When Children Want Children: THE URBAN CRISIS OF TEENAGE CHILDBEARING

by Leon Dash

 
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Washington Post reporter Leon Dash spent a year living in one of the poorest ghettos in Washington, D.C., and a total of seventeen months conducting interviews examining the causes and effects of the ever-lowering age of teenage parents among poor black youths.
Dash had expected to find inadequate sex education and lack of birth control to be the root cause of the growing trend toward early motherhood, but his conversations with the mothers themselves revealed the truth to be more complex.
A riveting account of the human stories behind the statistics, When Children Want Children allows readers to hear the voices of young adults struggling with poverty and parenthood and gets to the heart of teenage parents’ cultural values and motivations.
 

270 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Ankita Tejwani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dash has the answer.

By: Ankita Tejwani

When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of teenage childbearing by: Leon Dash

Teenage Pregnancy is a crisis going on in today’s modern world. There are many questions surrounding it. In this book, When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of teenage childbearing, Leon Dash a journalist for the Washington Post, addresses many of the questions and dilemmas.

Throughout this book, especially in the beginning Leon Dash shares some of his life history and how he thought of the idea for this story. This helps us understand not only the touching stories of the girls that he shares, but his deep connection to them. We don’t realize it at first, but he makes small connections with the stories of those girls to himself and his personal life; this gives us a true picture. As he empathizes with the girls he interviewed, it makes it easier for the girls to shares their stories and details.

The girls that Leon Dash interviewed were either teenagers who were pregnant, or sometimes he also interviewed two generations who had experienced teenage pregnancy. He also interviewed the girl’s parents, friends, any other witnesses, and in some cases the boyfriend as well. This helps us understand all points of view. All the stories of the many girls he shares capture your heart. It makes you realize that this dilemma is not how it looks on the outside. While few of the girls didn’t want to get pregnant, but were forced to, most of the girls had got pregnant out of their free will.

Leon Dash uses the stories that he retells, to make us realize for ourselves, the answers to the questions the book poses. Dash spent a year in a part of Washington, where teenage pregnancy was common, to get the inside scoop on this. He didn’t just go to that area to conduct interviews, but rented an apartment and lived there for a whole year. He went through many long, extensive interviews- to hear the experiences and stories. Most people believe that the girls were not aware of birth control or they were being manipulated by their boyfriends. It soon becomes clear after listening to the girls that is not the case. All of them were aware of birth control methods and not under the influence of their boyfriends.

Though this book was focused on teenage pregnancies it also shows how we all can relate to each other in ways never thought of before. There are many things that influence, and link to teenage child bearing such as poverty, lacks of education, and lack of family. Dash shows this in all of the girl’s stories he writes about, because he shows those linkages as well. For example, in one girl’s story- the only reason she wanted a child is because she wanted someone to love. In another, a girl living in poverty, decided to have a child- so she could try and give the child the best, more than she had.

Dash brings up many things that are interrelated to teenage pregnancies and are in fact equally surprising. One of them is the factor of children raising themselves. He addresses these issues and issue of teenage sex, instead of avoiding them like many other books about teenage pregnancies.

There is a famous quote, by Nora Ephron; she says that “If [teenage pregnancies:] were a book they would cut out the last two chapters.” Usually they do, but in this book they do keep the last two chapters- and Leon Dash explains to all of us, from this outstanding book, start to finish- the true reasons which lead to teenage childbearing.

[Muneer Uddin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very unlike Rosa Lee, in that this book reads like an account of Dash's experiences rather than a telling of the young women's stories. He did well abandoning this approach in Rosa Lee.

[Jacqueline Barba · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good but a little boring at times

[Jennifer Abbott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for JOUR 482 with Leon Dash himself and it is a really great book! I learned so much about a topic I never thought to learn about. Very educational and eye opening.

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

An insightful piece of work on the history, intentions, and mind of the urban African American adolescent mothers in the mid 1980's. Though repetitive in some places, I found this to be a wonderful read. Quite interesting are some of the things uncovered in detail.

We need to encourage our youth to continue their education. Parenthood is not a game of dress up or house, it's real and it hurts and some nights it will kick you where it hurts the most. Children are not ready for that. Rather than focusing on sexual education we should bring the education of living on ones own to the forefront. Teach them responsibility, bills don't pay themselves. Before having "the talk" (or honestly just ignoring it as long as possible so that you don't have to have it with your child...) we should be talking to them about how to be what it is they want to be when they grow up.

That is all.

[Timothy]

This was an enlightening book, which helped illustrate the single parent issue in black America.