State Legislatures magazine, February 2000: Legislator Works to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

State Legislatures Magazine: February 2000

Editor's Note: This article appeared in the February 2000 issue of NCSL's magazine, State Legislatures. To order copies or to subscribe, contact the marketing department at (303) 364-7700.

Not Your Average Teen Mom

Uphill Battle
Bewitching Hour
Baby Think It Over

Baby Think It Over in All States

Not Your Average Teen Mom

Being a teenage mother herself has motivated a Louisiana legislator to be a champion for preventing teen pregnancy.

By Mary Guiden

You've seen the statistics: 49 percent of teen mothers are on welfare or public assistance within five years of the birth of a child; 69 percent of teen mothers qualify for Medicaid; in 1995, more than one-fifth of teens who gave birth already had at least one child; and approximately a third of teen mothers don't finish high school.

But here's a less-common profile of a teen mom that adds a whole new twist to the equation: member of the Legislature since 1993; attorney-at-law; vice chairman of the Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee; member of the Health and Welfare Committee; and member of the State and Local Task Force of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

This sketch belongs to Louisiana Senator Paulette Irons, who by speaking about her own experience as a teen mom may break the mold that most policymakers use to think about the issue.

Irons says she hasn't always been forthcoming about the fact that she was a teenage parent. "People would be shocked when they'd see my daughter because, there I was, this very young woman with this little adolescent. They'd say, 'Golly, you must have been young when you had that child,' and we'd just leave it at that," she says.

But when she ran for the Senate in 1995, Irons said that her political advisers thought her opponent might try to use the information in a negative way. To ward off any potentially harmful consequences, they thought she had to speak out first.

"I didn't really want to promote that or talk about it," Irons admitted. "As far as I was concerned, I had overcome the mistake I made, and I wanted to forget it."

Despite the "mistake," campaign workers promoted the idea that to be a 16-year-old mother, to finish high school and then go to college and law school were all "admirable" accomplishments. "I was very uncomfortable with it at first," she added, "but my advisers felt it was truly a way to set me off from my opponents, and we went with it."

Not only did she "go with it," but since that time Irons has become a tireless advocate for prevention of teen pregnancy. As president of the Louisiana Initiative for Teen Pregnancy Prevention, for example, she spearheaded a campaign last year to post billboards in her district which read: Virgin: Teach Your Kid It's Not a Dirty Word. Initially supported by the Louisiana State Baptist Convention, among other groups, the Virgin campaign is now also backed by Governor Mike Foster and has expanded to the northern part of the state. The governor credits Irons with being "responsible for some very progressive measures in Louisiana on children's and women's issues." In addition, he said the senator "deeply cares" about her work. "She's just the best, and we're lucky to have her," he added.

UPHILL BATTLE
Although Irons likewise is quick to applaud the governor for his support and dedication toward preventing teen pregnancy, she also admitted that it's been an uphill battle over the years. "It wasn't from a passionate standpoint that I was successful" in bringing this issue to the forefront, she says. Rather it was from the fiscal side that she got the attention of her colleagues. Since she started in the Legislature in 1993, Irons says she has spoken about many "taboo" subjects-including teenage pregnancy, teenage sex, sexually transmitted diseases and birth control-all things that her colleagues "didn't really want to talk about."

What finally caught their attention was information released at a conference sponsored by the Southern Regional Project on Infant Mortality three years ago. It showed Louisiana had spent $875 million to support families headed by teens in 1995, compared with only $5 million on prevention efforts.

"The chairman of the Finance Committee was in the meeting with me," says Irons, "and his mouth dropped open."

When Irons returned from the meeting, she shared the information with the Senate president and the governor. Foster's first reaction, she said, was disbelief. "He then said, 'What do we do about it?'" Iron's answer? "We have to put more money into prevention."

Since that time a few years back, the state has made what most would consider extraordinary gains. "We have gone from spending $875 million on families headed by teens in 1995 to $540 million in 1998, well over a $200 million reduction," said Irons. As for the prevention side, Louisiana has doubled its efforts-from $5 million to nearly $11 million-a jump that Irons finds "remarkable" given the state's conservative political climate. (The figure, though, is not as dramatic as the $200 million drop in support-related efforts, she noted.)

Programs funded under the increase include: $3.2 million in state and federal money for family planning services for teens; $3.8 million in state and federal funds to support school-based health centers in 36 public middle and high schools; $149,000 for a counseling and abstinence-based education program in Calcasieu, La.; $1.6 million in federal funds for the governor's program on abstinence; $1 million for the Department of Social Services' abstinence program; and $400,000 in federal funds for a statewide media campaign aimed at reducing teen pregnancy.

BEWITCHING HOUR
When it comes to designing a program or activity that will be effective and will reach a lot of adolescents, advocates and researchers often refer to the hours after school lets out as the "bewitching" hours. Put another way, they believe risky behavior by teens-including having sex that could lead to a pregnancy-usually occurs at that time. There is no statistical data to back up the claim, although research does show that juvenile crime peaks in the afternoon between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on school days.

Senator Irons, however, said that she can speak from personal experience when it comes to what happens during that time of day. "My daughter went from playing with a Barbie doll at age 12 to sneaking off with one of her friends to the library to meet boys at age 13, and that just frightened me," she explained. Instead of panicking or making accusations, though, Irons said she decided to keep her daughter busy-and to tell her about the pitfalls of early sexual activity, including what it was like to be a teen mom. "I never made that a secret at all. And then I enrolled her in all the things that I never had an opportunity to do-ballet, piano lessons, swimming, bowling-whatever was out there, she was in it." As a result, "all of a sudden she was so busy, she had no time to engage in any extracurricular activities with boys. It wasn't until she was 17 years old that she actually had a boyfriend, because I made a point of keeping her busy. That is one of the things that I promote when speaking."

Irons' daughter subsequently married that first boyfriend and now has two children of her own. At the time, however, she didn't exactly appreciate that Mom was filling up her free time and putting a lot of pressure on her. "She just felt that I was being unfair. I said, 'I don't want you to go through what Mama went through,' and she seemed to understand and accept that."

Along with driving home a message about prevention in her own household, Irons also strikes a chord when she goes on the road to speak about preventing teen pregnancy. "When I speak, parents come up and say, 'We have a daughter who had a baby when she was 16, and you're just such an inspiration for her, to see that she can continue on.' Young girls come to me and whisper 'I'm a teen mom,' and I say, 'Well what are you going to do about it? Are you going to stay in school?'"

Many teenagers who approach the senator say they feel isolated, a situation she can relate to only too well. "One of the things that was very difficult was that I was ostracized because I got pregnant and wasn't married and I was a teenager. I shamed my family."

All of a sudden, the close friends Irons had were no longer there. "There were four of us," she explained, "and the other girls' mothers told their daughters they could not be around me." Having to deal with her pregnancy without her best friends didn't, however, make Irons retreat. Instead, it made her stronger. "I never thought that I could not go to school, and I was determined that people who disapproved were not going to make me feel any worse than I already felt." As a teenager, she also didn't understand why she was shunned. "But as a mother, when my daughter turned 12 years old, I realized what those parents went through."

BABY THINK IT OVER
Irons' most recent endeavor in the fight against teen pregnancy aims to show adolescents exactly what she went through as a teen mom. Using the infant simulator program called Baby Think It Over®, the senator held nine weekend retreats in her district with at-risk youth age 14 and younger. (Three weekends were reserved for young men, while six weekends were for young women.) Adolescents arrived at a local meeting place on a Friday night and stayed until Sunday, where they were charged with taking care of a "baby" for the weekend. As part of its life-like design-and unlike similar projects that use a sack of flour as a baby-the simulator contains a recording of a real infant crying; a tamper-resistant monitor that registers rough handling, neglect and total crying time; and easy, normal and cranky temperament settings. All the young women "wanted a baby when they ran in there that Friday night." But by Saturday afternoon, they'd changed their minds, notes Irons.

While the young men and women discovered how difficult it could be to care for a child, Irons and others who supervised the weekend activities encountered their own eye-opening experiences. "What we found out was that many of our girls were sexually active," she said. On one weekend retreat two 11-year-olds revealed that they were sexually active and one had chlamydia, a prevalent sexually transmitted disease.

Along with educating the adolescents about things like STDs, a variety of speakers discussed issues such as self-esteem, and taught the teens how to design a budget. There was even a grocery store set up on site so that the teens could see how much things cost. To drive home the "cost" factor of raising a child, the group also staged "unexpected emergencies," such as a case where the baby needed corrective shoes.

"We'd say, 'Do you want to get your hair done, do you want to get your nails done,' and the kids would respond, 'Yes.' But then we'd say 'Well, your baby needs corrective shoes and it costs $70, so you can't get your hair done.'"

Irons now runs a loan program to offer the dolls to churches throughout the community, so that they can sponsor an overnight program and use the infant simulators. Initial feedback on the program has been positive. To gauge the effects, the senator plans to hold a follow-up evaluation for participants. "We're going to see how the teens are doing, find out what they learned in the program, and see if they remember what we taught them," she explained.

Feedback about the program from both parents and local churches has also been encouraging, though Irons remains cautious in her outlook on preventing teen pregnancy in her state. "The parents are always tickled and the pastors just love it, so I think it's good. I hope it helps some teenage girls. I know we can't save them all, but if it helps one girl, then it's worth it," she said.

Mary Guiden is an editor of NCSL's State Health Notes publication.

Baby Think It Over in All States

The Baby Think It Over program has spread in some degree to all 50 states, Puerto Rico and "all over the world," according to program development director Sheila Oium.

The simulated baby is the brainchild of Rick and Mary Jurmain. As Mary explained it, she and her husband-who have two children-were "watching a TV program where teens were carrying eggs and sacks of flour to imitate caring for babies" and Rick remarked, "Where's the crying, the middle-of-the-night feedings? What a lousy substitute for a baby." That said, Rick-whose background is aeronautical engineering-tinkered in his garage for a few weeks and devised a rough prototype for the virtual baby in late 1993.

In addition to the "standard" baby, newly designed models include both a drug-affected and fetal alcohol syndrome infant-both of which are designed to show teens how drinking alcohol and using drugs during pregnancy can have lasting physical and mental effects on an infant.

For more on the Wisconsin-based program, call (800) 830-1416 or (715) 830-2040, or visit the Web site at http://www.btio.com

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