Emoni Forbes and Keshon Jenkins have known each other since meeting as freshman in high school. The 18-year-olds have been boyfriend and girlfriend almost as long.
"I love her from everything that's in me, probably more," said Jenkins, just returning home one afternoon from Armstrong High School, where he is a senior preparing to graduate.
These days, though, he has a new love interest: 4-month-old Zaniyya Jenkins. The couple's daughter was born Feb. 17.
Barely grown themselves, Forbes and Jenkins have a responsibility that neither expected so soon.
"I felt scared at first," Jenkins said, describing how he felt when he learned he was going to be a father. "After I realized there was nothing I could do about it, I manned up.
"I was praying for a girl," he said as he cuddled Zaniyya in the apartment in Richmond's East End that he and Forbes share with his mother, Adrianne Fleming.
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Every year, hundreds of thousands of teenagers in the United States give birth. In 2009, the most recent year for which final data is available, more than 410,000 girls ages 15 to 19 had babies. In Virginia, more than 8,000 teens gave birth in 2009. The promising news is that the rates of teen births and pregnancies are declining. Still, geographical and racial differences exist, with teen birth rates higher in Southern states and among Hispanics and blacks when compared with whites.
Whether they lack access to reliable contraception or think "it won't happen to me," or simply want a baby because friends have children, teens in the United States are becoming parents at a much higher rate than teens in other developed countries.
"I wasn't planning to" get pregnant, said Diana Gaitan, 16, a 10th-grader at Huguenot High School in Richmond. Her son is due Aug. 11. She and her boyfriend, a student at Thomas Jefferson High School in Richmond, have known each other for two years and have been going together for about a year.
"We actually did protect ourselves, but there's always something" that can go wrong, she said. They used condoms.
Gaitan lives at home with her parents and her 12-year-old sister. She sees her boyfriend, José, primarily on the weekends. He works after school and is standing by her.
"I knew I was going to disappoint them," Gaitan said of her parents. "They have done so much. They wanted me to be a better person. Then I became pregnant. That's something my mother did not want for her kids."
Forbes didn't plan her pregnancy, either. She had started using an implanted method of birth control but she had it removed after about a month because she couldn't tolerate the side effects. In studies, 11 percent of users had the implant removed because of irregular vaginal bleeding.
Forbes found out on the last day of 11th grade that she was pregnant. During the summer, she moved in with Jenkins and his family, which included another brother and his family. Later, the couple and Jenkins' mother moved to their current apartment.
Her biggest challenge, Forbes said, is getting Jenkins to spend more time with Zaniyya.
"Other than that, it's good," she said.
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"Teen pregnancy is a leading health concern because of the adverse health, social and economic consequences for teen moms, for their children and for society," said Ursula Bauer of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an April telephone briefing on new teen pregnancy and teen-birth data.
"Teen moms are more likely to drop out of high school, and they are less likely to ever receive a high school diploma" or GED diploma, said Bauer, director of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. "They are unlikely to achieve their full income-earning potential and they are more likely to need public assistance."
There is evidence that public-health messages to teens to delay starting families until they finish high school or college and have a work history are having an impact.
The U.S. teen birth rate, 39.1 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19 in 2009, was the lowest recorded. Still, it's higher than that of the United Kingdom, Japan and many developed nations.
It also can be a perpetuating cycle, Bauer said.
"The children of teen mothers are more likely to have a teen birth and to drop out of high school when they are teens."
There also are startling differences when categorized by race, ethnicity and geographic region.
Of the more than 410,000 teens who gave birth in 2009, about 160,000 were non-Hispanic whites, 98,000 were non-Hispanic blacks, and 136,000 were Hispanic, according to federal data. Asians, Native Americans and other ethnic groups made up the rest. The teen birth rate for whites, 25.6 per 1,000 girls, is much lower than the black rate, 59 births per 1,000 girls, and the Hispanic rate, 70 births per 1,000 teen girls.
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Virginia's teen birth rate in 2009 was 30.8 live births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19.
"Overall, the rates are dropping in Virginia," said Diane Helentjaris, director of the Office of Family Health Services at the Virginia Department of Health.
"There are little nuances," Helentjaris said, noting variations among the health districts by age and ethnicity. In some places, teenage pregnancy is linked with social problems such as juvenile delinquency, high school dropout and high unemployment rates that remain stubbornly resistant to interventions.
"We have to change … the way of thinking," said Jeanne M. Flinn, a trustee for the nonprofit John Randolph Foundation, which funds clinic health services in the Crater Health District and has awarded grants to the Resource Mothers program. The district includes Petersburg and Hopewell, areas with some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state.
The foundation has brought together a group of community leaders to form a teen pregnancy prevention task force. It is similar to an initiative in Richmond that seeks to get business and civic leaders to partner in finding solutions.
"I used to be a social worker at John Randolph Hospital," Flinn said. "It was nothing for me to hear mothers talking in the hallway about how excited they were that their daughter was pregnant because they couldn't have any more children and now they could have another baby in the household. So it's trying to get that way of thinking changed."
Rachel M. Dillard, coordinator for the Resource Mothers program at the Crater Health District, said the consensus at a recent conference she attended was that the "media has changed our young people so much that they glorify a lot of things. They glamorize immoral issues, and the kids think that is the norm. If they see on TV a lot of women having children out of wedlock — singers or celebrities — then they think that's the norm."
Many types of programs can make a difference in teen pregnancy, according to a report from Child Trends, a national organization focused on child welfare. Programs include comprehensive sex education, clinic services and early childhood programs. Some abstinence programs may work, but only for the short term.
"We believe that if we focus on education and start to consistently teach the children from an early age as possible what the possibilities of their lives could be" they avoid risky behavior, said Josie M. Craighead-Bailey, grant program officer for the John Randolph Foundation. She said the foundation is seeking teen pregnancy prevention projects to fund. Most existing community programs focus on girls after they are pregnant.
Richmond is initiating a project tested at one city school in the 1980s with impressive results, said Gale E. Grant, adolescent health coordinator at the Richmond City Health District. The Community of Caring initiative, based on a national model, was rolled out in five city elementary schools and will expand to middle schools next year. All the schools feed into Armstrong High School, located in an area of the city with the highest teen pregnancy rate.
The focus is on character-building. As kids, teachers and parents are engaged, the learning environment and behaviors shift, Grant said.
"You see academic performance go up and all those risky behaviors that you don't want to see in schools go down," Grant said. "You see fewer fights. You see less bullying. The teen pregnancy rates go down. There is just a host of those kinds of outcomes."
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It is possible to be young and a good parent if you have your priorities straight, said Jenkins, who is searching for jobs online when he gets home from school.
"You can't raise a child without a job," he said. He wants to go to culinary school eventually. He and Forbes attend parenting classes offered by the Richmond Resource Mothers program.
"It would be easier if you didn't have so many distractions, as far as friends," Jenkins said, faced with dividing time between being a new dad and being a teenager who likes to hang out with friends.
"It's not hard for him," Forbes said, laughing, "because while he has to go to school, I do everything through the night so he can be able to get up to go to school."
She is working with a homebound teacher on completing her GED, which she said she hopes to have in a few weeks. She is thinking about becoming a hair stylist.
Gaitan plans to finish school and go to college, although she hasn't figured out what she will do about child care.
Her mother, Rosa Gaitan, was 21 when she had Diana. Asked how she feels about her daughter's pregnancy, she said she worries because Diana is so young.
Diana said her father was mostly silent on the matter, but has started to come around when he learned he was going to have a grandson.
"I'm going to try to encourage my kid so he won't do the same thing when he gets to an age," Diana said. "I'm going to be the best mother I can."
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