mothers.  When I was deciding whether or not to keep my child abortion was almost the answer until a family me member stepped up and said they would adopt her.

 I searched for a statistic on adoption and I found an article, “Trends in Pregnancies and Pregnancy Rates: Estimates for the United States, 1980-92. (1995).” This states, “When they become pregnant, very few teens choose to place their children for adoption. In a 1995 survey, 51% of teens that become pregnant give birth; 35% seek abortions; 14% miscarry. Less than 1% choose to place their children for adoption” (ChildTrends, 1995). I am an advocate of abortion under the right circumstance and in my opinion a teen pregnancy is one of them, but I seem to stand mostly alone in my thinking, which was why I was blown away at how few young women give their babies up for adoption. During my research I was made aware of how serious of a problem teen pregnancy is.

I know from personal experience how hard it is to grow up without a father, even harder, to have a baby at such a young age. Both will haunt me for the rest of my life. I find it very interesting that fathers play such a role in how their daughters will turn out even if they are not around. I am left feeling more knowledgeable in general about teen pregnancy and how not having a father around can influence it, but I still wonder if my situation was due to my father not being there, and if I could have kept my daughter had I have been more supported. I hope that one day teen pregnancy will be less of a taboo and that people will accept that it is happening and start to build a solid support network for these girls, because there absolutely needs to be, the girls deserve it and so do their babies.

Bibliograpy

"Mountainhomemontana - Mission & Vision." Mountainhomemontana. 2011. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://www.mountainhomemt.org/mission-vision/>.

"Planned Parenthood® Action Center." Women's Abortion Rights. Planned Parenthood, 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/positions/protecting-abortion-access-69.htm>.

Ellis, Bruce J., John E. Bates, Kenneth A. Dodge, David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, Gregory S. Pettit, and Lianne Woodward. "Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?" Child Development 74.3 (2003): 801-21. Print.

Harrison, Jeff. "UA Study Sheds Light on Relationship Between Absent Fathers and Early Puberty | UANews.org." UANews.org. 9 Sept. 2008. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://uanews.org/printview/21474>.

Kost, Kathryn, and Stanley Henshaw. "U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity." USTPtrends08. Guttmacher Institute, Feb. 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/USTPtrends08.pdf>.

"Placing Children." Adoption Statistics:. Web. 19 Apr. 2012. <http://statistics.adoption.com/information/adoption-statistics-placing-children.html>.