U.S. pays states cutting
unwed-mom births
BY ELSA C. ARNETT
WASHINGTON, DC - If you're a single woman, your state government has this word of advice: Don't get pregnant. And if you do, get married. Fast.
What you do could determine whether your state cashes in on a $20 million jackpot.
Frustrated by a 50-year explosion in the rate of out-of-wedlock births, Washington is trying to motivate state governments to tackle a problem that traditionally has been left to relatives and clergy.
Last year's welfare law dangles a $100 million bonus to be shared among the five states that show the largest decline in births to unmarried mothers by 1999, without an increase in abortions.
Everything from preaching abstinence to providing birth control will be put to use.
In San Antonio, Jeffrey Hons, a community educator at Planned Parenthood, said the tactics will range from dispelling myths like ``you won't get pregnant if you drink a lot of vinegar, or if you have sex in salty ocean water,'' to giving young people a convincing reason to put off sex and pregnancy until they finish school and get good jobs.
But while there's widespread agreement on the importance of the mission, the federal government is struggling to figure out how to measure the states' success. Moreover, no one is sure that the states will be able to devise effective ways to reverse a broad social trend.
And some fear that in the states' zeal to cash in, they may cut off assistance checks to single mothers.
``There are a couple of keys to doing this, but it's not going to be easy. We've been working on this problem for two decades with virtually no success,'' said Susan Philliber, senior partner at Philliber Research Associates, an Accord, N.Y.-based organization that studies social programs.
Philliber said states must target their help to those who need it most -- such as disadvantaged teens -- rather than spreading their resources thin on everyone. And, she said, states have to accept that they won't see results quickly.
Realizing how difficult the task will be, many states are setting modest goals. Arizona, for example, wants to cut out-of-wedlock births to 37.5 percent of all births by 2005, from 38.2 percent in 1995. Florida wants to reduce the rate to 32.13 percent in 2005 from 35.76 percent in 1995.
While some states already had programs to reduce out-of-wedlock births, the $20 million jackpot is spurring states to tackle the problem more aggressively.
The fact that state governments are grappling with this issue at all is a sign of how much public attitudes about single-parent families have changed.
Five years ago, Vice President Dan Quayle was ridiculed by some for criticizing the television character Murphy Brown's decision to have a child out of wedlock.
Now, out-of-wedlock births are under attack because studies have shown that children born to single-parent households have higher high school dropout rates, lower incomes, and higher rates of crime, mental illness and suicide.
The percentage of out-of-wedlock births nationwide increased from 5.3 percent in 1960 to about 30 percent today. Nearly 90 percent of these births are to women age 18 and older.
``Illegitimacy is the fundamental underlying factor that ost of the other problems we have in society,'' said Robert Rector, senior policy analyst for welfare issues at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who helped to draft the provision in the welfare bill.
Federal officials are bracing for a bureaucratic headache in determining the winners of the bonus because the statistics are not centrally collected. Many states record information on such things as abortion differently and with varying degrees of accuracy.
Another problem is figuring out exactly what a state means by the term ``out-of-wedlock birth.'' In most states, it means that the mother is not married, but in other states, infants are registered as an out-of-wedlock birth if the mother and father don't have the same last name.
``It's much more complicated than it looks at first blush, and I don't think whoever put this together had any idea about how difficult it will be to track this data,'' said Pat Donovan, senior associate for law and public policy at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research group that focuses on reproductive issues.
Congressional sources working on the details of the legislation said they were trying to come up a uniform measurement, but they concede that they're still months away from issuing the final rules.
The first $100 million payout will be in 1999, and $100 million is expected to be distributed in each of the following three years. There are no restrictions on how the state can spend the money.
Aside from the logistical hurdles, there are sensitive religious and personal issues involved as states determine if they will reduce out-of-wedlock births by promoting abstinence, or by promoting the use of birth control, or a combination of the two.
Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for the conservative Family Research Council, says proper sex education ``involves discussion of responsibility, context, consequences, and how to say no.'' She said that focusing solely on birth control ``says sex itself is insignificant, only contraceptives are important.''
But others say that just calling for abstinence is unrealistic. And while they agree that more education about sex and contraceptives is needed, they argue the states must also address the underlying reasons why teens and women are having children out of wedlock, such as low self-esteem, a lack of hope and a sense that they have no control over their lives.
``The very best contraception for a person is a hopeful, positive future,'' said Hons of Planned Parenthood in San Antonio.
For example, Hons works with many youths in western San Antonio, one of the 10 poorest neighborhoods in the country, where the teens don't delay sex or bother with birth control because, ``they have such a bleak existence and they don't think it's going to get any better, so they don't see that there's anything to wait for.''
Acknowledging the complexity of the problem, most states intend to attack the issue through a combination of ways.
Wisconsin is experimenting with a ``Bridefare'' program that lets a woman on welfare live with a man without losing any benefits. While this program won't reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births in the short run, officials think it will have long-term benefits.
``This program enables us not to penalize intact families. It's a reaffirmation of two-parent families wherever possible,'' said David Blaska, a spokesman at Wisconsin's Department of Workforce Development.
Wisconsin is also reducing public assistance if a woman on welfare has a second child, and it is cutting off assistance for all subsequent children.
Other states are focusing on preventing teen pregnancies and targeting women who have unplanned pregnancies, because these women often have low incomes, and the unexpected pregnancy can throw their lives and their future into chaos.
They expect to have little, if any, influence with women who make a conscious decision to have a child out of wedlock, such as lesbians or single career women who choose to have a child because they feel they are nearly past their childbearing years.
Florida is creating a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Community Initiative that will beef up existing programs and work with schools and community groups to promote abstinence and to increase the availability of family planning information.
Kentucky will hold a statewide summit on teen pregnancy and pursue a statewide media campaign to promote abstinence.
Cary Willis, a spokesman at Kentucky's Cabinet for Families and Children, said,``Everyone knows children do better when they have both parents together, so anything we can do to reduce out-of-wedlock births, we will do.''