AMERICAN IDEAS, Page 12Adolescent Pregnancy PreventionGiving Teenagers a New View of Their Future By involvingadults, Michael Carrera helps young people believe in themselvesBy Melissa Ludtke
Here was a man out of place. A slender man dressed in a stylish
business suit, he sat by himself, night after night, in the
bustling entryway of the Dunlevy Milbank Center in the middle of
Harlem. His narrow face bore a trusting smile that masked a dogged
purpose. He was trying to teach a course on human sexuality for
neighborhood parents, and often nobody came. But he kept showing
up. Michael Carrera, professor and prophet, understood that as a
white man and an outsider he needed the parents' support if he
wanted to come to their community to help their kids. "Involving
parents is a show of respect," he declares. "It says they are
valuable, their kids are valuable, their family is valuable." After
a few months, families knew Carrera wasn't going away and that he
was there to help. A few began to listen and, soon, their kids
listened too.
Carrera holds the Thomas Hunter Chair of Health Sciences at
Hunter College. But it is some 50 blocks uptown, in Harlem
neighborhoods, where nearly 1 out of every 4 babies is born to a
teenage mother, that Carrera's teaching is put to its sternest test
in the Family Life Education and Adolescent Sexuality Program,
which he created. Pregnancy-prevention courses, Carrera argues, are
generally too narrow in focus to succeed. His approach is holistic,
born of a simple premise: Give young people a sense of their own
promise, and they will not be as likely to disrupt their lives with
an early pregnancy.
But this simple premise is difficult to execute. "To move kids
from fatalism to industriousness," says Carrera, "the intervention
needs to be complex and longstanding." After those initial months
of intense scrutiny and understandable suspicion, Carrera managed
to assemble 22 girls and boys, ranging in age from 13 to 16, and
a smaller group of parents for courses on family life and sex
education. "The kids are riddled with mythology about these things.
There is a real need to inform," he says. Before long, the
youngsters were not only learning but also receiving a range of
support services from adults who were willing to make a long-term
commitment. "For too many of these kids, adults have disappeared
on them," says Carrera, who has remained personally involved with
each of the kids and their families during the past five years.
Physicians from a local hospital provide comprehensive health
care. Tutors recruited from the Junior League help with homework,
and employment counselors place the kids in summer jobs. "Many
employers have stereotypes of black urban youth," says Mary Kay
Penn, who manages the Milbank program. "It is very hard to persuade
them to take these kids on, even when we pay the salary." But last
summer Penn placed 75 of the kids in jobs, and Carrera added a
silk-screening program so they could learn to design and sell T
shirts.
Though contraception is available -- prescribed by a doctor
with parental consent -- Carrera knows that access to birth control
is not enough. "When kids are empowered with information and
stimulated by hope for the future, it has a contraceptive effect,"
says Carrera. "Education. Employment. Their own bank accounts. Good
health. Family involvement. Self-esteem. These are also
contraceptives. It's the total fabric that is important." Carrera
also teaches them how to play sports, like squash, that rely on
individual discipline and control. "Whenever you posit a single
solution to a complex problem, you are not as successful as you can
be."
Success in Carrera's program brings a substantial reward. Under
an agreement made with former Hunter College President Donna
Shalala, students who graduate from high school and complete
Carrera's program are guaranteed admission to Hunter. So far, 15
participants, teens and parents, have enrolled; Shavon Glover, a
mother at 15, before she met Carrera, was the first. "I always had
college in the back of my mind, but I didn't think I could do it,"
Glover says. "When I met Mike, everything started lifting up."
Since his initial success at the Milbank Center, Carrera has
expanded his program to include two other community centers in
Harlem, one of which is in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.
Carrera receives financial support from New York City's Childrens
Aid Society and devotes many hours each week to fund raising from
private as well as public sources. The cost for each teenager is
about $1,500 a year, and the paid staff members are all indigenous
to the community. "Most adolescent pregnancy programs are headed
by white female social workers," says Cary Dixon, a 48-year-old
black man who teaches the family-life course to boys at the
Frederick Douglass housing project.
Dixon serves as a crucial role model, particularly for the many
boys who don't have fathers at home. "When I grew up, families were
there to teach kids that there are certain boundaries," he recalls.
"Now there is no discipline in their lives. Kids' lives are like
basketball played without lines." He believes Carrera's approach
holds promise. "By keeping these kids on a clear education track,
by having them understand the importance of delaying pregnancy and
by including parents, Mike is doing what others aren't," he says.
In all, about 225 kids and 75 parents are participating in
Carrera's three Harlem-based programs. Carrera's track record is
impressive. In four years only two girls have become pregnant and,
as far as the counselors can tell from their intimate weekly
individual discussions with the kids, only one boy has fathered a
child. "This is not a value-free program," he explains. "We have
a message that delaying sexual activity is good. We are taking a
stand." This year the Childrens Aid Society is establishing the
Stern National Training Center for Family Life Education in
Manhattan, where Carrera will teach his techniques to others
searching for ways to cope with adolescent pregnancy in their
community.
"The message is that if you expect changes in kids, you have
to be in for the long haul," Carrera warns. "That is necessary to
overcome the myths and go up against the stereotypes that surround
these kids' lives." So far, Carrera has managed against great odds
to outlast all those who said it can't be done. To do it, he had
to learn how to overcome the everyday frustrations that inevitably
accompany adolescent struggles. He calls his technique "patient
endurance."
But Carrera also is energized by memories of his own youthful
struggles and of adults who helped him find his way. His beliefs
in the power of family and of public service are woven from the
fibers of his childhood. Born a half-century ago in the Bronx to
immigrant parents, a house painter and a patternmaker, he found
his role models in an attentive and extended Italian family. "I
found there is strength in family," says Carrera, who was the first
in his family to graduate from college, and ultimately earned a
doctorate from Columbia University. Along the way he taught junior
high students in the Bronx, and there he discovered his calling.
"It was clear to me how poorly these kids were treated," he
recalls. "I saw how responsive they were to being around a caring
adult, how that would get them turned on to other things, such as
learning."
Now that he can, Carrera gratefully gives something back to
kids. "These kids don't often have someone saying they can do
things. Instead there always seem to be barriers put in their way,"
he says. "So we're going to be the ones to say, `We're glad you're
