Education

Having Child Is ‘Symptom of Alienation’

February 15, 1989 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

In the following excerpt, Leon Dash suggests that the young mothers he interviewed became pregnant as a response to their isolation from mainstream society:

In the end, I discovered that not a single one had become pregnant out of ignorance or by accident.

Some of the people I interviewed were couples. Some were single parents. Some were people living on welfare stipends. Some were working people living on what little they earned each day. One was an adolescent mother who had been abandoned by her family. What they all shared was poverty and a long legacy of racial oppression.

I had believed, even before I moved in, that the patterns of alienation acted out in Washington Highlands every day parallel the behavior patterns of innumerable other poor Americans. Their poverty is the dominant factor of their lives. Their poverty produces predictable responses, predictable choices.

I also knew that among black Americans I would find another dimension of antagonism. Our American experience has added layers of alienation, starting three and a half centuries ago with slavery, followed by a de jure system of ethnic oppression, then de facto discrimination, and rejection at every level of the larger, white society.

I do not believe that any black American, even one born into comfortable levels of economic well-being or privilege, has completely escaped the feeling of alienation. Blacks of different income groups and of varying economic mobility handle the alienation differently, more because one’s class often governs one’s behavior and outlook, but all blacks can readily agree on the source of the alienation.

In Washington Highlands, one of the many black-adolescent symptoms of alienation from mainstream America is having a child, a rejection of the larger society’s value system regarding what is rational and irrational behavior. The patterns of childbearing were laid down long before the children of Washington Highlands were born. The patterns are viewed by many of them as rational responses to human needs, requirements that cannot be met by other means.

Excerpted from When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of Teenage Childbearing by Leon Dash. Copyright 1989 by Leon Dash. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow and Company Inc.

A version of this article appeared in the February 15, 1989 edition of Education Week as Having Child Is ‘Symptom of Alienation’

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Education Briefly Stated: February 21, 2024
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education Briefly Stated: February 7, 2024
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
8 min read
Education Briefly Stated: January 31, 2024
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
9 min read
Education Briefly Stated: January 17, 2024
Here's a look at some recent Education Week articles you may have missed.
9 min read