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Latinos re-examine pregnancy in teens
Limiting births contrary concept for immigrants

By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/12/05
Carolina Darbisi has a formidable task: getting Latin American immigrants to talk to their kids about sex. But she has found one statistic weighty enough to smash cultural taboos against discussing the subject.

Of every 10 Latinas in Georgia, she tells parents, six get pregnant before turning 20, according to the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention.

That gets their attention. "I say, 'How many daughters do you have?' " said Darbisi, who visits parents in schools and apartment complexes in Gainesville for the nonprofit group, which is known as G-CAPP. "They say, 'Oh yeah. So my daughters are [included] in that number.' "

Newcomers from Mexico and other parts of Latin America have made Georgia home to one of the nation's fastest-growing Latino populations over the past decade. Some have arrived from villages that place a high value on motherhood, even at a young age. Others, many in the United States illegally, find themselves in difficult circumstances far from support networks back home. Alarmed Latino activists say the result is something that can hamstring those families in America: a soaring teen pregnancy rate.

The pregnancy rate for Hispanics ages 15-19 leaped 58 percent between 1994 and 2003 in Georgia, even as the figure for both white teens and black teens fell more than 32 percent, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Human Resources. The pregnancy rate for Latinas in Georgia was second only to that in North Carolina in 2000, and is now about double the national average for the ethnic group.

The forces driving the increase are as diverse as the Latino community itself. Some immigrant parents work late, leaving their children unsupervised in the after-school hours. Some marry young. Many of the teens are Roman Catholic and less likely to use contraception. And a large portion of the newcomers are from rural Mexico, where young women often are encouraged to start families.

For decades the Mexican government urged women to have lots of children, who could help settle the sparsely populated desert region of northern Mexico, said Greg Bautista, a former G-CAPP worker who is now outreach Manager for AID Gwinnett, an HIV/AIDS service organization.

"We're combating over 100 years of ? what is normal and appropriate for a family to look like in Mexico," Bautista told those attending G-CAPP's 10th annual meeting last month in Atlanta.

Between two cultures

Teenage mothers in the United States, married or unmarried, face greater hurdles to improving their education and finding successful jobs, advocates against teen pregnancy say.

Families settling into Georgia from all over Latin America often get stuck between two cultures, and early pregnancies result, said Maritza Pichón, a Colombia native and executive director of the Latin American Association in Atlanta.

"What has been a support system or safety net in the countries where they come from â€â€