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RE: foster care and childbirth
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<DIV>The Alan Guttmacher Foundation has excellent research on teen pregnancy.
Their latest one on several counties in California (Monterey is the most
southern of them) goes into great detail on the relatively HIGH proportion of
young women who were in a "relationship" with a young man - not "just dating" -
- before they became pregnant and many of them intentionally became pregnant
without marriage in order to establish a new family apart from the problems of
their birth family. Unfortunately, the basis for the relationship was not
sufficiently stable even in many cases to last until the child was born.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In my cultural background, it is more common than not for Polynesians with
a traditional family orientation NOT to marry until a first child conceived
out of wedlock establishes the woman's fertility. Marriage follows the
pregnancy. In the cases above cited by Guttmacher researchers, the
families do not insure that the marriage actually takes place, nor do they
participate in the selection of the young man by the girl. Usually, he is
an ALTERNATIVE to remaining in her family. She is not experienced enough,
nor is she of sufficiently high value in the anthropological marriage market, to
insure that she gets a high quality mate, and gambles on the pregnancy (which he
often wants to bind her to him even in the absence of marriage) to cement the
relationship. A pregnancy insures, at least in the short run, that no
other young man will want her, even if he offers her no real material or
emotional benefit, or even the promise of stability. The prudish failure
to educate young women not only in the mechanics of sex but the psychology of
human sexuality insures she is without armor to deal with these challenges in a
more "hopeful" way.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think it is safe to assume that the motivations of women who bear
children out of wedlock, too young, and unprepared to support themselves are
pretty much the same, in general, whether they have been in formal foster
care are not. Most of the women in the Guttmacher survey were not forced
to have sex, and entered into unprotected sexual behavior, they say, willingly,
knowing the likely outcome.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>You might look at the Alan Guttmacher web site for the report.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I also recommend the Wally Seccombe book highly. I have presented a
variation of this theme to the UC Santa Barbar Latino Forum on Immigration and
Welfare Reform, and to the Southern Counties Welfare Reasearch Forum at its
quartely meeting in Orange County some years ago.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For underlying strategies basic to this behavior and the evolutionary value
of them, I recommend The Evolution of Human Sexuality, by Professor Don Symons,
of UCSB, my fellow grad student at Berkeley many years ago.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I do not know of research testing my theoretical framework in controlled
studies of children emancipating from foster care. They are in line with
the outcomes reported in the Casey post-foster care report they published
recently, on line at the Annie E. Casey web site. And their children had
the BEST of social services to support them before emancipation. I
think, however, using the kind of extrapolation from similar populations that
demographers conventionally use, that this approach may be more fruitful than
some I have seen in the literature.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>>>> dixondm@missouri.edu 08/26/03 09:01AM
>>><BR></DIV><FONT face="Microsoft Sans Serif" size=2>
<DIV><SPAN class=220395815-26082003><FONT face="Microsoft Sans Serif">I find
your assumptions interesting. I haven't heard the reasons for high teen
pregnancy rates among girls in the foster care system articulated in this way.
Do you have any publications that expound on your ideas and/or any suggestions
for how to question/measure if these are present prior to
pregnancy??</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=220395815-26082003></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=220395815-26082003>
<P><FONT face="Palace Script MT" size=4>Donna Dixon, RN, MS</FONT> <BR><FONT
face=Arial>Center on Adolescent Sexuality, Pregnancy and Parenting</FONT>
<BR><FONT face=Arial>Department of Human Development & Family Studies</FONT>
<BR><FONT face=Arial>University of Missouri</FONT> <BR><FONT
face=Arial><SPAN class=220395815-26082003>314</SPAN> Gentry Hall</FONT>
<BR><FONT face=Arial>Columbia, MO 65211</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial>(573)
882-6687</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial>(573) 884=4878</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial
color=#000000><A
href="mailto:dixondm@missouri.edu";>dixondm@missouri.edu</A></FONT> <BR><FONT
face=Arial color=#000000><A href="http://outreach.missouri.edu/hdfs/mvrm.htm";
target=_blank>http://outreach.missouri.edu/hdfs/mvrm.htm</A></FONT>
</P></SPAN></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT
face=Tahoma>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> Freya Schultz
[mailto:freya@co.santa-barbara.ca.us]<BR><B>Sent:</B> Monday, August 25, 2003
2:13 PM<BR><B>To:</B> Child Maltreatment Researchers<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re:
foster care and childbirth<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>I wonder if people have any research with outcomes differentiated by the
degree of permancy and the length of permant placement (age at last permanent
placement). The issue I would be interested in seeing would be to
distinguish the effects of the PLACEMENT situation the child experienced from
the effects of the birth family situation. In either event, we can
assume, I think, that early child-bearing is associated with:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> 1) a desire to CREATE a family to love and be loved when one has
had less lifelong committed relationship experience as a child (<U>related to
narcissistic injury and emotional developmental delays which have not been
adequately remediated</U>), and /or</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>2) <U>a failure to prepare adequately</U> (among girls in particular)
<U>for lifelong self-sufficiency</U> (school attainment/vocational
preparation) related to inferior educational outcomes often experienced by
children passing through the foster care system. In other words, a form
of wanting somebody else to take care of you and assuming this will happen if
you give birth to a child with one or more men, regardless of whether a stable
relationship with a young man with the MEANS to support a young family
exists.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Just assuming greater and earlier permanent placement would remediate
things BY THEMSELVES, I think, assumes too much effect for this one
parameter.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In much of the U.S., it takes TWO working parents to support even two
children adequately, or a single woman with at least a college education and
work experience and two or fewer children to support. Children without
adequate economic preparation for adulthood will not just automatically
KNOW this and if not prepared explicitly for this life challenge, will not
meet it adequately, or will refuse to meet it (it counters their immediate
family's values). </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This is particularly true for subcultural groups who come from an
extended family model, in which setting up an independent economic household
unit BEFORE commencing child-bearing is not an explicit ( or implicit)
cultural goal - it may even be considered dangerous for extended family
cohesion. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Hence, the failure to do so is higher in some groups than others, for
"cultural" reasons, independent of whether a child has EVER been in foster
care.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The Canadian sociologist Wally Seccombe (in A Millenium of Family
Change) makes this case very convincingly for Western European societies in
history, and by extension, for other family-type preference groups.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Freya Kaniuokalani Schultz (demographer/anthropologist)</DIV>
<DIV>and person of mixed race (ethnic Hawaiian, etc. - for whom these
conflicts remain a salient cultural issue)<BR><BR>>>>
jadynne@tpg.com.au 08/24/03 04:21PM >>> <BR>Hello Mark, <BR><BR>It
sounds like you're doing some excellent and interesting work. Similarly, I
<BR>presently am examining various life outcomes for people 18-30 who have
left the <BR>care system within Australia. Loosely speaking, the majority of
people who have <BR>had children have done so early, oftentimes whilst still
in care, or just after <BR>leaving care, with the age range between about 15
and 23. Certainly there are <BR>some people in my participant group who have
had children at older ages, but the <BR>majority if they have had children
have had them quite young. <BR><BR>I'm finishing off sampling at the moment,
but can send you through some findings <BR>when I get that together.
<BR><BR>Best of luck with your research. <BR><BR>Jadynne Harvey <BR><BR>"Mark
F. Schmitz" wrote: <BR><BR>> Hello all, <BR>> <BR>> I'm working on
some analyses that look at various adulthood outcomes of <BR>> foster care.
Right now, I'm looking at the rate of childbirth for young <BR>> adults
(21-30 years old) who were raised in the foster care system at some <BR>>
time in their childhood or adolescence. Does anybody know of any research
<BR>> that has examined this issue? <BR>> <BR>> Thanks, <BR>> Mark
Schmitz <BR>> <BR>> *********************************************
<BR>> Mark F. Schmitz, Ph.D. <BR>> School of Social Work <BR>>
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey <BR>> 536 George Street
<BR>> New Brunswick, NJ 08901 <BR>> <BR>> email: <U><A
href="mailto:mschmitz@rci.rutgers.edu";>mschmitz@rci.rutgers.edu</A> <BR>>
phone: (732) 932-3550 <BR>> fax: (732) 932-8181 <BR>> <BR>> NOTICE:
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</A><BR><BR>-- <BR>Jadynne Harvey <BR><A href="http://Ph.D. ">Ph.D.
</A>Candidate <BR>Department of Psychology <BR>ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY SA 5005
<BR>AUSTRALIA
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