California CapitolWeek 9/15/00

Teen Sexuality

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Special Edition -- Teen Sexuality

(( Jack ))On this special edition . . . teen sexuality. Why are so many of our kids, having kids of their own?

What can we do about it? “I’m Melissa Crowley . . .commuication may be the key . . have that story coming up.”

Plus. . . . programs that are opening communication and showing teens what parenting is all about. Hello I’m Jack Kavanagh. A special edition of California Capitolweek is next.

((Jack)) Thank you for joining us . . . Melissa Crowley will join us on location in a moment. Joining me in studio today is Bonnie Erbe . . host of the national PBS show “To the Contrary,” the country's first news analysis series featuring all women panelists.

(Bonnie) Thanks Jack. It’s great to be here to talk about a topic that many people are afraid to talk about . . . . teen sexuality.

We need talk about it, especially here in California, which has the second highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. We’ll hear from a diverse group, from advocates of sex education to those promoting abstinence.

(Jack) But first . . . California does not mandate training for individuals who teach sex education.

Local districts adopt policies, but do not have state curricula to develop their programs. Melissa Crowley looks at some efforts to get the dialogue flowing.

SEXUAL EDUCATION PKG

I’m Melissa Crowley here at the Birthing Project in Sacramento, and here they offer the full spectrum of services. Everything from teen pregnancy to prenatal care, and even help in resources for young mothers, but experts here say the one thing we can all do to help, open the lines of communication with our children.

Tanya Khemet, The Birthing Project: A lot of the problems that we see in our society right now teen pregnancy may be just a symptom of the problem. The Birthing Project seeks to help by providing programs designed to open lines of communication.

Zelon Harrison, Parent: Me and Ronisha went through, and it helped us so much.

Programs like Saturday Salon and Sister Friend…

Zelon Harrison, Parent: It was just so different, our relationship, once we went through the program learning how to communicate with each other. Like Katherine said, it didn’t feel like a pregnancy prevention program. It felt like a time where me and her could spend time together bonding.

Communication about goals and sexuality is applauded by experts…

Antonia Jackson, Amandela Project: It can’t be a monologue. It has to be two people who are ready to listen, and two people who are ready to share openly and honestly around their shots on sexuality.

Other parents say that parents can stress their preferences, but the dialogue should include all pregnancy prevention options

Debra Heffner, S.I.E.C.U.S. Executive Director: We can’t say to the young people of America, “Just say no or die. Just say no or get AIDS.” What we know from the literature is that the best programs are the programs that talk about abstinence and talk about contraception and STD prevention.

Other programs like “Baby Think it Over” give teens a dose of parenting reality. The teens must use a care key to calm the crying babies. The crying cannot be turned off and can happen every hour.

Lucy Meadows Clark, Nevada County Schools: The goal of the Baby Think it Over program is to give kids the hands-on experience of what it’s like to be a parent, and we want them to experience both the rewards and the responsibilities of parents.

The goal of all these programs, prevention, by helping teens feel loved and connected and by preparing them to make the right decisions at the right times in their lives.

Kathryn Hall Jr., Teen Counselor: I just think they should know all that comes with having a child before they actually think they want to have a child.

And some children and parents say that, in the process, they grow closer…

Zelon Harrison: That really was an intimate moment for us.

END SEXUAL EDUCATION PKG

((Jack) This past January, a new law went into effect requiring schools that teach sex education to use curriculum that is medically accurate and free of gender, racial and ethnic bias.

(Bonnie) But is that enough? Joining us now, a group representing the different sides of the debate.

DISCUSSION PT. 1

Bonnie Erbe: I’d like to throw a question out to Terry Lind of Planned Parenthood. Terry, a Field Institute poll showed that 93% of California parents want explicit sex education in the schools, including teaching California’s teens and pre-teens about, if they are sexually active, how to prevent pregnancy and to prevent transmission of STDs, and yet, only half or fewer of the public schools offer such training. Why?

Terry Lind, Planned Parenthood: I think that this is a very frightening subject for people. Sex, in general, is sensitive, and there are a lot of taboos in our society, but research finds that the best prevention is accurate, factual, up-to-date information. Comprehensive information combined with an abstinence message. Certainly, at the younger ages, abstinence is the primary message that needs to be given.

Jack Kavanagh: Sounds like a simple solution to me. Why doesn’t it work?

Jose Perez, Latino Journal: Because it’s not a simple solution. It’s actually a very complex issue.

Jack Kavanagh: What are the dynamics of that?

Jose Perez, Latino Journal: Well, let me share what I perceive to be the problem. According to the California Department of Health Services—they carry a lot of statistics on their web page—there were 70,000 teenage pregnancies in 1996, and of that, Hispanic women actually made up about 40,000 or about 63%, white, young girls about 14,000, African-Americans 7,000, and Asian at the lowest with 3,000. Every population in California is unique. It’s diverse in its culture and its language and its values, so if you want to really go after teenage pregnancy, you have to go after the population?

Bonnie Erbe: How do you go after those populations differently and in a culturally sensitive way?

Jose Perez, Latino Journal: Well, one is language, obviously. You have to be very sensitive to language differences, cultural differences, and I think the funding that the state of California puts into it—it’s about 73 million dollars—I think we need to take a look at how those funds go back to the populations.

Jack Kavanagh: We’ve got a couple lawmakers. We can ask them for money. That’s what we do with lawmakers in California. Tina, you wanted to add something.

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: I think it’s important to also involve the community, and the community could be where those teens are. It could be their school; it could be where they go for healthcare; it could be where they attend church. Those are avenues whereby they trust, so I think you also have to include those avenues when you’re talking about teens and sexuality, and I also think that when we use the word “explicit,” to me that seems X-rated, but when you use the word “accurate—“

Bonnie Erbe: Okay, but what about open and honest dialogue with teens, because that’s what’s going on in Europe, for example. The United States has a thirty times greater rate of teen pregnancy than, say, the Netherlands, much higher rate of teen STD, much higher rate of teen abortions than in many of the Western European countries where they are much more open and honest and treat teen sexuality as much more of a natural thing.

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: See, when I was in school, which wasn’t that long ago, sexuality was in the context of health education. It wasn’t separated, so when I think you tell teens the truth about how their body works, I think that they appreciate that, and that’s what they say to us—

Jack Kavanagh: Jim, can I ask you though, how—

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: I think it’s difficult to compare us to another country like the Netherlands. On a comparative basis, three people live in the Netherlands. Also, we’re talking about cultures that are much more homogenous. We’re a very diverse, as this gentleman pointed out, state and country, so the solutions have to be more local in that regard. Some may say that the state should have an absolute requirement to have this in the schools, but the debate there is, does that belong in the schools? That changes the flavor.

Jack Kavanagh: And in the legislature is there a limit to what you can legislate in this?

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: Well, I think that we can set some ground rules. For example, I wrote that new law that requires that once a school district decides to have sex education courses, it has to be medically accurate—

Jack Kavanagh: But the decision is made locally on having that course in the first place.

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: Right. School districts decide whether to include such curricula, and it involves parents, and it ought to be done at that level because we are so diverse, and every segment of our community is different, requiring a different approach. One size all will not work.

Jack Kavanagh: Bonnie, is that getting to the heart of the problem? Is sounds like there is an option not to have sex education in some of the local districts. Is there a consensus here that we should make that a mandatory thing?

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: Well, I think we’re making an assumption here that teen pregnancy occurs mainly because the teens do not understand issues about sex, but there are other reasons that we have to explore. A lot of times, it’s lack of attention, and they feel by getting pregnant, I have someone to love me now, and I can get attention, so, I don’t think it’s just sex education, and I think we get really heated when it’s isolated. We have to talk about other issues.

Christine Cipperly, Catholic Diocese of Sacramento: I couldn’t agree more. I work for the Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, and we have a program that specifically focuses on teens and parents and communication between the teens and parents, so we bring the teens together with the parents, and then I have my teen leader who works with the teens. We do communication exercises. We have a very comprehensive medical curriculum that is factual and medically accurate. We talk about the whole spectrum, and we try to put it—I like what you said, Tina, about isolating it—we try to put it within the context of the teenager’s whole life because teenagers have a couple of really specific developmental tasks to achieve before they graduate from high school and leave their parents. They need to find out who they are. How are they different from their parents? They’re going to be leaving. They need to develop their own boundaries, and they need to learn that they can experience a feeling—a sexual feeling, a feeling of anger, violence, a feeling to buy something—and that they don’t have to act on it. That there are ways, that we can give them tools, but that we need to do it within the context of the family.

Connie Erbe: Jesse, as the representative teenager, what do you think works with teens? Is it being open? Is it being honest? Is it about giving teen’s full information about a combination of abstinence and, if they choose to be sexually active, how to protect themselves when they are sexually active?

Jesse Dundon, Teenager for Chastity: Well stuff like saying it’s okay to do it if you use protection and stuff, that’s not really a good way to do it because that’s saying that sex is okay. The best way to do it is to teach not straight abstinence but chastity which makes it a more positive value than abstinence which is negative, like “don’t do this; don’t do that,” but saying, “save yourself.”

Connie Erbe: Are all teens that you know abstinent?

Jesse Dundon, Teenager for Chastity: No.

Connie Erbe: Okay, so don’t the teens who are sexually active need information about what happens to them when they are sexually active?

Jesse Dundon, Teenager for Chastity: Yeah, they need the information, but you can’t be so casual, like, “here’s the information, and it’s your decision.” You need to be saying that it’s really not okay to be doing stuff like that.

Jack Kavanagh: Caroline, you’re an educator, so you’re caught in the crossfire here where we have a couple of ideas that seem to be very simple and simple to work, but they don’t in practice. They’re hard to put into practice.

Caroline Roberts, Dept. of Education: Right, and I think the Field’s survey that was cited earlier is another example because over fifty percent of parents are saying that they’re not comfortable talking to their kids about sex. A lot of parents don’t even have the medically accurate, scientifically-based information about sex and sexually transmitted diseases, and that’s one reason that schools that have credentialled health educators and credentialled school nurses are one possible venue for the information to be provided to the families that decide that this is the way they want the information delivered. I think that the comments we’ve heard so far I agree with. We want families to be an important source of information. We want religious organizations to be an important source of that information too, but we know statistically there are a lot of parents who aren’t comfortable or who don’t know the latest information, so I think schools that have qualified personal have an opportunity to provide an important service.

Connie Erbe: Mr. House, your comments on all this as a member of the lawmaking—

George House: Yes. Proper information is education. That which is not true is not education. I appreciate what Jesse said, that it’s not just this or that, but you can not in the curricula of the schools leave out the values of proven societies. Jesse is the one of nine children, right? I am the oldest of seven brothers, and we have seven sisters, and my parents have no illegitimate grandchildren. Yes, there’s something to teaching. We grew up in poverty. We didn’t have television. We didn’t have electric lights in the house or the school room or running water, and the nature of people and behavioral rules, principles, the psychology of humanity has got to be considered, and we’re all endowed with the drive and the need, but from the earliest of times, the ability with proper training and the expression of personal responsibility controlled behavior. If you can’t do that, then when the guy robs the bank down the street and says, “I can’t help it,” you say he just couldn’t help it, but he could help it. Training is important. In the public schools, you have to have curricula that are correct with regard to the problem, but as Jesse said, you don’t invite all of them to participate.

Connie Erbe: All right, I’m going to have to cut you off right there because the problem is we’re out of time.

END DISCUSSION PT. 1

((Bonnie)) We’ll continue this discussion in a moment. Pregnancy and parenting are the major reasons females drop out of school. Forget high school proms . . . diapers, formula and prenatal care become their major concerns. Melissa Crowley introduces us to one teen mother who tells us how her baby changed her life.

TEEN MOTHER PACKAGE

Denesha Lewis is a bubbly teen… …a B student with a busy schedule……and a 4 month old baby

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: Yeah, a lot is different. It’s harder. She never imagined at 16 that she’d be a mother.

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: When I was 12, 13, I never thought I’d have a baby…

…I used to have daydreams, but now to have a baby; it’s unbelievable.

Denesha is a dedicated young parent

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: You can get real good smiles with a rattle.

Every day she gets up at 5:30, gets Lexi ready, and with a lot of help from her family…

…Denesha and Lexi then hop a bus to daycare before Denesha takes another bus to work.

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: On the way home, I’ll be, like, “Thank God the day’s over.”

When Denesha gets home, it’s dinner time, for Lexi…

…After fixing Lexi’s dinner, Denesha finally eats herself…

Denesha says she couldn’t do it without her sister and mom’s help. She has big plans for her daughter…

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: I want her to be President, or I really want her to be a singer or a model.

Denesha’s plans?

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: I want to be a doctor.

Meantime, things are about to get a lot busier with fall classes and high school, and while she cherishes her daughter…\

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: She’s just so cute.

…Denesha has advice for other teens.

Denesha Lewis, Teen Mother: Some teens, they think they wanna’ get pregnant, then when they get pregnant, they just wish they never had a baby. Wait. It’ll happen one day, but when you’re young, it’s not fun.

END TEEN MOTHER PACKAGE

((Bonnie)) Denesha hopes to become a doctor.

Check out these numbers . . . nine out of ten teens who give birth keep their babies

Approximately 5 to 7 billion dollars in state and federal money is spent every year on public assistance for teen parents and their families.

DISCUSSION PART TWO

Jack Kavanagh: Jose, let me ask you about the economics behind this. It seems that when the economy is booming and everything is going well, teen pregnancy tends to go down, and the reverse is true. When the economy begins to falter, teen pregnancy tends to go up. Is there a connection there somewhere?

Jose Perez, Latino Journal: You know, I’m not sure that there is, but I want to offer an observation that the teenage pregnancy problem in California is 63% Latina female, and I would suggest that the state programs, budgets, and all the community and company efforts are failing Hispanic young women because they have not incorporated that aspect of it. 63%, that’s two thirds of the problem. If you could just shave that in half, you could eliminate one third of teenage pregnancy.

Bonnie Erbe: Well, let me ask you this. Does frank discussion in the Spanish language help?

Jose Perez, Latino Journal: That would help. I think the other think that we oughta’ consider is that some of the 73 million dollars that the state spends on the issue, we oughta' be giving it to the Catholic Church because that’s where Latinas go. They go to the Catholic Churches. We need to use the institutions—

Bonnie Erbe: And have what done with it? How would that help?

Jose Perez, Latino Journal: I think some of these programs that we’re hearing from these folks here are great programs, but we’ve got to take the message to the people that are most impacted.

Bonnie Erbe: Jim?

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: One of the most successful state programs—and there’s some encouraging news, at least from a California perspective—in fact this year, we were given a bonus from the federal government for having the most significant drop in teenage, unintended pregnancies on a nationwide basis as a result of one of the programs out there, the Community Challenge Grant. That’s where it’s driven by a lot of younger kids who are in a position where they have to care for a young adult, but we also use those children to help educate others to prevent them from going down the road to unintended pregnancies. It’s been very, very successful.

Jack Kavanagh: Tina?

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: I agree with you. The Birthing Project is actually a recipient of—

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: Of one of those grants.

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: And we have the Saturday Salon, which you saw, and what we do is we don’t call it teen pregnancy prevention. That’s not how the teens view it. What we’re doing is fostering positive communication between the mother and the daughters. We start at sixth and seventh graders because we believe we have to get them early—

Bonnie Erbe: And what do you teach them?

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: We teach them that there is a way for the mothers to respect what their daughters are saying and disagree, and there’s a way for the daughters to respect what their mothers are saying and disagree, and to also let them know that there are other activities that they can share in together and that it builds up their self-esteem.

Jack Kavanagh: Terry, let me ask you, is there a difference in the way that middle class people and wealthy people deal with this problem compared to poor people?

Terrie Lind, Planned Parenthood: I think there is. I think one of the best pregnancy prevention is a view of the future, a plan. Teenagers and adolescents are very grounded in the present, and they need to look beyond, they need to feel that they can accomplish, they need to have the support of parents, but there are some families that cannot provide that, that are not comfortable providing that.

Jack Kavanagh: And that’s an economic problem?

Terrie Lind, Planned Parenthood: I think it is.

Bonnie Erbe: Terry, what kind of information is it that teens need to help them from becoming pregnant in the first place and from becoming infected from sexually transmitted diseases. Do they need information about—you tell us, what kind of information do they need most?

Terrie Lind: I think the programs that have been proven by research to work have an extended time, multiple sessions. They provide information about anatomy and physiology. How does the body work—

Bonnie Erbe: Condom use?

Terrie Lind: Condom use, sexually transmitted diseases prevention, pregnancy prevention, and communication and skill building so that—

George House, (R) Modesto: Well, I think it’s a values problem, and I think we have to tie the parents into what is taught in the schools. We have to be objective to what we teach in the classrooms, and as Jesse said, don’t encourage those to go that way—

Jack Kavanagh: Okay, communications and values work together. How does that work?

Christine Cipperly, Catholic Diocese of Sacramento: Well, I think it’s really important—and Jesse’s older sister was actually my first team leader on this curriculum that we’re using—and what we found is really important, and Zoey said to me, “It’s really important that the teens know why.” You don’t just say no, you say, “look, you have these different things. You have a whole life ahead of you. What kind of marriage do you want? What kind of relationship do you want? Will you respect the opposite sex? Will you feel exploit? Will you feel used? Will you feel dehumanized?”

Bonnie Erbe: Caroline, I’d like you to chime in too.

Caroline Roberts, Dept. of Education: I think one of the things that we’ve all talked about here. Some of you may not be familiar with the umbrella label. It’s a concept called Youth Development. It’s a foundation for the community challenge grants. It’s the foundation for some teen pregnancy prevention grants that the Department of Education administers, and Tina’s program, The Salon Sisters, exactly epitomizes youth development, building positive relationships, building positive skills among youth, giving them a positive outlook on their own future so that they are motivated to succeed in life.

Bonnie Erbe: Caroline, the teen pregnancy rate has just recently dropped. What do you think has influenced that drop?

Caroline Roberts, Dept. of Education: We think it’s the combined approach. We think it’s the abstinence message. We think it’s also providing comprehensive sex education in an appropriate way so that students or teens that are sexually active know what they need to do.

Bonnie Erbe: And, Jim, your thoughts too.

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: One, I’m a pro-choice Republican. I’m also a father of young children, but I do want to say, we can’t look to our schools to be the panacea for this. We need to work with other local community organizations until our fourth grade reading scores go from fiftieth to number one or any of the other academic subjects. We cannot necessarily always look to the school to be the distributor of social services—

George House, Assemblyman (R) Modesto: Some of the stories about sex education in the public schools are devastating. They’re terrible. We have to know—

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: And there’s some great successes though, too.

George House, Assemblyman (R) Modesto: We have to know what the curricula is to be.

Bonnie Erbe: Such as?

Jack Kavanagh: To sum this up, what is working? We’ve heard that communication is working. We’ve heard that self-esteem is working. What else is working?

Terrie Lind, Planned Parenthood: Accurate, comprehensive, responsible education, and skill building.

Tina Roberts, The Birthing Project: And I think providing mechanisms for parents to get involved because teens do listen to their parents.

Jack Kavanagh: Is this making sense, Jesse, to you? Are we saying the right things? Are we correct from your point of view?

Jesse Dundon, Teen for Chastity: Yeah, mostly.

Jim Cunneen, Assemblyman (R) Santa Clara: The best ideas are going to come from people, and that’s why those grant programs are essential to continue in this state. Let’s let Tina take the lead. Let’s provide her the tools to get this job done. One size won’t fit all.

END DISCUSSION PT. 2

((Jack)) Thank you all for joining us. . . . For more information on the issue of teen sexuality, go to our website at capitolweek dot o-r-g. You can also send us feedback through our website on this week’s topic . . .. what is the best way to stop teen pregnancy? We’ll share some of your comments on air.

That is all the time we have. Bonnie Erbe of To The Contrary, thank you. It was great working with you. ((Bonnie)) Jack, it was a pleasure being here. We will see you next time.