When Christina Deemer found out she was pregnant the summer before her senior year of high school, she considered dropping out.
"It was hard," said Deemer, "but I stuck it out."
Sitting by the window in a Monroeville Starbucks, Deemer kept one eye on her giggling toddler as she recalled a tough senior year.
She spent the fall semester pregnant, and then she missed eight weeks for maternity leave. Before that year, she had been a gregarious teen, spending weekend nights at parties or bowling with friends. But the pregnancy made her self-conscious and tired, and she found she had less in common with her carefree classmates. She argued frequently with her baby's father, to whom she was briefly married, and she suffered through post-partum depression.
But after giving birth to a healthy baby girl, whom she named Micheala, Deemer graduated on time with Derry Area High School's Class of 2007. This month, the mature, well-spoken 19-year-old graduated from the Sanford-Brown Institute in Monroeville with plans for a career as a medical assistant.
Despite Deemer's success story, the odds are stacked against most teen parents. Having a baby is the leading reason that girls drop out of high school, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. The organization has found that only 40 percent of teenagers who become moms before they turn 18 will ever graduate.
In Westmoreland County, however, pregnant and parenting teenagers are supported by PACT, a program aimed at keeping them in school by providing parenting help and career counseling. PACT, which stands for Pregnant Adolescent Childcare Training, works in high schools and is funded with state grants through the nonprofit Center for Schools and Communities.
For the 2007-08 year, program officials boast of an almost-perfect graduation record -- 45 of 46 high school seniors in the program received their diplomas.
Other areas of Western Pennsylvania where similar programs have been offered have experienced their own successes, though most recorded lower graduation rates than PACT.
In Pittsburgh, the state-funded teen-parenting program had an 84 percent graduation rate, higher than the goal of 75 percent set by the Center for Schools and Communities, said Kathy Short, who manages teen parenting programs for Pittsburgh Public Schools.
"It's phenomenal, it really is," said Short. "Over half our kids went on to college last year."
Statewide, the graduation rate for students in these programs was about 80 percent in 2007, according to the Center for Schools and Communities.
PACT works in 14 of the 17 school districts in Westmoreland County, and more than 90 percent of pregnant or parenting teens in those districts participate, said PACT director Shelly Myers. The program is voluntary, but upon enrolling, students have to sign a contract in which they promise to attend school and maintain a 2.0 grade point average. Students who follow the rules receive small incentives, such as Wal-Mart gift cards. Students who break their contract could be kicked out.
Deemer credits PACT with helping her get through the rough period before and after her daughter's birth.
"I was with all the seniors, and it just felt really weird," Deemer recalled. "I felt really out of place, because I'm the pregnant one and everybody knew it. No one else understands it unless you've been through it."
PACT classes offered a supportive environment and frank information about pregnancy and parenting.
"They pretty much went through everything that I was going to go through," Deemer said. "They said, 'This is going to be bad. It's going to hurt. You're going to have problems with the baby.' I went through a lot of bad after I had her, and they helped me get through it."
An intrusive approach
PACT instructor Mary Collins spends most days shuttling between high schools with a crate of worksheets and a life-size baby doll.
The doll drew stares in the main office of the Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center as Collins arrived one recent afternoon to teach a half-dozen teenage parents about keeping their babies healthy.
Today, Collins was discussing the importance of knowing your baby's temperament.
"The baby's crying," she told the class. "What do you do?"
"Put him on my chest," volunteered one young father.
A girl offered that her son liked to have his ear on her voice box.
Swaddling the baby in a blanket can help, too, Collins said, demonstrating the technique by wrapping the doll tightly in a soft, white cloth. But sometimes the usual tricks don't work, she said.
Exhaustion, Collins said later, is the main reason students give for missing school. But valid as it may be, the excuse gets nowhere in the PACT program.
If a student misses two days of school, a PACT case manager will call to ask why. The third day, a case manager goes to the student's home to solve whatever problem is keeping her out of school.
If a student is having trouble with child care, a case manager helps arrange for subsidized care. If a student can't get to a doctor's appointment or court date, a case manager will drive her there.
Such an intrusive approach is key to a program's efficacy, said Rebecca Maynard, a professor of education and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied programs for pregnant and parenting teens. Programs that are too "warm and fuzzy," she cautioned, sometimes encourage teen mothers to have more babies.
"The hard evidence is that while these programs feel good, they're not that effective," Maynard said.
Regardless of what schools do to help pregnant and parenting teens, the students still face a struggle.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," said Anthony Pugliese, a PACT case manager who counsels teenage fathers. "I had a kid who conceived a baby when he was 12. Guys I've worked with come from single-parent families, foster care. It's here and it's what we've got to deal with."
Well-known teen moms Bristol Palin, daughter of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and Jamie Lynn Spears have been in the news recently. But their stories do not represent reality for most teen moms.
"The way the Palins handled it was not the typical outcome," said Joe Fay, director of the Pennsylvania Coalition to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "Her family is well-to-do, she has the support of her parents, and they decided to get married."
In reality, the life of a teen parent consists of long hours and little sleep, Deemer said.
"Most of the time I work," Deemer said. "That's pretty much as far as my life goes: work, school, baby."
Though she is glad she chose to keep Micheala, who is a happy, blond toddler just beginning to use sentences, Deemer admits, "I wasn't ready."
Larger text
Smaller text
Print this article
E-mail this article
