Customer Reviews

When Children Want Children: THE URBAN CRISIS OF TEENAGE CHILDBEARING

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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.

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.