Underage moms and health education

Romania has one of the highest proportions of teenage mothers in the European Union.

Christine Leșcu, 19.09.2018, 11:51

Becoming a
parent, one of the most important events in a person’s life, should be – and
most of the time is – a moment of true joy. It’s also a decision that brings
along changes for which parents must be prepared. This is not the case,
however, with teenage mothers in Romania, which has one of the highest figures
in this respect. According to EUROSTAT, in 2016, 14% of first-time moms were
under the age of 20. In 2015, also according to EU statistics, more than 350 of
the women who gave birth that year were aged 10 to 14, and another 12,800 were
aged 15 to 19. Behind these figures there are real lives, which are denied a natural
course of development and are often subject to public condemnation. Such cases
of children with children have impressed the Romanian director Ozana Nicolau,
who wrote and directed a play titled Foreplay, based on her own
recollections. Here is Ozana Nicolau:

The core of
this show is extremely personal. It’s actually about my childhood, in the
1990s, somewhere on the outskirts of Bucharest, where I met a lot of teenage moms.
I had school colleagues and neighbours in that situation. The story was most of
the time the same: the girl would get pregnant, would not dare tell her
parents, so only some colleagues and friends knew about it. And I’m speaking of
6th to 8th graders, in 1996-1998. At some point, when the
pregnancy became visible, they would disappear from school or from the
playground. I can only assume that the solution was for them to be sent to the
countryside or to a smaller town. But it was a huge disgrace, it was
unacceptable for a girl aged 13 or 14 to be pregnant and stay in school. It was
inadmissible.

Besides school
drop-out, which blocks women’s access to decent jobs, teenage mothers are also
subject to social stigma. For her play, Ozana Nicolau talked to more than 30
girls that had got pregnant. Some of them told her that their peers believed
they made a mistake. And this is how some of these mothers get to see their own
child as a mistake. Ozana Nicolae:

To them, the
joy of becoming a mom turns into a burden. Being a parent is in any
circumstance a difficult experience, full of challenges. So when this happens
at the age of 14 or 15, when you are not really defined as a person, you cannot
be responsible for yourself, let alone for another human being. So, an inner
conflict emerges, and adding to that is people around you, pointing the finger
at you for making such a big mistake.

Another thing
that the artists working on the Foreplay project found out was that the
teenage mom phenomenon cannot be strictly linked to a precarious economic
situation, because such cases are reported among all social categories. Here is
Ozana Nicolau again:

This is rather
related to our past. Romania still carries the burden of sexual taboos, it is
still very difficult for us to talk about such matters. Sexual education is
scarce in schools, as it is at home. That is the real problem.

Still, as of
2004, the public education system has introduced an optional course titled
Education for Health. The program is available to children from the 1st
to the 12th grade, and the subject matter is taught in schools by
biology teachers or educators, following a special training. One of the organisations
that have provided this type of training is the NGO Youth for Youth. The
course starts with an introduction into hygiene and environmental protection,
and then focuses on reproductive health and family. All these concepts are
taught in keeping with the children’s age, as Adina Manea, the director of the
foundation Youth for Youth told us. In the 2014-2015 school year, 6% of the
total number of school children benefited from the courses provided under the
Education for Health programme. Adina
Manea told us how many schools in Romania chose to teach that optional course:

Data provided
by the Ministry of Education show that, in the 2017-2018 school year, some 3,500
schools registered for that optional. This accounts for 6-7% of the total
number of pupils in the pre-university system. It’s a lot for an optional course,
but not enough if we think of the Romanian students’ needs, irrespective of
their age.

Civil society
militates for a broader access of the population to this type of education, but
not necessarily through school because part of the young women who become
mothers are no longer enrolled in the national education system. Other factor
are at play in this case, such as the early school dropout rate, which is quite
high in Romania. However, universal access to reproductive health is necessary,
according to Adina Manea:

We are talking
about 10% of the total female population. This is quite a lot, because teenage
pregnancy entails other health risks for both mothers and new-borns. During a
school year, full term pregnancy is only reported for 2 girls per school on
average. What is clear is that school helps them complete their education if
they want to. Teenage pregnancy is no longer a stigma, but at the same time the
topic is never discussed. As far as the school colleagues and friends are
concerned, things are different from one case to another. In the cases that our
association is familiar with, the babies were kept and raised by the family.
Given that we work mostly in high schools, we are talking about teenagers who
have the financial means to reach this level of education and who benefit from
the support of their families.

Family support
is extremely important, director Ozana Nicolau agrees:

If they are
lucky enough to be in a family whose members are emotionally balanced, who
understand what the girl is going through and who give her emotional support,
then things get settled in about 2 years. I knew a girl in Vaslui, a mother in
her turn, who finished high school, passed the baccalaureate exam with a very
good grade, went on to university and is getting a scholarship. So anything is
possible, if the family supports the girl and if her partner is also close to
her.

Foreplay has been warmly received by the public.
Parents who had come alone to see the performance later talked about it to
other parents or brought their teenage children to see it. The play will also
be performed in high schools in Bucharest and in schools near big cities.