Why are our...

Children Having Children

Written by: Kenneth-Michael

Imagine waking up and not only having to get yourself ready for the day, but getting three other generally helpless people ready. This may seem normal for the average adult, but Bronte Moore isn’t your average adult. She hasn’t even scratched the surface of adulthood. At 20 years-old, Moore is the mother of three young children.

She discovered her first pregnancy at the age of 16 while still in high school.

“When I first found out, I didn’t tell anyone,” said Moore. The only person that she recalls telling at the time was the father of the unborn child, who was 23 years-old. “I didn’t tell my mother. She found out by the size and the lines under my stomach.” She was in the shower when her mother noticed the change in her daughter’s body. Moore was in her fourth month.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, close to 750,000 teenage girls become pregnant between the ages of 15 and 19 years-old. Among the four different race/ethnicities, the number of Black teenagers had fallen—according to the last statistic in 2002—by 8.5 percent from the previous year to 134.2 percent. In 2002, the total pregnancies of women between the ages of 15-19 was 746,820 which had fallen from 2000 with 821,810 average pregnancies. That same year, teenagers age 14 or younger averaged over 17,000 pregnancies.

Now looking back on it, Moore says that she did start out using protection, but suddenly stopped when she and her children’s father became serious. When her mother realized that she was pregnant and unsure on how far she was, they immediately made an appointment to see a doctor. “When I went to all my appointments, my mother was right there with me,” said Moore. She admits that she expected her mother to be a little upset, but it was her father who gave her grief.

To read more of this story, click the link below:

http://www.etmmagazine.info/future/2009/04/2009_04_childrenhavingchildren.html