fireproof gloves
I was stopped and saddened by a short, almost throwaway, story in today’s local newspaper. And no — this time, it’s not the writing that made me wince. It’s this:
A scared, but savvy 7-year-old Richmond girl called 911 early Thursday to report she and two younger children were left home alone.
An hour later, Heather Clark, 23, of 805 N. W. Fifth St., was arrested after arriving while police and Child Protective Services officers were present. Clark has been charged with three counts of neglect of a dependent, all Class D felonies. She was lodged in Wayne County, where she remained Thursday night. Her surety bond is set at $5,000.
“She said they (children) were left with another lady,” said Lt. Brad Berner of the Richmond Police Department, citing the incident report.
The girl was awakened around 5 a.m. by a crying younger sister. The 7-year-old first called her grandparents in Florida.
“She did a real good job (of calling for help),” Berner said. “That’s got to be a scary situation.” Berner said he wasn’t aware of any similar situations with the mother. Police also found marijuana in the house. Clark has been charged with possession of marijuana, a Class A misdemeanor.
The young woman who is the mother is twenty-three. Her eldest of three children is seven years old; this means she became a mother at sixteen. A sixteen-year-old girl is a child. I realize most sixteen-year-olds don’t think so, but here’s the reality, kids: at sixteen you can’t vote, you can’t legally drink or smoke, you have barely earned the right to drive and to work full-time. If you have a child at the age of sixteen, you are in the eyes of the world, and in reality, a child with a child. And how do you think the rest of your life will go after this?
Here’s what one study (quoted in the Indianapolis Star) says:
Compared with women who don’t have children until they are at least 20, teen mothers face increased odds of dropping out of school, remaining unmarried and living in poverty. Their children are more likely to be victims of abuse and neglect and to enter the child welfare system.
And here’s what one expert blames for the reason:
…Betty Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, said the decline in the state’s teen birth rate has leveled off since 2002. She said a 2005 study by Indiana University showed many teens are not being taught medically accurate sex education in public schools.
Cockrum said another study, by the Guttmacher Institute, ranked Indiana 49th in the availability of contraceptive information and services, while the state’s sex education policy was ranked worst.
“Our teenagers are not getting the information they need, and that is putting them at risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,” she said. “We have 31 teens get pregnant in Indiana every day, and 10 of them are under 17.”
So. Indiana has the worst sex education policy. Indiana is second to last in the availability of contraceptive information and services. And those last numbers? Thirty-one teenagers getting pregnant every day in Indiana? Every day?
Add a few more numbers to this list. Remember the graduation rate in the high school? That 54% that shocked everyone? Oh, I know. It’s not 54% anymore. It’s 65% or maybe 70%. Enough time has passed for the administration in charge to fiddle with the numbers. Or, for the less cynical view, perhaps a few more students have actually graduated. Whatever the new numbers, and however they have been arrived at, one thing is clear: the graduation rate at the high school in Richmond, Indiana, is not 100%. Not even close.
Shall we dare to compare the two sets of numbers: teenage pregnancies and the dropout I mean graduation rate? I’ll leave that to the sociologists among us. I will also leave other correlations to others wiser than I: teenage mothers (and fathers) and drug use (see above article); teenage mommies and daddies and crime; …. and unemployment; …. and poverty rate; …. and school violence; … and any number of social ills and tribulations that beset us here and now, in this city.
Am I blaming teenagers for the mess that we have here in Richmond, Indiana? No. I am blaming the idiot adults in charge who do not and will not provide kids — girls and boys — with basic information about sex, and then don’t provide access to birth control, and then don’t make it at all easy for any girl — GIRL — who becomes pregnant to have access to abortion services, and then effectively sentence that girl to a life with a child, a life of missed opportunities, poverty, petty crime, and misery. And then, smugly and neatly, those same adults blame the girl — and sometimes the boy — for not pledging chastity, not practicing abstinence, and getting themselves into this mess in the first place.
Look, adults. Kids experiment. They fool around. Sometimes even the best of the best kids do. Even if they don’t mean to. Sex is one powerful, heady experience. In the hands of an adolescent, it’s like fire. You can tell your kids not to play with fire. That’s fine. But for god’s sake (yes, God), give your kids some fireproof gloves just in case they do play with fire. Yes, that’s a metaphor. Fireproof gloves = birth control.
I’ll just add this: I dare say that all the good ideas on the planet meant to save Richmond, Indiana, from itself won’t amount to a hill of tiny beans unless we help our kids stop having kids. If a 16-year-old is raising a baby, she probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about recycling, or going green, or becoming a vegetarian, or refurbishing old buildings for art spaces, or making bike paths, or any other well-intentioned work in progress. She’s thinking about WIC, and food stamps, and working part-time at Wal-Mart, and how she’s going to pay for the cab that gets her to work. And in this town, in a lot of towns, there are a lot of sixteen-year-olds raising babies.
Or twenty-three-year-olds raising, with marginal success, three small children.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Jean,
So what’s the next step? Is it a community conversation about reproduction? Is it different/better sex ed in schools? Mandatory this or that for would-be parents?
Where do we go from here?
I hear the frustration in your words about putting this in perspective, and I agree that it’s a privilege to be able to think about recycling or bike paths or refurbing old buildings when other people are struggling with life at a different level of immediacy. I’m not sure that means we should all stop thinking about the many ideas out there for making Richmond better, and I do think they’re all related in some form, but I’ll take your point that if we don’t address those core issues of population management and acceptable parenting skills, other successes may be hollow ones.
Chris
March 6th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Hi Chris -
The only answer I have ever had is for each and every responsible, sane, active adult in any community to “adopt” a child, mentor that child, be a voice of reason for that child. I did it for years, beginning with the Mentor program in the schools. It’s limited as a program, but it doesn’t have to be. I decided to take on a kid in sixth grade and stick with her, see her through middle school, high school, college and beyond. I think it made a huge difference in her life. Was it perfect? No. Was I? No. Did it matter to her that I was around? Yes, it did. A great deal.
As for mandatory sex ed — sure, that would be great. Perfect, even. Kids will have sex, I think we have to acknowledge that. Abstinence may work for some, but by and large it fails. And when it does, and a kid has no resources, no information, no birth control no understanding about what to do before during and after sex — and I mean protection — they’re bound to get pregnant and/or an STD. Either one screws up a life (sorry for the bad pun).
I am pretty burnt out on working within a system to create change. Our local school board and community does not seem likely to institute aggressive sexual education, to post condom dispensers in the bathroom (and, yes, I’m for that — good grief why not! it’s not like owning a condom will make someone have sex. That’s like saying owning a car will make me drive on the Autobahn!). Nor will arguments for sex ed likely sway the abstinence-only folks — they are well-meaning for the most part I think, but misguided — to think this is a good idea.
However, one sane adult with one curious child — this will make a difference. Kids have lots of questions. They may act savvy and cool; they may do bold and crazy things; they may resist adults — at first (and believe me, my kid did, a lot!). But you know what? Kids know when someone genuinely cares about them. They know when they are listened to. They know that when a stable, caring, consistent adult appears in their life that they now have someone they can count on. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes a combination of humility, humor, toughness, and love. But kids appreciate it. They don’t expect you to provide condoms or give them sex ed lectures or to counsel them on abstinence. But they do want someone they can trust to answer their questions straight up, someone who will stick around, someone they can model themselves after. Whether they admit it or not, a kid who sees an adult with a steady job, a decent outlook on life and the future, a good head on their shoulders — the kid is going to make a lot of decisions about life just by looking at you and figuring out how you got where you are. So, yes, volunteer for Girls Inc. Be a study buddy. Be a mentor. Be a good neighbor. Go to the Boys and Girls club. Heck, go to church and teach Sunday school. Whatever it takes!
And yes, Chris, I have nothing but good things to say about recycling, bike paths, and other things that make our community better. Those matter too. They are necessary. Just not sufficient.
- J
March 8th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Oh Jean. You are so smart. Run for school board.
March 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Natalie - Nah. I don’t think parents would like my take on things very much. Besides, I really don’t play well with others. Unless they’re second graders!
April 16th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
I’ve always likened “abstinence-only” sex ed to “security through obscurity”.
Essentially — you’re hoping to remain “safe” by keeping certain things secret or hidden away. Which is only effective until your marks figure it out on their own.
“Security through obscurity” is a parenting strategy some use — you keep certain things hidden away, or use them in secret (light switches, juice, chairs, etc.) to keep your toddler from knowing it until they’re responsible enough to use it on their own.
As much as it may make parenting more difficult, I’ve found that if I show Sullivan, in all of his two-year-old-glory, the correct way to use light switches, chairs, refrigerators, DVDs, television, etc., he’ll do it as correctly as he physically can. Showing him how to do those things encourages him to explore, and it helps to keep him safe by pre-empting potentially dangerous “learning mistakes”.
If we can educate our children with contraceptive methods but still emphasize that intercourse is a risky proposition, then they can make better judgements when in risky situations.
I don’t know who’s idiotic enough to think that if we don’t teach our kids about sex they aren’t going to figure it out for themselves — that may have worked back in the 50s, try taking a tally of how many television shows advertise sexual situations on *NETWORK TELEVISION*.