On Their Own by Martha Shirk

Author:Martha Shirk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books

For relaxation, Casey-Jack likes to play the drums.

Casey-Jack Kitos cites religion as a source of strength. Left, he worships at a charismatic church in Lawrence.

Monica Romero with her daughter, Amber

6

“I WAS TIRED OF LIVING THAT LIFE”

Monica Romero, San Antonio, Texas

By age sixteen, Monica Romero was skipping school and spending her allowance on drugs. She and her foster mother fought constantly.

By seventeen, she had dropped out of high school and run away to Mexico. For seven months, her foster mother had no idea where she was.

And by eighteen, Monica was pregnant. For four months after her baby’s birth, she depended on the kindness of friends—and sometimes strangers—for a place to stay. The low point in her odyssey was surely the night she and the baby spent in the home of a stranger who’d offered them a ride.

Many young people become parents not long after aging out of foster care. Within four years, 42 percent have given birth to or fathered children, a study by the Westat, Inc., research organization has found.1

For too many young women who become mothers while they’re still teenagers, giving birth marks the end of aspiration. They are much less likely to attend college than their peers. About one-fourth give birth to a second child within two years, and 28 percent of them remain poor through their early thirties, four times the rate for women who delay childbearing.2

But Monica has defied the odds. Becoming a mother proved to be a turning point for her. She vowed that her baby would have a better life than she had had. And she also promised herself that she would never put her feelings for a boyfriend ahead of her devotion to her child, as she believed her mother always had. “Seeing what kind of mother my own mom was made me know that that’s not how I wanted to be,” Monica says. “I saw what drinking and partying did to her, how they took her attention from her children, and how men took her attention away from us, too. That’s not how I wanted my daughter to grow up.”

One and a half years after her daughter’s birth, Monica is a model mother, a conscientious student, and a devoted granddaughter and sister.

Monica got on the right track because a lot of people believed in her—strangers who opened their homes when she didn’t have a place to stay. The social workers at the private agency that supervised her foster placement. The psychologist in whom she confided for twelve years. The case manager at a program for homeless mothers and children. Her sisters and grandmother.

But Monica wouldn’t be where she is today if she hadn’t also begun to believe in herself.

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