July 16, 2001

Maria Giron was 14 when she got pregnant and dropped out of school.

"I was throwing up every day, so I took a home pregnancy test," said Giron, 18.

The test turned out positive, so she decided to tell her mother. When the doctor came back with the results confirming Giron's fear, her mother, a teen mom herself years before, started to cry.

"It gets easier as he gets older," Giron said. Her son, Victor Lindo, will be 3 years old in August.

Giron never married her son's father and still lives with her parents. She recently graduated from high school and will begin a new job at Wal-Mart. Life is beginning to take a turn for the better.

But becoming a mom in her teen-age years changed Giron's life: After the birth of her son, she didn't have the money to spend on new shoes and clothes for herself like most teen-aged girls. Before, running to Modesto on a moment's notice with her friends to hang out in the mall didn't mean first finding a sitter. And there are the little daily things Giron says motherhood took away - sleeping late in the morning and taking time to put on her make-up before school.

"I think if I could have turned everything around, I would have waited," she said. Giron loves her son and is thankful of the support her mother and father have given her. Sometimes she thinks to herself that life would have been a lot different if she hadn't gotten pregnant so soon.

In the past 10 years, teen births have been on a steady decline in Stanislaus County and California at about equal rates. Still, the Stanislaus County Health Services Agency recorded 114 teen births in Turlock last year and 1,008 countywide.

"Teenage pregnancy is so, so complicated," said Jan Husman of the county Public Health Department. Husman oversees three county programs that help teens be successful parents to their babies.

One common story Husman sees with teen-age moms is the difficulty breaking the generational cycle of teen-age pregnancy from mother to daughter. For a girl to end that cycle is like telling their mother or aunt that they are better than them, Husman explained.

Giron's mother, Rachel Giron, said she talked with her daughter about not making the same mistake she did in her teens - but it happened anyway.

"I support her because I did it, and if you want to make it, you can do it," Rachel Giron said. Rachel explained that she helps her daughter in many different ways. Most importantly she encourages her to set goals so her daughter doesn't fall into the stereotype of a teen mom who sits at home collecting welfare and watching TV all day.

Rachel Giron has noticed her daughter turn into a responsible mother, a considerable change from when she told her she might be pregnant.

One of four children, Maria Giron says her pregnancy is due to her lifestyle of partying and the belief that it would never happen to her.

She remembers a sexual education class in junior high school when the teacher assigned each student to take home a simulated baby for one week. Giron and her friends just laughed and joked, not taking the assignment seriously when the baby would cry. "I never in my mind would ever think it would relate to me - ever," she said.

Maria Giron tries to tell her young friends the entire picture of motherhood when they comment on how cute her son is and say they want a baby of their own: "My advice to them is wait until you have a home, a car, and you have already graduated because after you have a kid, it's not about yourself anymore," says Giron.

Another problem in the home that leads to teen-age pregnancy is abandonment, according to Husman. In homes with one parent, or where parents make their children secondary to drug or alcohol abuse, having a child of their own seems like a security blanket.

"A lot of times having a baby is a conscious choice, and for some of them it actually centers their lives, gives them a purpose," Husman said. A baby often brings with it an urge to be more accountable, leading them to think, "Oh, I have a baby - now I have to be responsible" Husman explained.

Nicole Coleman, 18, didn't change her lifestyle that led to pregnancy until the birth of her second child last year.

"With my first child I really wasn't calmed down. I was leaving him with my mom and still going out. It didn't phase me at first. I think that after I had my daughter, that's when it hit home hard", said Coleman.

Coleman, who lived much of her life in Turlock, was a 15-year-old freshman in Oakdale when she became pregnant.

Coleman's father died from drug use last year, and she began taking drugs and alcohol in the seventh grade. She's sober now and says she is a good parent to her 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.

She learned that her life was being torn in two directions between parenting and maintaining her partying and drug use. "Eventually I would have had my kids taken away from me if I kept doing that and doing that," Coleman said.

Scott Smith is a reporter at the Turlock Journal. His e-mail address is scotts@turlockjournal.com

Reprinted by permission of the Turlock Journal.