Sunrise Price, 19, said he regrets ignoring his mother`s lectures about practicing safe sex.
Now, the Tilden High School student has a 1-year-old daughter, Paris, whom he will have to feed, clothe and educate for the next 17 years or so.
”At the time, I didn`t realize I had to take care of this baby until she`s 18,” he said. ”That`s the scariest part about being a teen parent. I wish I would have listened to my mother.”
The vision of a teenage boy discussing fatherhood may seem jarring in a society that has incorporated ”teenage mother” in its lexicon but rarely considers the teenage father.
Only recently have schools and agencies begun to offer guidance to the ever-growing population of teenage fathers, and those programs are scarce at best.
Price is a schoolmate of 15-year-old Dwayne Loyde, whose case recently brought the subject into the public consciousness with painful force.
The Tilden freshman was charged with first-degree murder last month in the beating death of his 7-week-old daughter, Taylor Briana Huggins. The baby`s snowsuit-clad body was left in a portable carriage on his girlfriend`s front porch. He was arrested at school Nov. 24 and was being held on $1 million bond.
Officials said Loyde told the Cook County state`s attorney`s office that he accidentally rolled over on the infant during the night, that her crying later made him wake him up in a bad mood and that he spanked her on the back. According to authorities, he also said in a written statement that he cleaned her too hard with a towel while changing her diaper.
The Cook County medical examiner`s office said the baby was a victim of a severe beating. Police have said there also was evidence of sexual abuse.
Price said he was shocked to learn that his schoolmate had been accused of killing his child.
”Obviously, the maturity was not there,” Price said. ”When you`re 15, 16, 17 or 18, you don`t know nothing.”
Counselors and parents of teenagers said the strains of taking care of an infant can be mind-boggling to youths who still may think of themselves as kids.
Many become fathers as a badge of manhood but insist that they are too young to be married and have no emotional or financial means to be a parent, social workers and educators said.
A few form lasting bonds with their children. Others move on to new girlfriends and even fear being teased by friends if they have to baby-sit or change diapers.
”How can you take care of a child when you can`t take care of yourself?” asked Pearl Price, Sunrise`s mother. ”Single parenting is hard, but it`s even harder for a teen.”
But it is becoming more prevalent, according to statistics from the Illinois Department of Public Health. In 1990, 25,545 babies-13.1 percent of all live births in Illinois-were born to teenage mothers, according to the most recent statistics available. An estimated 630 were born to girls ages 10 to 14, and 9,039 were born to females ages 15, 16 and 17, according to statistics.
More than 11,525 of those teenage births occurred in Chicago, where 383 babies were born to girls ages 10 to 14, and 4,491 were born to females ages 15 to 17, statistics showed.
About 7,900 of the state`s teenage births were to African-Americans, 3,543 to whites and 2,568 to Hispanics, according to statistics.
Tom Schafer, a spokesman for the Public Health Department, said it is next to impossible to keep statistics on the number of teenage fathers because often a young mother does not know who the father is or will not identify him. But in a dropout-prevention program at Tilden that also discusses parenting, the number of teenage fathers is on the rise. Seven of the 13 boys in the class said they are expectant fathers. Most of the youths are 15 and 16 and will be fathers before the school year ends in June.
Terrence Reed, 16, said his teenage girlfriend is three months` pregnant, while Eric Watson, 16, said his first child is due in a few months.
”She went for a checkup and told me she was pregnant and I said, `Oh, my God,”` said Watson, a sophomore who lives at home with his mother. ”I thought about getting a job at McDonald`s and that way I can help take care of the baby.”
Watson said he plans to ask his aunt, who receives government-provided food, to give him cereal and milk for the baby. He also is depending on his mother to help take care of the infant.
”Maybe she will see the baby and like it and buy it clothes,” Watson said, acknowledging that he is not ready to be a father.
Sunrise Price, who also is in the class, is a father. His mother said that he is shy about taking care of his daughter, Paris, and that he does not know how to comb her hair or do other parental chores.
Sunrise Price, who acknowledged that he should have waited several years before becoming a father, said he did it for the wrong reasons.
”It was cool to make a baby,” he said. ”That`s basically why I did it. ”But I`m trying to be responsible now. I`ve got friends 15 and 16 years old who`ve got two and three kids and don`t even go around their children. They just make them, leave them and deny them.”
The dropout-prevention program is part of a special curriculum offered at Tilden and Englewood High Schools by the New City Health Center Families with a Future.
Tilden Principal Hazel Steward said that scores of teenage parents are in the Chicago Public Schools system and that among the boys, ”It`s a notch in their belt.” She added that the youths rarely discuss marriage or living together as a family.
Price, whose first concern is to finish high school and find a job, said he never considered marriage when he became sexually active with his daughter`s mother.
”That was the last thing on my mind,” he said.
Robert Johnson, a 16-year-old junior at Tilden, said he pities boys who believe being a teenage father is a badge of honor.
”In a way I feel sorry for them, because they`re going to miss out on a lot of things,” said Johnson, who wore two unopened condom packages dangling from the bottom of his jacket. ”I`m not going to have a kid until I`m at least 25. I`ve got plans to go to college or trade school.”
Johnson said he decided against being a teenage dad after a friend had a baby and told him raising it was ”like being on punishment,” always having to be there with the child and never having time to do high school things, like attending dances, football games and dating.
He said he does not understand why male teens want to become parents, but he suggested that peer pressure plays a significant role.
Will Edwards, a Tilden junior who has a 2-month-old son, said he believes many of his friends choose to become fathers to ”make up for the love their father or mother never gave them.”
”Sometimes it really bothers me when I see a kid with a mother and father and they`re really happy,” Edwards said. ”I never had that.”
Christine George, project director for the Illinois Caucus on Teen Pregnancy, said that it may seem macho to be a teenage father but that the child is the one who suffers if the father is not mature or responsible enough to help raise and nurture a baby.
”Teens have all the problems of being adolescents and are not fully mature enough to be parents,” George said. ”A father doesn`t mean just siring someone.”
