Growing up fast

Friday, May 21, 1999 | 11:55 a.m.

The nation's highest teen pregnancy rate is as unique to Nevada as the Strip and the phenomenal growth rate.

Although state officials created a foundation solely to curb the rate at which Nevada's teenagers are becoming pregnant, experts say they still don't know why it happens more often here than in other states.

And they aren't planning to spend the bulk of their time or money figuring it out.

But a UNLV sociologist says the answer to that persistent "why" question is likely more obvious -- and less popular -- than some are willing to admit.

"It's a tough town. This is a crazy culture," said Bob Parker, an urban sociologist at UNLV who for about 10 years has been studying how growth and the gambling culture affects Nevada's youth.

Still, successfully fighting teen pregnancy is more about prevention than about finding a cause, said Lynn Carrigan, director of the Nevada Public Health Foundation.

State officials created the foundation in 1996 to address Nevada's teen pregnancy rate. It is an education machine that provides peer counseling, classes for teens, classes for parents of teens, and a host of other programs throughout the state.

The programs are working, judging by the fact that Nevada's teen pregnancy rate -- though still high -- has dropped, Carrigan said.

Those results are tangible, she said. Answers to the "why" question are elusive and anecdotal. There is no way to scientifically measure the causes.

"It's all speculative," Carrigan said. "There's not good research on it."

And there likely won't be any such research in the near future, said Tamara Kreinin, director of state and local administration for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy in Washington, D.C.

"The most important thing to spend money on is to look at what solutions work best," Kreinin said. "If a young person isn't motivated to stop pregnancy, she won't."

A study released in April says there are 140 pregnancies for every 1,000 Nevada girls 15 to 19 years old. That is fewer than the 145 pregnancies per 1,000 teen-age Nevada girls reported in 1992, but it still is the nation's highest rate, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute report.

Guttmacher is a nonprofit organization that studies reproductive health issues.

But staying at the top of the nation's teen pregnancy heap doesn't happen by accident, Parker said.

If people want to find a solution, they need to confront all possible causes, he said. And that's hard, because it means questioning the human effect of something Nevada holds culturally and economically dear.

The tourism industry.

"Not many people are willing to walk down that path," Parker said. "This is about the most artificial place I've ever been. There's a real premium on excitement and living on the edge."

Teen pregnancy isn't the only symptom of a society out of control, Parker said. His research has shown Nevada also ranks at or near the top nationally in teen-age dropout rates, youth crime and underage gambling.

He figures it's because Nevada's urban teens have ample opportunity to experience a flashy, fast-paced society packed with sex, drinking, gambling and other adult recreation. They are exposed to activities they are not mature enough to deal with, Parker said.

Adults must take the lead and limit that exposure, even if it means taking a hit in the pocketbook, he said.

"The powerful economic leaders are not prioritizing the residents and their problems," Parker said. "They see the tourist industry as our goose that laid the golden egg -- our economic development engine."

The high-rolling gambling culture also creates a lot of service jobs that pay pretty well by a teenager's standards. It's hard to persuade teens to stay in school when they can earn $40,000 a year in entry-level service jobs that offer tips, Parker said.

Scholastic failure and teenage pregnancy go hand-in-hand, said Kreinin, of the national campaign. It's not always easy to tell which one causes the other, but they typically go together.

The 24-hour nature of towns such as Las Vegas and Reno -- the state's two urban centers -- also may mean more parents are working odd hours or two jobs, Parker added. That suggests less time at home with teenagers, who can appear old enough to get along perfectly well on their own.

"I don't think they feel connected to their parents, their neighborhoods or the broader community," Parker said.

That lack of connection also is indicative of regions experiencing a lot of growth, Stanley Henshaw, a Guttmacher researcher, said.

Teen pregnancy, overall abortion and overall divorce rates typically are higher in areas where large numbers of people are moving in from other places, Henshaw said.

Fitting into a new town, new job and new school isn't easy, and newcomers often don't have a sense of community or a social structure to lean on. That could easily happen in Nevada's fast-growing urban areas, he said.

"There's a lack of social cohesiveness. It's a result of not being connected socially," Henshaw said.

In June, teen pregnancy experts from Nevada, California, Arizona and New Mexico will travel to Reno for the national prevention campaign's first-ever regional conference, Kreinin said.

Kreinin said they chose Nevada not only because of its high teen pregnancy rate, but also because some of the programs offered by Carrigan's foundation are good models for other states.

Among them is one that offers free classes to parents on how to talk to adolescents about sex in a manner they understand. Regardless of how teens react to such discussions on the outside, talking with parents is important to them on the inside, Kreinin said.

"Teens all over the country tell me they want adults to talk to them," she said.

Candice Smith says her becoming pregnant at 14 didn't happen for a lack of information. The adults in her life said plenty about what can happen when teens aren't careful and how hard it is to raise a child.

"Everybody told me not to. Everybody," said Smith, now 17. "They even took me to see a doctor and to see my cousin have her baby, to see how hard it is."

Smith, seated in the day care center of Horizon South High School, looked at 2 1/2-year-old Mariah squirming on her lap.

"But two years later, here I am," she said.

Still, Smith and a handful of Horizon High School classmates who also juggle being a teenager with being a mom say frank discussions with adults help.

One heart-felt talk from an adult who has survived the perils of being a pregnant teen could make some kids think twice and help others get through whatever decisions they've made.

"I think there should be more (discussion) on the experiences -- like what it's like when you're up in the middle of the night with a baby that has a fever," Smith said. "You know, an older person who has been through what we're going through."

Valerie Lueck, a 16-year-old Horizon student and mother of 9-month-old Katelin, said she hopes she and her daughter will be able to talk openly and calmly about sex and raising children when the time comes.

Lueck said she never once thought of giving up her baby for adoption, and she doesn't regret the added responsibility. But if she had it to do over again, she might change one thing.

"It would've been a lot smarter to wait a couple of years," Lueck said.

Parker and Kreinin also speculated that Nevada's growing Hispanic population could contribute to the teen pregnancy rate, as statistics have shown pregnancy among Hispanic teens is rising more per capita than among other races.

Statistics also show that nationally Hispanic women have a higher fertility rate, which is the average number of children a woman will bear in her lifetime, said Carl Haub, of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C.

Figures from 1997 show Hispanic women ages 15 to 44 bore an average of three children in their lifetimes as compared to the national average of two for all women in the same age group.

But those numbers don't apply to Nevada's teen pregnancy rate, Haub said. The state's overall race distribution mirrors the nation's distribution, so local trends would follow national ones if based solely on racial makeup.

"We really can't use race as an explanation," Haub said. "It's definitely a social thing."

A social thing that somehow seems unique to Nevada. Parker says people who want to prevent teen pregnancies here need to look critically at the social and cultural atmosphere in which Nevada's teens live -- all of it.

Even the part that makes money.

"Young people (here) do things they wouldn't normally be able to do in other places. It never stops. It's 24 hours a day," he said. "And there's no time to reflect on what they're doing."

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