Motherhood Without Marriage Growing Number Of Unwed Idaho Women Giving Birth

Mandy Sletner concedes that having a baby at 16 has not offered her an easy path through life.

But as her fiance held their day-old son at Kootenai Medical Center on Wednesday, she also said she would not change anything if she could do it over.

“Hopefully we will be able to provide him with what he needs,” she said.

“We don’t have any money or anything right now.”

They do, however, have each other. Sletner and Chayne Piscitelli, 18, will be married Jan. 17.

Sletner joins an ever-increasing number of unwed mothers giving birth in Idaho. Since 1984, the number of babies born to unwed mothers in Idaho has increased continuously. About 21 percent of all babies born in 1996 were to unwed mothers, according to the recently released 1996 Idaho Vital Statistics report. In the five counties of North Idaho, 26 percent - just over one in four - of all babies were born to unwed mothers.

Shoshone County led the state. There, 41 percent of the babies born were to unwed mothers.

Teenagers were most likely to be unmarried new moms. A total of 1,503 of the 3,986 out-of-wedlock births in Idaho were to women ages 15 to 19, according to the report.

In North Idaho, 196 of the 547 out-of-wedlock births were to women between 15 and 19 years old.

“I could definitely tell you that we see a lot of single mothers and that they do struggle because of the situation they’re in,” said Paul Donnolo, an outreach program manager for the Community Action Agency in Coeur d’Alene. “It definitely is a problem. We see a lot of people in here with children. Usually they’re women. They’re not married, and they’re not seeing any child support.”

At the St. Pius shelter for women, director Lillian McSwain sees a similar pattern.

“The majority of people coming into the shelter are unwed mothers,” she said.

Welfare reforms are allowing many of those women slip through the cracks, she said.

“With the Health and Welfare reforms, these women are in a position where working for minimum wage full or part time is not enough,” she said.

For example, they often lack insurance, and they lose many benefits if they try to go to college, she said, pointing out some of the obstacles unmarried mothers face.

Several state programs attempt to curb unwed motherhood, especially young unwed motherhood.

The Governor’s Council on Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention sponsors a media campaign targeted at youths between 10 and 14 years old and their parents.

The idea is to influence the way young people think about teenage parenthood, said Joanne Mitten, chief of the state Bureau of Health Promotion.

“They’re starting to understand the consequences of their behaviors and changing their attitude,” she said. “They’re starting to think more about abstinence than having sex early.”

Abstinence is exactly what the state Department of Education wants.

It’s doling out a $225,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control to school districts which promote abstinence-only programs.

But others say an abstinence-only approach fails young people who will choose to have pre-marital sex anyway.

Linda Dunn, education director for Planned Parenthood of Idaho blames what she calls inadequate sex education for the increasing trend of unwed motherhood, she said.

“I do believe that it’s a lack of a balanced, responsible sex-education program,” she said. “Being balanced would be a sex-education program that would meet the needs of all students, whether they choose abstinence or to be sexually active.”

Others point to broader attitudes for the reason unwed motherhood continues to rise.

“If there’s an increase, we have to look at what we’re teaching and how we live,” McSwain said. “There was a time 15, 20 years ago when a man got out of high school or college and he got a job, he expected to be in a family (in his job). There was security.”

Now, however, people plan on changing careers often and companies fail to provide families with adequate stability, she said. And individuals have become less responsible, too, she added.

“They don’t buy into marriage as lifelong commitments or relationships as lifelong commitments,” she said, “and we’re raising another generation of children like that.”

While Donnolo concedes he doesn’t know how to change the trend in unwed motherhood, he thinks working with individuals - as the Community Action Agency does - will be a good start.

“I think any time you take a blanket approach to this situation, you miss people. Some fall through the cracks,” he said. But helping individuals “is a time-consuming and money-consuming process. It’s tough. It’s a tough call.”

While society tries to figure out what to do about unwed mothers and their families, young mothers like Sletner are just trying to figure out how to fulfill their dreams for their children’s and their own happiness.

Sletner dropped out of the 11th grade but plans to finish high school via correspondence and maybe, someday, go to college. “Hopefully, I’ll have a good job,” she said, admitting she doesn’t know what kind of job it will be.

She also eventually wants to have another child. “I’ll be more ready for it, plan it,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo Graphic: North Idaho unwed mothers increase