URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/news/nk-2teenmom.htm

Sunday, May 30, 1999
2 Teens Take On Fatherhood

A Bundle of Blessings & Burdens

Baby 101 for Teen-age Mothers

Experts: Families a Key to Prevention

Photo Story By Rebecca Roybal Of the Journal
    Doris Montoya tried to be open with her teen-age son.

   She had him watch a Catholic Church video, "Let's Talk About Sex." She watched it with him twice, and "told him to show it to (his girlfriend) when they got serious," she said.

    But her son will soon be a daddy.

    Jesusita Anaya encouraged her children to use birth control. "I told (my son and daughter) to protect themselves. ... I told them to do that even though it's a big no-no (in the Catholic Church)," she said.

    Her son didn't take her advice, and now he's a father.

    In both cases, the families are continuing to urge the boys to be responsible.

    This time, the boys are listening. Brian's story


    Inside the Montoya family mobile home just south of Española is an altar with a burning candle. Pictures and paintings of Jesus and saints are a few feet from the television. There's even a pew for praying.

    "We're still kind of in shock," said Doris Montoya, 37, who will be a grandmother in October.

    Her son, Brian Montoya, 18, a student at Pojoaque Valley High, will soon be a father. He and his girlfriend plan to get married this summer.

    "He's just a real good boy," Doris Montoya said. "We're proud he's going to do the right thing for her."

    Brian and his 17-year-old girlfriend have been together about a year.

    "I would ask him, 'Are you having sex?' " Doris Montoya said. His reply was always the same: No.

    "If you have sex with her, you'll get her pregnant," she said she told her son.

    His father, Harry, said he tried to explain to Brian the "realities of being a father."

    Brian and his girlfriend talked on the phone every night. They saw each other two or three times a week. "We were real serious," Brian said.

    He proposed marriage, and she agreed in December. In January, she learned she was pregnant.

    "I saw my whole life flash before my eyes. All the partying and going out and drinking with my friends has ended now and I have to take responsibility," he said.

    The week after they learned of the pregnancy, they opened a joint bank account.

    Then they told their parents.

    Her mother didn't talk to them for a week.

    His mother was livid.

    Brian's girlfriend and her parents declined to be interviewed.

    After his parents had time to talk about the situation, they told Brian he should get married to make a good life for his child.

    "I hadn't been listening to my parents so I thought now would be a good time to start," he said.

    In the fall, Brian will attend college at Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M., and she will finish her last year of high school. Their families will help with housing and cars there, Brian said.

    His parents have stressed to him time and again that finishing college should still be his top priority -- in addition to raising his family. Arsenio's story


    The Anaya residence in the South Valley is always bustling with kids: children, grandchildren and other relatives' children. It's how the family likes it.

    And that close family relationship has made raising 8-month-old Mariah easier for 19-year-old Arsenio Anaya and his girlfriend, Michelle Jaramillo, 16. They inhabit half of the Anayas' home.

    His family and hers have committed to doing whatever is necessary to raise Mariah, to make a new family that sticks together.

    Anaya, who graduated from Rio Grande High School, holds two maintenance jobs. When Jaramillo was pregnant, she and Anaya rarely saw each other, since he was working so much and she was home a lot because of a hard pregnancy.

    Before the baby came both families agreed that, for the couple to succeed, they needed to be together.

    "There really was no option. We were going to have a baby. No abortion, nothing like that was mentioned," Anaya said.

    "It is my responsibility to take care of the baby and Michelle, and make sure Michelle finishes her high school education," he said.

    He was concerned, at first, that Jaramillo's parents would be so upset about her pregnancy that they wouldn't let him see the baby or Jaramillo. "I was expecting the worst, not the best," he said.

    Anaya realizes that what he's doing is the exception. Often, when young men become fathers, "they say, 'I've got a kid. Oh, well.' It's just like nothing, just another thing that doesn't matter," Anaya said.

    Anaya and Jaramillo took parenting classes at Presbyterian Hospital and through the Rio Grande GRADS, where they learned how to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation to a baby and everyday tasks such as how to feed and dress a baby.

    During his lunch hour on Mondays, he goes to a meeting for teen dads. The rest of the week, he spends his lunch hour at school, visiting with Jaramillo and Mariah.

    "Our relationship is really open now -- like a family," he said.