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Letter to the editor

Baby mamas

By RODNEY THRASH
Published May 6, 2005

[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]

Amber Ramsey, 16, gets her 9-month-old daughter ready for bedtime after a bath. Ramsey tries to have Sylena in bed by 6 p.m. so she’ll have time to do her homework.

	‘Baby Mama’ — from the CD Free Yourself, by American Idol Fantasia Barrino B-A-B-Y M-A-M-A This goes out to all my baby mamas. This goes out to all my baby mamas. B-A-B-Y M-A-M-A This goes out to all my baby mamas. I got love for all my baby mamas. I see you get that support check in the mail. Ya open it and you’re like ‘What the hell?’ You say, “This ain’t even half of day care.’ Sayin’ to yourself, ‘This here ain’t fair.’ And all my girls who don’t get no help, Who gotta do everything by yourself, Remember: What don’t kill you can only make you stronger, My baby mama.
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	[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer]
	After arriving on the bus, 17-year-old Krishawna Bostick carries 8-month-old son Christopher, along with his car seat, to his day care at Marchman Technical Education Center in New Port Richey, a school for teen parents.
	[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford]
	Kevin Rodriguez Sr., 17, of Clearwater and his 14-month-old son, Kevin Jr., are en route to the Pinellas Technical Education Center, where Kevin Sr. goes to school and Kevin Jr. is in on-campus day care. The two started their morning early, and by 5:30 a.m. the baby was clean, dressed and fed.

On the not-so-good days, when teenage motherhood seems overwhelming, Krishawna Bostick plays track No. 6.

I see ya working ya job.

I see ya going to school.

And girl I know it's hard.

And even though ya fed up with making beds up, girl, keep ya head up.

"I can listen to that song," the 17-year-old high school junior says, "and it's like, "Okay, well, I'm not the only one.' "

In Florida last year, 89,285 children were born to unwed parents. That's a provisional number, but if the statistic stands, that would be a 4,552 jump over 2003.

"Now, it's a common thing," says Bostick, who attends Marchman Technical Education Center in New Port Richey, one of two teen parenting sites available to Pasco County high schoolers. "It's not such a big deal as it was before. Nobody makes too much emphasis on teen parents."

The stigma today isn't as great as it was some years ago, but the consequences are still serious. For better or worse, this "common thing," as Bostick calls it, is redefining what a family is. In some teenage and young adult circles, children aren't called children anymore (they're "seeds"). And parents aren't called parents.

What are they called? Let Bostick tell you.

"My baby daddy," she says of her 8-month-old son's biological father.

The label has been catching on for some time. An Atlanta rap group popularized the term with the 1997 hit My Baby Daddy. The title of Bostick's favorite pick-me-up is Baby Mama, a song that has been accused of promoting teen parenthood with lyrics such as this: " 'Cause nowadays it's like a badge of honor to be a baby mama."

On Orlando hip-hop radio station 102 Jamz, the Wake Up Posse names a Baby Mama of the Week. The winner gets clothes, shoes from Lady Foot Locker and a lunch with American Idol Fantasia Barrino, whose well-documented past as a high school dropout who became pregnant at 16 inspired the song Baby Mama, from her Free Yourself album. Onstage, plays such as Baby Mama Drama are making their way around the urban theater circuit.

And on Sept. 29 in New York, about 300 couples will vie for one of 10 all-expenses-paid weddings, a day that organizer and Brooklyn author Maryann Reid has dubbed "Marry Your Baby Daddy Day."

For Bostick, baby daddy is an appropriate - and more accurate - descriptor. She's just calling her son's father what she says he is.

In the eight months since Christopher Bostick's birth, he has seen his father twice. Maybe three times. Bostick isn't sure where he lives. "Somewhere in Tampa," she says.

"The way I was raised, a father is one that's there - fathering," Bostick says. She calls her baby's father "the sperm donor."

But not everyone thinks the terms are appropriate, even if they do use them.

Amber Ramsey, a sophomore at Marchman, hates it when guys call her - or any single mom - a baby mama. It makes her feel as if she is someone else's property, not a mom.

"They say it to their friends as if nobody could talk to you because you have a baby," says Ramsey, who had 9-month-old Sylena Lorentsen when she was 15.

Alyssa Maldonado, 17, is a senior at the Pinellas Technical Education Center and mother of 1-year-old Myla. "It makes me sound like all I am is . . ." she says, struggling to find the right word.

"Someone who produced a baby," classmate Brittani Thomas, 18, says. "Nothing more."

***

Jordan Gebler blasts Baby Mama on her bedroom stereo.

She will be one in less than two months. June 16, to be exact.

"I think there's two different messages," Gebler says of the song. "One, it's supporting those girls who are going through a hard time. But the other message is letting girls say, "Wow, it's okay.' "

That message is what frustrates Gebler about an otherwise catchy song.

"I would hate to see another girl go through what I'm going through," the 16-year-old says. "It's a scary thing. I don't know how to be a parent. I've never done it before."

In middle school, she had low self-esteem. She met a boy. He said she was beautiful. He was the only person who told her so. They were still an item when they started high school in 2003. They had sex.

"If I didn't do this with my boyfriend, then he didn't love me, and if he didn't love me, what did I have?" Gebler asks. "Then, it's not even a problem of, "Oh, my life could get harder or I could get pregnant,' because you don't care about yourself. You see the only thing that cares about you, so if it happens to me, who cares? I'm half-dead anyway, emotionally."

Two Fridays before Halloween, Gebler sensed something was different. A friend bought her a pregnancy test and she took it. She thought her life was over.

"I wanted to do so much with my life," Gebler says. "I want to be an accountant, I want to go to college, I want to visit many places in the world, I want to have my dream house, my dream car, all those things."

She called her boyfriend. They'd recently broken up. He asked her if the baby was his.

"I don't remember answering him," Gebler says. "I think I got very sarcastic at that point."

She never told her parents, but he told them. Gebler was three months pregnant by then. Her parents cried. They asked their daughter's ex-boyfriend to give them some space. Gebler hasn't spoken to him in three months. Not that she wants to.

"I'm staying away from guys," she says.

At least until June. She's having a boy, Isaiah.

"The meaning of his name is "saved by God,' " she says. "I couldn't have gone through with the pregnancy without God."

Or her mom and dad. They've agreed to help raise Isaiah while Gebler finishes her last two years of high school.

"My whole family is fighting over him," she says.

***

At Withlacoochee Technical Institute in Inverness, teen moms bring their children for day care while they work toward their high school diplomas. Media specialist Angie Schoenberger tells the preschoolers at the day care, "Today, our stories are about families.

"We all have different types of families. Some of us live with our moms and dads. Some of us live with our moms."

Megan Warner, a junior at the institute, knows that all too well. Last November, she became a mom. At 16 years old.

All her life, she hung with the boys.

"Girls," Warner says, "were all snotty."

While the "snotty" girls were playing with Barbie dolls, she was playing football and hockey and participating in spitting contests.

At 10, Warner was molested. A family friend, she says.

"I started to feel gross in my own skin," she says. "I didn't ever want to get a boyfriend."

That all changed when she turned 13. She became "a big flirt," she says. Warner isn't sure why.

"I needed to be with someone," she says. "There was a week I went without a boyfriend, and I went nuts."

She got pregnant at 15. Her mother made her get an abortion. A year later, she met a guy named Beau. Warner became pregnant after their first time together. She named the baby girl Madison.

Warner recently went to her senior prom. And she plans to attend college.

That's why she appreciates Baby Mama. It gives her hope, a sense of validation.

"Not very many people are daring enough to write a song about unwed mothers, whether you're a teenager mother or an adult," Warner says. "That song is giving gratitude and thanks to all the people who didn't drop out of school and still live their life the way that they did before they got pregnant. It's just telling us that we're not stupid or lowlifes, like the bottom of the food chain.

"Just because I have a baby doesn't mean I still can't be 17. I'm both. I'm 17 and a mom"

***

People often assume that Kevin Rodriguez Sr. is a baby daddy.

The Clearwater teen, 17, says, "If I tell someone I have a child, the first thing that usually comes out of their mouth is "Am I still with the mother?' "

"I don't like that in the sense that they believe that I was there, had my fun, and then a child came out of it and that was it. That's not how it happened."

Rodriguez is still with his son's mother, 16-year-old Ophelia Navarro. They've been inseparable since eighth grade. Navarro has legal custody of Kevin Jr., but she and Rodriguez share responsibility for their 14-month-old son.

"I can't brush it aside in my head saying that it's just an accident," he says. "I can't forget about it."

Not like his father forgot about him.

"I know that when I was growing up, my dad wasn't around a lot," Rodriguez says. "I know from that personal experience, I would not want my son to feel the same exact way. And because of that, I wanted to be pretty much what my dad wasn't. Be there."

Adoption was never an option he considered. His mother got pregnant at 16, and her parents made her give up the baby - his sister - who would be 25 years old today. "The standards were different," Rodriguez says. "My grandparents threatened to kick her out if she didn't give her child up for adoption." His mother has been searching for the child for most of Rodriguez's life.

"I always tell myself if I could have done it differently, I probably wouldn't have," he says. "The way I see things, I see it from a whole new perspective."

Before Kevin Jr. was born, Rodriguez lacked drive.

Now?

"Someone else depends on my success," the soon-to-be high school senior says. "The better I do in life, the better he will be able to do as well. He'll have a role model to look up to because I never had a father figure to look up to."

As for an anthem for young, unwed dads, he jokes, "I'll make my own song."

-- Times researchers Kitty Bennett and Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

Baby Mama

-- from the CD Free Yourself, by American Idol Fantasia Barrinocq

This goes out to all my baby mamas.

This goes out to all my baby mamas.

B-A-B-Y M-A-M-A This goes out to all my baby mamas.

I got love for all my baby mamas.

I see you get that support check in the mail.

Ya open it and your you're like "What the hell?'

You say, "This ain't even half of day care.'

Sayin' to yourself, "This here ain't fair.'

And all my girls who don't get no help,

Who gotta do everything by yourself,

Remember: What don't kill you can only make you stronger,

My baby mama.

[Last modified May 5, 2005, 14:03:06]