Teen mom Joreena Horris turned to the streets for love because she wasn’t getting love at home. She joined a gang and eventually became pregnant.
“My mother didn’t really guide me … I looked for love and support on the streets,” said the 19-year-old from North Minneapolis. “I tried to fill my life with men, and then I wanted something to love and hold on to so I thought a baby was the best thing.”
Asked directly if she sees a connection between teen pregnancy and violence, the mother of three said no, but when she started talking about her past it became clear that violence had played a big part in her life.
Joreena Horris
19-year-old mother of three children
The father of Horris’ two-year-old daughter was murdered, and so was her brother. Both deaths were gang-related, she said.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily violence” that causes teen pregnancy, Horris said. “I think it’s the environment … like if you grow up in poverty or if you have a teen mother, it’s like a cycle. That’s what you know. That’s what you feel you deserve, so the cycle continues.”
Brigid Riley, executive director of the Minnesota Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and Parenting (MOAPPP), said there is a correlation between teen pregnancy and violence.
Children who experience or witness violence have a greater chance of being involved with a teen pregnancy, said Riley. (See sidebar)
Tanisha Finley, a violence prevention specialist for Broadway High School in North Minneapolis, an alternative school for pregnant and parenting teens, agrees.
Finley said there is a connection between teen pregnancy and violence. Many young mothers come from dysfunctional or single-parent families that sometimes don’t provide a lot of support to the mother, she said.
“Because the single mother is out trying to provide for her family … a lot of times she’ll have one or two jobs, full-time,” Finley said. “So if there’s no supervision at home throughout the day and in the evening, that pretty much allows your child to find some other form of entertainment.”
Some teen parents get frustrated with children when they misbehave and don’t have the patience to deal with the child appropriately.
“When they cry and you can’t calm them down, some people do (hit their child),” said Kayleen Sweeter, a 14-year-old mother. “I’m one of the parents who don’t. I’ll never raise my hand to my child.”
According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 50 to 60 percent of teens who get pregnant were abused physically or sexually as children.
Many teen parents grew up in homes where there was domestic abuse, said Nancy Kristensen, a parent educator at Broadway High. “I mean large numbers,” she said.
“The moms or dads in the home might have had an addiction to a chemical,” she said. “It could be alcohol, and it could be crack, it could be meth, it could be any chemical that impairs their ability to be a good parent.”
Fifteen-year-old Angela Bixler’s parents were addicted to crack.
“I didn’t have a mom growing up,” she said. “So that’s probably partially why I went to guys to look for love … I didn’t have nobody else. (My parents) didn’t care.”
Creating healthy teenage parents
There are a number of efforts in the Twin Cities aimed at breaking the pattern of teen pregnancy.
Broadway High School provides teen mothers with programs that get them ready for their life as a mother by being a hub of social services, Finley said. Under one roof, Broadway offers chemical dependency assessment, high school and college classes, child care, employment services, social services, parenting classes and anger management classes.
At Broadway High, teachers and staff teach mediation skills for handling disagreements. And they give girls chances to lead in positive ways by helping them organize pep rallies, prom and community service day, Finley said.
Lots of focus has been on moms but there aren’t enough programs that encourage dads to play a part in children’s lives, Kristensen said.
“Without a powerful male figure in their life, a lot of times the allure of gang is quite exciting,” she said.
At 19, Horris has never been to prom, because she is a young teen mother who had to take care of her three children. “I want them to go to school dances and be normal,” she said. “I want to preserve their innocence for as long as possible.”
Programs can help teens, but Horris learned she has to help herself too. One day, Horris didn’t have any food to feed her daughter, she said. She was afraid she would have to turn back to the streets for help again, but she didn’t want to depend on the streets anymore.
Her goal now is to break what she calls the “generational curse” of teenage motherhood.
“Not necessarily that I’m a bad person, but I want them to be better than me,” Horris said of her children. “I want them to know that they deserve better cause I didn’t know that and that they don’t have to have a baby to be loved or love somebody.”
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