Ronnie Polaneczky: We have to talk about babies having babies

MY COLLEAGUE Mensah Dean wrote this week about the teenagers sentenced for taking part in the flash mob that terrorized Center City on Feb. 16. The most distressing paragraph in his utterly depressing story was this one:

"Another 15-year-old Gratz student, convicted also of possessing 12 small bags of marijuana, was given a 30-day boot-camp sentence to be followed by placement in a state facility. His girlfriend held the couple's 2-month-old son."

All I could think was, "That poor, poor baby."

Born to a teen mother who, instead of spending the day in school, getting her derailed life back on track, stands by her drug-toting baby-daddy in a courtroom, where he's being sentenced to the slammer.

I don't own a crystal ball, but I don't need one to worry about that kid's future. And the future of every child born to a child in Philly. And the future of a city where too many children are having children.

Overwhelming research shows that babies born to poor, unwed mothers are vulnerable to some of life's harshest odds, with terrible long-term consequences for their lives and communities. They're more likely than kids from two-parent households to act out, go to jail, get pregnant, become truant, drop out of school and commit suicide.

The odds go up the more unprepared the unwed mom is - you know, without things like a job, stable housing and all the supports it takes to independently raise another human being to responsible adulthood.

So, it's hard to imagine a more unprepared mother than an adolescent one. Especially when she so often comes from a home where her own young, unwed mother raised her alone. What does a child know about raising a child?

The question plagues Family Court Administrative Judge Kevin Dougherty, who every day sees the fallout of chaotic parenting when the delinquent children of children crowd his courts.

"Today's definition of 'family' has expanded to include many nontraditional families," says Dougherty, who oversaw the flash-mob trials this week, and was spending yesterday with his son's class cleaning a vacant lot in northwest Philly.

"But in the courtroom we're seeing more families that consist of minors raising minors. There is no one exerting real parental care or control. That's not an enlightened expansion of the family. We're witnessing the deconstruction of the family. It's heartbreaking."

We're not supposed to talk about this stuff, of course. We don't want to be labeled elitist or racist.

And we don't want to imply that people in tough circumstances should be denied parenthood.

But, as Dougherty told me, "This isn't about race or class. It's about children's lives. It's urgent. We have to talk about it."

I've been talking about it a lot these days, with a Philly high-school teacher who prefers I not identify her. She told me how she went home and cried the first time she asked one of her pregnant students why the teen would choose to keep the baby instead of placing the child in an adoptive home.

"She said, 'My baby is gonna love me, and worship me and be all mine,' " says the teacher. "She had so little love in her life, she wanted a baby to love her. This was a girl who couldn't get it together to come to class or do homework. How was she going to guide a child?"

But that proud, misguided refrain of "my baby will love me" is what the teacher hears most among her pregnant students. At least three girls in each of her classes are already mothers; three more per class are pregnant.

"They have no concept that you don't have a baby because of what the baby will give you; you have a baby because of the life you can provide him," she says. "They don't understand that they're perpetuating the cycle. Their own parents aren't there for them, so they haven't learned, from example, how to be there for their own child. I'm not saying they don't care about their children. They just don't know how to raise them."

But the myth persists that having a baby will somehow improve their life, says Maria Kefalas, a sociologist at St. Joseph's University, who's also co-author of "Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage."

"It's completely irrational," says Kefalas. "You have poor teenage girls, they look at life, and it looks dire. They go to a crappy school, they live in a bad neighborhood, no one they know has a job or enough money. They have no vision of a hopeful future. So there's no reason to wait before having sex with their boyfriend.

"Then they get pregnant and a magical thinking takes over. They actually think a baby will make life better. They're totally unprepared for the reality of parenting."

And for the possibility that, one day, their own kids could very well be the needy teens having babies to make up for the hopeful future they couldn't envision for themselves, either.

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/ronnieblog.