Articles on the plight of single mothers in last week's Royal Gazette raised a number of issues which Coalition for the Protection of Children chairwoman Sheelagh Cooper will this week seek to address. Today, Mrs. Cooper looks at why young girls are having babies. Tomorrow she tackles the reasons behind why these young mothers then continue to have children when they cannot support the ones they already have.

The problem of "children having children'' is not unique to Bermuda and young girls who have babies around the world share many of the same characteristics.

Activist Sheelagh Cooper said that often single mothers come from single parent homes and their mothers had children in a similar fashion.

"They often had early sexual experiences, but not by their own choosing,'' Mers. Cooper added. "In other words, they were victims of sexual abuse or incest. They often tend to be sexually active at a young age because they have not been protected properly by the community.

"If you look at their emotional state, you often find they are emotionally needy and they tend to look to their peers rather than their parents for emotional support.

"They're looking for love in all the wrong places,'' said Mrs. Cooper. "They are looking for affection from a young man and the baby they are looking forward to having.'' And their reaction to the discovery that they are pregnant is one of joy, she added.

"My experience with these young girls is that they are not shocked when they find out they are pregnant. They are happy about it,'' said Mrs. Cooper.

"They are looking forward to the birth of the baby, irrespective of their age and circumstances.'' The use of birth control does not even enter the picture, she continued, so addressing the problem requires more than just education about birth control.

"It is a more complex issue than that,'' said Mrs. Cooper.

"We have to protect young girls so they do not become sexually active earlier on against their will,'' she stressed. "We have to ensure that they are getting the emotional support and stability they crave at home so they don't have to go looking for it somewhere else.

"They need to have dreams that they can realistically aspire to, a vision of what their life could be like rather than what they see at home,'' said Mrs.

Cooper.

These girls dreamed of successful futures like most girls their age, she noted, "but then something happens at adolescence in this community''.

"Young girls and young boys lose that capacity to dream and seem to be resigned at an early age to replicating what they see before them. Obviously part of that has to do with the reality of what they live with.'' Mrs. Cooper said the hope for these young girls lay in the schools.

"Our teachers have an important role to play when the children are in school for six to eight hours a day,'' she said.

"They can inspire them and nurture their hopes and aspirations.

"This can really be achieved more successfully in a school environment that's nurturing, supportive and caters to the individual child and the child's specific nurturing style.

"It is difficult to achieve this in a punitive environment where children are regularly subjected to criticism and sometimes even emotional abuse.'' HEALTH HTH