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Experts: Pregnant teens are often in denial

BY JOHN HILDEBRAND | john.hildebrand@newsday.com

September 2, 2008

When a teen gets pregnant, her first reaction is likely to be, "How could this happen to me?"

While this might seem surprising, youth counselors on Long Island say they hear the same shocked expressions again and again - and for reasons that are perfectly understandable.

Teenage girls, they say, often cannot admit to themselves that they might engage in premarital sex and might need to safeguard themselves against pregnancy, especially if they come from families that disapprove of such behavior. And teenage pregnancy can occur in the most prominent of families, as underlined by yesterday's announcement that the 17-year-old unmarried daughter of John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is pregnant.

"It's the kind of mentality that this can't happen to me," said Athena Jones, a former youth worker with the Patchogue-based Suffolk Network on Adolescent Pregnancy, a regional counseling service. "It doesn't matter what your economic status is or what your family background is - kids are all the same."

For this reason, Jones and others say that parents need to talk to their children about sex and related subjects such as birth control - and often enough that these topics become an accepted part of family conversations. Parents who themselves feel uncomfortable with the subject can find reliable advice on the Internet.

One source is "Pregnancy in Adolescence: Information for Parents and Educators," a paper prepared for the National Association of School Psychologists. It can be found on the association's Web site at nasponline.org/families, along with a list of other resources.

Along with shock, pregnant teens may feel an immediate need to hide their condition from family and friends, to try to avoid embarrassment or condemnation. This, counselors say, is a grave mistake, because teens in the early stages of pregnancy need help to obtain medical care, and possibly legal advice as well.

"The most important thing we try to do is get the child to tell the parent or guardian," said Scott Andrews, principal of Amityville Memorial High School and a former guidance counselor at Jericho High School. "They need to find someone they can trust."

TEEN PREGNANCY

1997 2006

Total live births on LI 36,862 34,298

Total births to teenagers 1,491 1,535

Total births to unwed teenagers 1,286 1,397