Hope for a "Pregnant Girl"

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"The painful clarity that I was now instantaneously different—inherently bad. Other. I was one of those girls, eroding the American family and American society and disappointing everyone who ever cared about me. It happened quickly and without question or hesitation—the transformation from good to bad girl, from right to wrong, from destined for greatness to destined for failure."

These powerful words come from Nicole Lynn Lewis, author of Pregnant Girl*, describing how it felt when she—a studious high school senior in the midst of her college applications—and her boyfriend “watched the pink lines surface, light at first and then darker—like watching magic.” In her new book, Ms. Lewis shares her journey from that moment to becoming the founder and CEO of Generation Hope, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that “all student parents have the opportunities to succeed and experience economic mobility.” One part memoir, one part mission statement, and one part treatise on teen pregnancy in the U.S., Ms. Lewis’s book elucidates how teen pregnancy is a symptom—not a cause—of violence, intergenerational poverty, and systemic racism, and seeks to end the stigma attached to teen pregnancy.

Pregnant Girl displays Ms. Lewis’s dual talents as a storyteller and researcher. A 2003 graduate from the College of William & Mary with High Honors in English, she chronicles her life with the deftness of a seasoned novelist, knowing when to immerse the reader in personal details and when to hit them with a quick, almost merciless, punch to the gut. She interweaves these episodes with historical context, statistics, studies, and anecdotes from her Generation Hope students, in order to demonstrate that her story is not unique but also not the stereotype associated with teen pregnancy. My only complaint is that when Ms. Lewis pauses—for example, to explain reproductive coercion or highlight racial bias in the U.S. health care system—she interrupts the momentum of her own story, leaving this reader occasionally frustrated. But those feelings serve as a testament to Ms. Lewis’s ability to craft a compelling narrative.

Supporting student parents in higher education

"People will ask me what kept me motivated through every late night and every sacrifice, and it was Nerissa. I kept going because she needed me to, and now that I was a college graduate, I could give her what I’d promised her in the delivery room the day she was born. This is the same answer I will hear from each of my students. Their children are their motivation."

Ms. Lewis’s story definitely makes you want to do more for student parents. Generation Hope provides several recommendations, including collecting data on student parents, designating a staff position to champion the needs of student parents, and identifying ways to be more inclusive of student parents in campus life. I, too, have written about student-centered interventions for parents, including ways to alleviate parental guilt and to reframe parenthood as a strength and resource, as articulated above by Ms. Lewis.

Perhaps the most important lesson learned and shared by Ms. Lewis is to never lower the bar for student parents because that’s neither what they need nor want. Student parents, in fact, earn higher GPAs than all other student groups; their lack of persistence results from a lack of other needed resources.

As Ms. Lewis writes, “Our expectations for marginalized students are often the bare minimum, prescribing low expectations and precluding them from opportunities that could challenge them or reveal their brilliance. My thesis experience will convince me of the exact opposite—expectations for my students will be high, and my assumption about their potential will be that it is limitless.” So let student parents know you expect the best from them and don’t be surprised when they deliver that and more.

Perceived longevity and sexual behavior

"Rakheim always told me he expected to die young. It was hard for him and his friends to talk about the future beyond the next few days or months.… They didn’t need a study to tell them homicide was, and is, the leading cause of death for Black males under the age of 44. They could feel it in their bones as they sat through the funerals of their lost friends or family members."

This passage about the father of Ms. Lewis’s first child jumped out to me, as it relates to a body of work on how adolescents’ perception of their own longevity predicts myriad life outcomes: educational attainment, income, substance use, suicide, and more. Although psychologists often talk in terms of future orientation, perceived vulnerability, or expectations of early death, what we’re really talking about (much like Ms. Lewis’s organization) is hope. While we expect adolescents to practice safe sex and plan for college, those behaviors don’t make sense in the absence of hope. In fact, research shows that some adolescents take risks not because they discount the future but because they don’t see any future for themselves at all.

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The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health surveyed over 20,000 7th-12th graders in 1994-95, with follow-up surveys in 1996, 2001-02, and 2008. Across waves, respondents were asked, “What are your chances of living to age 35?” with response options of almost no chance, some chance but probably not, a 50/50 chance, a good chance, or almost certain. Bear in mind that practically every youth should respond almost certain because outside of knowingly having a life-threatening disease, the actual risk of dying at these ages is < 1 percent, even among young Black males.

Contrary to the typical view of adolescents believing themselves to be invincible, almost 15 percent of youths thought they had a ≥ 50 percent chance of dying before age 35. Rates were even higher among Hispanic (21 percent), Black (25 percent), and Native American (29 percent) youth, as well as youth living in poverty, those living in unsafe neighborhoods, and those exposed to violence.

Although none of these studies directly predicted teen pregnancy from perceptions of early death, there is much knowledge we can glean. First, adolescents who perceived a ≥ 50 percent chance of dying by age 35 were twice as likely to engage in risky sex (defined as using a condom less than half of the time) and were between 2.5x and 5x more likely to be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Moreover, perceived early death was associated with twice the risk of not finishing high school, with the odds of a woman not finishing increasing fourfold if she experienced a teen pregnancy.

So what’s going on in the minds of youths who think they might be dead in the next 15, 10, or even 5 years? One explanation is that nihilism sets in—why not have sex? Why bother with a condom or other means of birth control? Whatever the consequences may be, they don’t expect to be around to deal with it.

But these sexual behaviors may also be strategic. As Ms. Lewis shares in Pregnant Girl, one of her Generation Hope students told her, “My whole reason for thinking about becoming a parent was due to my environment. I thought I’d be killed, and if I died, I’d have nothing behind my name. I wanted to have a piece of me left behind.” For this young man, being a teen father was not an accident but a choice. In terms of evolutionary biology, in which the purpose of life is to propagate life, being a teen parent under these circumstances is perhaps the only rational choice.

Changing youths’ life expectations

"They will do all of the hard work, staying up late, sometimes working 40 hours a week and then going to school at night, waking up in a homeless shelter and heading to class, or escaping an abusive relationship to graduate magna cum laude. We will walk with them along the way, doing the small things, like greeting them with hugs in the office or reaffirming the agency and expertise they have in their lives, and sometimes we will do the much bigger things. I will love celebrating them."

How do we change a youth’s future if they have no hope of living to see it? The answers are unsurprising yet challenging. School environments, for one, have a strong influence on students’ future orientation. The more stable and nurturing the school, and the more teachers and other students talk about going to college and having careers, the more hopeful students become.

There’s a catch, though—one study found increases in antisocial behavior among youths who had low expectations for the future but attended a school where the norm was positive future expectations. In this case, a student may see attempts to build future goals as disingenuous, leading to externalizing reactions. Such a student may need targeted support to set and meet achievable, short-term goals in order to build momentum toward long-term goals, like college.

Another study examined youths who initially believed they would die before age 35 but later changed their minds. One of the best predictors of this shift toward optimism was a caring connection with an adult who was not a parent or teacher. This finding speaks to the immense importance of mentoring, especially for youth in chaotic environments who may see no hope for a better future. Programs like Generation Hope, Detroit’s Michigan Hispanic Collaborative, Maryland’s CollegeTracks, and Newark’s Cooperman College Scholars offer frameworks for how caring mentors can provide youth with the resilience they need to persevere through college and beyond. Ultimately, the most important thing for any intervention for at-risk youth to convey, at its very core, is hope.

*Full disclosure: I received a complimentary advance copy of the book from Ms. Lewis's publicist.