The Crittenton Blog

The National Crittenton Foundation in Youth Today

2008-11-13T04:17:00Z

Jeannette Pai-Espinosa, President of The National Crittenton Foundation, argues that it's time to really help pregnant and parenting youth, and to give them the tools they need to succeed, in November's Youth Today.

Helping young mothers make their own decisions

2008-10-03T04:53:00Z

Even in the best of circumstances, parenthood is the toughest job around. Now imagine that you are a teenager who has spent most of her life in foster care, and suddenly you find out you are pregnant. Without the experience of growing up in a stable, secure home, how will you know how to be a good parent?

By age nineteen, 32 percent of young women in care report having at least one child, as compared to 12 percent of their peers not in care. (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Fostering Hope: Preventing Teen Pregnancy Among Foster Care Youth, 2006).

And yet services to support young mothers in care and their children are scarce, and at the most basic level, young mothers in care do not often know what their rights are with respect to the custody and placement of their children. To address this gap in information, we have created “Rights and Resources” for pregnant and parenting young women in foster care.

Rights and Resources takes the form of a physical pocket-sized handbook that focuses on national information and state-specific information on our website. An electronic version of the printed handbook is also available.

We hope to get Rights and Resources into the hands of as many young women in foster care across the country as possible.

Initial distribution of the handbook will be through the 22 members of the Crittenton family of agencies, located across the U.S. Many of these agencies serve pregnant and parenting girls and young women who are or have been in foster care, juvenile justice or in another systems of care.

The handbook and online state information are designed to empower girls and young women by providing information about custody and placement rights due under federal and state laws. Girls and young women in foster care want and need to understand their rights and have access to resources in order to make an informed decision about their lives and the well-being of their children.

Our stories

2008-08-06T17:57:00Z

For our 125th anniversary, we produced a video that included stories about Crittenton clients. These stories can be viewed on YouTube right here.

No fairy tale

2008-07-15T19:37:00Z

In last year’s sleeper hit movie “Juno,” just out in video stores, the teenage and pregnant heroine escapes her fate relatively unscathed. Her parents are understanding and supportive; she decides that she doesn’t want her boyfriend’s support. Facing relatively little judgment from her community, she returns to school and gives up her baby right after birth, with fairly little grief. In the end, she’s back dating the baby’s father and the world looks bright. Cue the lights.

I had just one thought after seeing Juno: nice fairy tale.

Counter to the images in the movie the reactions to the alleged pregnancy pact in Gloucester, MA show us that social attitudes have not changed nearly as much as Juno depicts. Moral judgments about teen pregnancy focus on the young mother. While the blatant underlying “boys will be boys” and “sowing wild oats” attitude is made clear by the absence of vocal criticism about the young men who are the fathers. Certainly, we want them to stick around and be good fathers, but the responsibility for getting pregnant always seems to rest on the shoulders of young women. A sad but true and a clear indication that sexism is alive and well.

Across the country right now many teenagers are pregnant or parenting young children. For many young women, pregnancy is a symptom of deeply ingrained issues and trauma that mask root causes like poverty, racism and sexism.

Many have experienced serious issues in their lives before they became pregnant–sexual, physical, emotional abuse; neglect; substance abuse; domestic violence. Many are themselves children of teen mothers and they face additional serious issues once they become pregnant. Most are abandoned bythe fathers of their babies, boyfriends, partners and family, and contrary tothe depiction in Juno, many of them choose to parent their own children.

Those who seek an adoptive family for their child struggle with the decision before, during and after, and they do not find adoptive parents in the “Penny Saver.”

Despite the barriers they face, many young mothers and their children have healthy relationships, strong bonds and go on to succeed and excel personally and professionally. In many cases, mothers and children remain together, and for others adoption is the right choice for both.

Many things have changed since the days when young women were hidden away (though in many places it’s still necessary). In the past, adoption was a decision often made by the young mother’s family or social service agencies, often against her will. For most of our history a hallmark of Crittenton agencies was to keep mothers and their children together, even if it went against the social norms of the time. This being said, we do recognize that there was a period of time during which Crittenton agencies, like many others, reacted to local and national values, expectations and pressure, resulting in the separation of too many mothers and children through “forced” adoptions.

Today we know that no matter what decision a pregnant young mother makes it must be her own, even if the result of her decision does not include a Hollywood ending.

In recognition of the efforts of parents, children and family members searching for each other, I’m proud to report that The National Crittenton Foundation has launched “Crittenton Connections” on our website. We hope that the ability to post information or search the database is of help to the many parents and children who were once connected to the Crittenton family of agencies and who continue to search for each other.

Jeannette Pai-Espinosa, President–The National Crittenton Foundation