Photo Story
By Rebecca Roybal
Of the Journal
Little Melanie Sandoval has sparkling eyes dark as chocolate and a wild mass of curls to match. She squeals with delight as her tiny feet clomp around in mama's white pumps.
It's those smiles and Melanie's demeanor that keep 19-year-old Martha Sandoval afloat during the hardest of times in a life that's tough all around.
Sure, she'd heard all the do's and don'ts of sex. But when you're 17 or 16 or 15, it's hard to imagine how quickly the teen years can turn to sleepless nights, searching for child care, finding transportation, making the diapers and formula stretch. Never mind homework.
Sandoval's situation is not unlike the problems facing several thousand New Mexico Hispanic teens annually who become pregnant and opt to give birth.
New Mexico numbers from most of the 1990s indicate Hispanic teen-agers 15 to 19 years old are more than twice as likely as their Anglo counterparts to become pregnant.
When a teen-ager finds herself pregnant, Hispanic girls are about half as likely to have an abortion. And many Hispanic families say giving a baby up for adoption simply isn't an option.
The combined effect: Far more Hispanic teen-agers are having children and facing the pressures of motherhood.
Ask the experts why there are so many Hispanic teen-age parents and they point to what they say is missing in many Anglo families: poverty and extended close-knit families. Others say the choice has everything to do with religion and culture.
"I think it's because we have a high poverty rate, a high unemployment rate and we have the cultures," said Laine Renfro-Sedillo, executive director of New Mexico Teen Pregnancy Coalition. "We have cultures in our state that value children. We give birth. We don't abort."
Maria Otero, vice president of community outreach for Planned Parenthood, said Hispanic culture and religion play a role.
Among Hispanics, she said, if a pregnant teen tells her mother she wants an abortion, "her mom will say, 'Let's keep the baby,' " Otero said. "It's religious beliefs."
Despite the strain on families when a teen-ager gets pregnant, Hispanic families are likely to pull together to raise the child, said Jorja Armijo-Brasher, manager of the city's Family and Community Center, Child and Family Development Services.
"It's not more acceptable to get pregnant in any culture," Armijo-Brasher said, "but there are some cultures that provide that support for keeping the baby. In the Hispanic or Latin culture, families want you to raise your child, so it's seemingly more acceptable. They don't want their daughters to get pregnant but, if they do, they help."
Sandy Dixon is principal of New Futures School, a secondary school for pregnant and parenting teens where last school year 65 percent of the students were Hispanic, and 92 percent came from low-income homes.
"Young women who choose to parent didn't perceive the future as very bright," Dixon said. "They didn't see themselves going to Bryn Mawr or UNM."
There's no obvious way of getting Hispanic teen-agers to see they can have a bright future without bearing children, Renfro-Sedillo said.
"I wish we knew. I wish we had a clue," Renfro-Sedillo said. "We're working with the Hispanic community now to see what they think. We really want to hear from the Hispanic community. What training should we be providing?"
One thing is certain: As long as teen girls see themselves as mothers, rather than college-bound women, they will continue to get pregnant.
Unfortunately, having teen parents can make life hard on the new child.
Parents helping parents
Raising baby Mariah Anaya is a family affair.
Her parents, 19-year-old Arsenio Anaya and his girlfriend, Michelle Jaramillo, 16, get help from their parents in raising the baby and keeping their young relationship together.
Jesusita, 41, and Ralph Anaya, 43, handed over about half of their South Valley home to the young family.
Jaramillo's mother, Sandra Lopez, 36, pitches in with rides, baby-sitting and pep talks.
Arsenio Anaya has two jobs working in maintenance. Jaramillo, a junior at Rio Grande High, is trying to finish high school with the help of the GRADS program, which offers parenting classes and day care for Mariah, 8 months old.
Someday -- though not any day soon -- the couple plan to get married and make a home of their own.
Lopez said the hardest part of being a grandmother is having her daughter live away from home with Anaya. She misses her daughter. But, she said, it's necessary.
"They need to be together," she said.
Lopez doesn't want her granddaughter to grow up without both parents.
"I told her that if you get pregnant, it's hard and your teen-age life is over," Lopez said. But she added: "If you ever end up pregnant, I'll be there for you."
Lopez said she's sorry she didn't put her daughter on the pill as soon as the couple got serious.
Though their initial reaction was disappointment when the teen couple told them about the baby, all the grandparents agreed on what needed to be done -- abortion and adoption were out of the question.
"It's just like me killing someone," Jesusita Anaya said. "Adoption? Not in a million years. I would have taken on full responsibility as a grandparent. If I had to quit my job today, I would do it."
$88 million price tag
According to 1997 data from the state Department of Health and the New Mexico Teen Pregnancy Coalition, taxpayers forked over $88 million that year in New Mexico in public support for teen-age mothers.
Nearly all the teen-agers under 18 who gave birth in 1997, and about 60 percent of the teens 18 to 19 years old, required public support of some kind: Medicaid; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families; Women, Infants and Children nutrition program; day care; and programs for pregnant and parenting teens, such as the Teen Parent Residence Program.
Babies born to teen mothers have a higher risk of being born with health problems such as low birth weight, compared to babies born to women in their 20s. They are likely to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit, which can run from $20,000 to $120,000 per baby.
Changing minds?
Ask anyone who works with pregnant or parenting teens about why the girls get pregnant in the first place and they point out that teen moms often were born to teen moms; that teens don't think they can get pregnant the first few times; that being a mother is often the only future they see for themselves; that promises of love forever from boys are convincing.
It's a rare teen father who helps raise his child, Renfro-Sedillo said.
The New Mexico Teen Pregnancy Coalition is hoping to change teens' minds about sex. To better target Hispanics, the organization has held meetings within the Hispanic community in Albuquerque and Las Cruces to get ideas on how to reach Hispanic teen-agers.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Health has launched an abstinence campaign.
But parents, teachers and experts can only preach so much.
Martha Sandoval, Melanie's mother, was one of those students flooded with information at school.
She met her boyfriend, Albert Lucero, now 20, when she was 15 and he was 16. They attended the same church. She was hoping her father would like Lucero.
As time wore on, the more she liked Lucero and the less time her father let her spend with him. "He didn't want me to get pregnant," Sandoval said.
"I guess you could say we fell in love ... and we didn't use any birth control," she said.
After an argument with her dad, Reno Sandoval, she left home to stay in a shelter for two weeks. There, she found out she was pregnant.
Reno Sandoval said he didn't speak to Martha for a long time after he found out about her pregnancy. He called the rift "tough love."
They have since reconciled -- and Reno Sandoval said he loves being a grandfather to Melanie, 2.
"I missed out on Melanie's first year," he said. "The big issue was that (Martha) got pregnant at 16."
She eventually found out about the Albuquerque's Teen Parent Residence Program, where she and Melanie have lived for more than 11/2 years. She gets help with child care, parenting and goal-setting for a career.
Lucero lives with his parents, and Martha said Lucero provides what support he can.
Adoption advocate
Archbishop Michael Sheehan holds strong views on the issue of teen parents: He says there shouldn't be any.
The baby's life should be considered first and foremost -- and that's why any teen-ager who gets pregnant should not have an abortion and should not attempt to raise the child, he said.
Instead, Sheehan said, the baby should be given up for adoption.
A teen-ager who brings a baby into the world is being unfair to the soon-to-be grandparents, who often end up raising the child, he said. It's also unfair to the child.
And, Sheehan said, young people should not get married for the sake of the child because the marriage probably would fail.
"Young women should allow a family to adopt that child," Sheehan said. "They can provide more care than a mother by herself. The answer is not abortion or trying to raise the child herself. But adoption."
For example, he said, one of his family members got pregnant as a college student. She gave the baby up for adoption, eventually married and had three children. "God blessed her," he said.
He added that teen-agers should "have self-control" and abstain from being sexually active.
Sheehan said teen pregnancy has been a pressing problem everywhere he's lived.
It all boils down to self-control and morals, he said.
"Abstinence is the answer, not a truckload of condoms and pills," Sheehan said. "Dumping a truckload of condoms at the boys bathroom won't solve the problem.
"The best we can do is to give them good, moral values."
That means, he said, instilling in girls that they don't have to become "sexual objects" to be loved.
"So often, it's the girl that has to suffer," he said. "Then the guy isn't interested."
Abstaining from sex keeps teens from having to face results they aren't ready for, he said.
"Parents need to talk to kids about self-control," he said.
Sheehan said morals have declined because of bad examples: television, music, President Clinton and pedophile priests.
"We live in a world that's highly sexually charged," Sheehan said. "We believe, obviously ... that to have self-control and abstinence from being sexually active is the best thing."
Martha Sandoval agrees that teens are better off waiting to have babies. But she also is confident she can provide a good life for Melanie and herself.
In her daughter, she sees a future that wasn't there before.
"I look at her as a revolution because she's helped me in so many ways to better my life," she said. "And now I can better hers. Not all teen-age mothers turn out bad. I've proven (the naysayers) wrong."
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