Reed comes to Visit! Mama Mia

Now, from what I remember, it is pretty common to start having kids around the age of 24 or so. The average age at first birth for mothers has been increasing in many developed nations and today it is 25 years of age in the U.S. as opposed to the 21 years of age in 1970. It seems that women start having children later and later and careers are testing the limits of the “biological clock”. My mom had my older sister when she was about 29 and 29 years later, my sister just gave birth to her first child and my first niece (Olive Anna – Born at 12:48 am September 9, 2009 – 6 lbs 14 ounces, 20” tall)! I am one proud aunt! Back to the point…. If my grandparents were alive today, they would be somewhere around 92. Regardless, the possibility that my grandparents would be around to see their great grand kids never really existed. Things are a little different where I live in the Dominican Republic. Not only do great grandparents meet their great grand kids, they get to know their great, great, great grand kids. Seems outlandish, I know, but not if you start motherhood at the ripe age of 12! Reed and I went around my community doing a mini-photo story on young families and it came as no surprise that we were able to find Yuli the 14 year old wife of my friend, Nappa, who is 8 months pregnant and Mileisi; 16 year old mother of one. Not to mention all the pregnant 16, 17 and 18 year olds who I saludar every day. There are supposedly 9.7 million people living in the Dominican Republic and 32% of them are 14 or younger. Are you all thinking what I rewind over and over again in my head on a daily basis….. doesn’t anyone see the correlation between poverty and birth rate? Or where the hell is the birth control? Or why aren’t these kids using condoms? Sure, reproductive health education is not as easy to access as a Presidente, but the information is out there and people do talk. Granted, there is a lot of hidden “love”, birth control chit-chat is talked about just like deciding what is for dinner. There isn’t much privacy around a callejon (block, street) where people depend on their neighbor for protection, water and sometimes food. It is no secret who has had their tubes tied and who hasn’t.
So why is it that current day Dominican Republic campo has so many young moms and families when the infant mortality rate is 29.6/1,000 ?
There is some rhyme and a little reason behind so many young moms like 14-year-old Yuli and why the age at first birth has not changed much since vintage Mejen gave birth to her first child in 1933 at 12 years old. Although there is TV now, hormones still run wild. The age-old saying goes, “Amarra tu gallina porque mi gallo anda suelto.” Tie up your chicken because my rooster roams free. Just so happens that regardless of accessibility to reproductive health information, tradition and culture, not to mention hormones, are hard to change.
Some girls in the Campo simply just don’t have the biological orientation about the correspondence between pregnancy and unprotected sex. Other Latin teeny bops believe it when their macho man assures them they that peeing after sex is just another form of birth control. More noteworthy than these common cases is the hang-up with marriage engrained in this culture. There isn’t a day that goes by where someone does not tell me I need to have a Dominican boyfriend if not a husband. It used to be that when people called me over to them urgently I thought it was because they needed some help desperately, but now I know it is just because they are extremely concerned about whether or not I have a boyfriend. No one has been even close to in as much of as panic (I was recently in a motorcycle accident) as when people discover I am a single woman.
The peer pressure to start a family and begin motherhood is unbelievable. Before these kids can talk they are asked who they have a crush on and how many children they want to have. Just like bachata sounds all day at the colmado some doña is simultaneously propagandizing that to be anywhere close to a respectable human being in society, one needs to be married. Women are thought of as jamonas (hams) if they haven’t shacked up by their 24th birthday. No matter how modern in technological advances, the Dominican campo has a long way to go to be modernized socially. And will continue to be so as long as the dominating peer pressure is to maintain the hot Latin lover reputation Mejen and Lila raised the bar to 76 years ago.
Mileisi’s mom and youngest grandmother (32)we came across wanted Mileisi married by the time she was 14 and was disappointed when she waited ‘til her 16th birthday to say yes to campo matrimony.
She also told us that her second daughter would get married when she was 13 because she is smart! As long as mothers are promoting their children to have children, adolescence will be quickly replaced by motherhood.