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Teen Moms Relate To Pregnant Bristol Palin

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 3, 2008

TAMPA - Alikeyda Heredia was a 16-year-old junior at Leto High School when she found out she was pregnant.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "I was in denial for months."

Her mother supported Heredia's decision to have her son and keep him. Heredia also got involved with a local mentoring program that helped her graduate.

Today she's an 18-year-old single mom with plans to study physical therapy at Hillsborough Community College. Having the support of her family and community was "huge," she said.

Teen pregnancy, on the rise nationwide after a 15-year decline, is once again in the national spotlight, after Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin's revelation that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is 5 months pregnant.

Heredia and those who work with teen moms say the interest generated by the announcement translates into an opportunity for public education. State figures show that almost 26,000 Florida teens gave birth in 2006, the most recent statistics available.

"It's a good topic to talk about, and to happen now was good timing," said Heredia, who counted 10 pregnant students at her school the year she graduated.

It doesn't matter if you're from a good family or you have the support of two parents like Bristol Palin does, she said. "It shows that it happens to everyone."

For Jane Murphy, executive director of the Healthy Start Coalition of Hillsborough County, the news opens the door for parents to talk with their children - daughters and sons - about sex and its consequences.

"There's no immunity," she said.

Florida has the sixth highest rate of teen pregnancies in the nation, said Adrienne Kimmell, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates in Sarasota.

The reasons vary, she said, from abstinence programs that overshadow prevention education, including information about safe sex, to Florida not having any formal standards for sex education.

But the outcome is clear, Kimmell said: "We're really failing our teens."

Figures from the state Department of Health's Office of Vital Statistics show there were 25,860 births by mothers 19 and younger in Florida in 2006, an increase of almost 1,300 from the year before.

Hillsborough County reported 2,078 births to teenagers that year; of those, 662 were mothers age 15 to 17, and 30 were mothers 14 and younger. The total has steadily increased since 2003, when there were 1,744 births to teen mothers.

Funding cuts and shifts in focus have caused some pregnancy prevention programs to fall by the wayside, said Slake Counts, a project manager for The Children's Board of Hillsborough County. The government-funded agency provides research and grants for children's studies and programs.

The board changed its focus several years ago, concentrating less on pregnancy prevention and more on issues that affect children from birth to age 8.

"That left us with services after the fact," Counts said. "We knew when we took away prevention programs, the rates would go up."

Woman to Woman is one of those programs that helps pregnant teens up to age 18 finish their education and keep from getting pregnant again while they're in school. Sponsored by Gulf Coast Community Care, Ounce of Prevention and The Children's Board, it pairs the moms with female volunteers who become life coaches for a year.

For Heredia, it was added support to succeed. Monthly workshops taught her about parenting, anger management, healthy relationships and goal setting among other skills. "It kept me focused," said the teen, whose son, Marcelo, is 16 months old now.

For 18-year-old Ada Adorno, Woman to Woman bolstered her self-confidence. Pregnant at 15, she was a foster child without any direction in life.

"I got to know more about myself," Adorno said. "I learned why things were happening and who I was. I asked myself, 'What do I want to become as a mother?' I don't want my kids to go through what I went through."

Adorno said she graduated from Simmons Career Center in Plant City with a 3.47 grade-point average. She has her own apartment now, where she lives with her 2-year-old son, Christopher, and attends Hillsborough Community College.

In Florida, only 30 percent of teen moms complete high school, said program manager Iris Grimsley, who was once a teen mother at 19. Since August 2004, about 70 teen moms have taken part in the program, and all of them have graduated high school or received their GED, she said.

They have babies because they're lonely or because they know they can get financial help that will give them independence from their families, Grimsley said.

Some see movies like "Juno," which featured a pregnant student who gives up her baby for adoption, or they watch reality television shows like the "Baby Borrowers," which lets teen couples try on the role of teen parents, and they think having a baby will be fun.

Or they read about Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's baby sister who got pregnant when she was 16, and think being a young mother is glamorous.

"It's socially acceptable," Grimsley said. Every now and then, one of the pregnant teens in her program will admit: "I'm afraid to tell my parents."

"And I think 'Wow, that's so uncommon!" Grimsley said.

Having the issue discussed during the presidential election can only help further educate people about teen pregnancy, she said.

"I think she's going to be able to relate to a lot of families," Grimsley said of Sarah Palin. "It's life. We take it too seriously. As if mistakes are never to be made. That's how we learn."

Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com

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