When Children Want Children: THE URBAN CRISIS OF TEENAGE CHILDBEARING [Paperback]

Leon Dash (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Washington Post reporter Dash moved into the ghetto community of Washington Highlands, his behind-the-scenes viewpoint resulted in an award-winning report on adolescent childbearing, a problem of shocking dimensions. As he talked to teenage parents, many of his preconceptions about the high incidence of pregnancy among poor, black urban youth were proved wrong. What became depressingly clear is that for these youngsters, "a baby is a tangible achievement in an otherwise dreary and empty future," a rite of passage with historical antecedents. In exploring why so many black teenagers are caught up in the syndrome and its devastating consequences, Dash became more than a working reporter. At times confidant and friend, he has written a sociological report that reaches to the roots of early childbearing patterns.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Growing out of a fine series that reporter Dash did for the Washington Post in 1986, this book focuses on young black parents in a Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Dash's first-hand observations and sustained interviewing over a 17-month period led to his understanding that the pregnancies did not just "happen." Rather, these young adolescents consciously conceived children, for social status, for self-realization, and, Dash concludes, for a host of other complex, underlying reasons. An engrossing work about the nature of a pattern that extends beyond the particular individuals whose hopes and feelings Dash so vividly portrays. For professionals, academics, and lay readers. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; 1 edition (May 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252071239
• ISBN-13: 978-0252071232
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,316,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Why Do I Want To Read About Dash's Experience In The Hood?, July 14, 2010

By 

reenum (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Children Want Children: THE URBAN CRISIS OF TEENAGE CHILDBEARING (Paperback)

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.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth About Black Illegitimacy Finally Revealed, December 31, 2006

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Children Want Children: THE URBAN CRISIS OF TEENAGE CHILDBEARING (Paperback)

In this investigative journalism gem, award winning Washington Post reporter, Leon Dash, primarily on the advice of Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame), re-interviewed his subjects not once or twice, or even three times, but at least six times. As Woodward had so sagely suggested, after the sixth interview, the story of the teenage mothers in the Washington Highlands ghetto, where Dash lived for over a year, not only began to change but did so drastically.

After three interviews, Dash was ready to go to print without realizing he had been thoroughly "conned" by these sexually savvy teenage mothers, who had used their (and society's) favorite cover stories as their primary defense. They said that they had become pregnant because "they lacked knowledge about birth control methods;" or because it "was what their boyfriends wanted them to do;" or that "they had sex only because they feared they would lose their boyfriends if they refused, and thus became pregnant out of ignorance, etc."

However, after the sixth interview, all of the cover stories began to give way to the true motives behind these scripted pregnancies carefully engineered by very sex savvy teenagers.

By the sixth interview, to a woman, Dash's subjects, began to admit that they had all lied about the true reasons for their pregnancies, and said that the real reasons they had become pregnant were because: (1) They had become bored with, and felt left out of life and needed someone to love them unconditionally. (2) They felt they were losing control over their boyfriends because they saw themselves getting fat, ugly, and thus sexually unattractive, and having a baby was a sure way of better controlling their men. (3) Having a baby solved a host of problems with their parents, like gaining their respect as full adults. And finally (4); that with a baby, they could "get on welfare" killing the last two birds with one stone: With a monthly welfare check, they would have the money to control their boyfriends and declare their independence from their parents at the same time.

In today's social environment where the national conversation about gender issues has gone directly from complete "male chauvinism" to "complete feminine fascism," in one stroke, without "passing Go to collect $200," and with little or no honesty or light being shed on either side in the process, Dash's expose is a breathe of fresh air. It sheds a much-needed spotlight on one of the dark, dark crevices of the black race and the black social condition: why there is so much teenage illegitimacy. He corrects the record (that illegitimacy is primarily a problem of over-sexed black men) and at the same time "gores" one of America's favorite sacred cows "the motives for so much teenage pregnancy and so much single motherhood."

It is a fiercely honest book that although it has won several book awards, is still very much underrated. Five Stars.