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Why Did 1 In 7 Girls Get Pregnant At Robeson High?
Officials Say A Mix Of Factors Are To Blame, As They Try To Help The Young Women
About one in seven girls at Robeson High School are pregnant. Officials say a variety of factors are to blame.





It is a Chicago public school full of energy and spirit. It has about 800 girls, and 115 of them have something in common – something you might find disturbing.

CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman reports.

All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul Robeson High School. It's not a school for young mothers, it's a neighborhood school. And all of the pregnancies have happened, despite prevention talk.

If you want to know why, the people closest to the situation say there's no simple explanation.

Chicago Public Schools says it does not track the overall number of teen moms in the district. But Robeson Principal Gerald Morrow knows the count at his school in Englewood: 115 young ladies who are either expecting or already have had children.

To put it in perspective, their school pictures would fill roughly six pages of their high school year book.

Why is it happening at Robeson?

"It can be a lot of things that are happening in the home or not happening in the home, if you will," Morrow said. Absentee fathers are another factor, he said.

LaDonna Denson and two other Robeson students say parents not talking to teens and, in some cases, the pursuit of public assistance also factor into the pregnancies. None of them thought they'd be moms at such a young age.

They said they have support at home. But not all girls do, they said. In fact, some girls get thrown out of the home.

Not on Morrow's turf. "We're not looking at them like 'Ooh you made a mistake,'" he said. "We're looking at how we can get them to the next phase, how can we still get them thinking about graduation?"

So there's help in a teen parent program. And coming soon, right across from Robeson, developers are turning a one-time crack house into a day care for student use. "We have to provide some type of environment for them and some form of support for them," Van Vincent, CEO of VLV Development, said.

It's all made an impression.

"Just cause you have a baby, that doesn't mean your life is over," one student said.

One thing they might not know about their principal: His mom had him when she was 15. That's why accepting the problem -- and working through it -- is so important to him.


moar condoms, amirite?

abstinence only education has clearly worked

let me guess: they are all black

btw this is why I basically support forced sterilization

Eating lead paint chips increases fertility.

Forced sterilization of healthy young people?

Absentee fathers are another factor
Absentee fathers are another factor
Absentee fathers are another factor
Absentee fathers are another factor
Absentee fathers are another factor

To put it in perspective, their school pictures would fill roughly six pages of their high school year book.

Oh, so that's perspective.

it makes you cool

Oh yeah, I'm sure that the kids in inner city Chicago public schools are getting abstinence only education

As to absent fathers? Why stick around when gubmint can be dat kids daddy?

my school, composed of mostly middle class but some poorer areas and some richer ones, definitely got pro-abstinence education (wrote off condoms as a real viable way of prevention) and we had our fair share of pregnant girls. i honestly don't think that education on that front, in high school, really does that much.

and if you think the moral hazard created by government not letting kids starve is what leads people to abandon their kids, that's an lol.

Let's get over the "teenage dumb ass girls get preganant due to lack of education" schtick. This is the most educated generation of kids when it comes to sex and preventing pregnancies. How people can confuse lack of caring, low self esteem and an abundance of laziness equate with a lack of education?

Personally, I thnk this is more a result of the growing spread between the poor and rich and the lack of hope in improving their lot in life. Makes the idea of having a little baby to love seem not so bad. It's not like the baby is going to prevent them from achieving greatness, as they feel that's not a possibility in the current environment.

I think I agree with tyler. I find it really, really hard to believe that 14 and 15 year old kids in the United States do not know about making babies. Honestly, I would expect 14 and 15 year old (black) kids living in urban Chicago to have a lot better idea than 14-15 yo kids in rural Texas, but you don't exactly see a lot of the bible-thumping kids getting pregnant. I do not believe that this is about education or being ignorant as to how babies are made.

Can someone explain this to me? They want an extra paycheck from the government, so they have a kid?

sadly, it's very true

115/800

Isn't that more like 1 in 8? Let's all just calm down here.

yeah, clearly the other 7 kids know how to pull out. to this story.

115 x 7 = 805.

115 x 8 = 920

So 805 being much closer to 800 than 920 is, the 1 in 7 ratio is right.

I went to public school.

can we please start giving the other 6 fellas credit for knowin' when to demand a BJ from these loose high school broads?!!

amirite?!