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-------------The teen part of me was like any teenager. I was a person becoming someone, a person just beginning on my journey to discover who I was, where I should be and what I should do. Like any teenager I had no training, little education and little ability to support myself. Life was still something that adults did, and I was not yet an adult. I was confused about my place in the world. I was still trying to sort out the criticisms from my mother, the competiveness and derision from the high school environment, and the negativity pervasive in my ailing rust belt city. -------------But suddenly I was 99% mom and 1% teen. I was ferocious. I may have never told anyone I was ferocious, but I was. I knew I was going to provide for my daughter. My mother, herself a single mom of three, made it clear that I was on my own. I had no help from anyone. I was so isolated that if there was any other help I didn't know about it and didn't know how to go about even finding out about it. -------------At first, of course, I lived in crisis. I needed to provide my daughter with the necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing. The only job in my town that offered enough to meet those needs for an uneducated teen was factory work, so I went to work at the rubber glove factory. But, as soon as I met those basic needs, I thought about the future: about freedom from fear of factory layoffs, freedom from the monotony and the misery of the job. On one level I was hunkered down, determined to do whatever it took to get me out of my situation. On the other hand, I was resentful and angry. Why was my dream of going to college such an unreality now? Why was my life over? How could I find the way to become a person becoming someone? How could I still be a part of my generation, instead of being a part of the mostly middle aged and older women that worked at the factory? I wanted to be able to support my daughter but not feel bitter and angry and trapped. I also knew I didn't want her to grow up in a factory town with no prospects, no hope, and no possibilities except a job like the one I had. -------------The mom part of me wanted to provide for my daughter in the best way possible. The teen part of me wanted to have my own liberty and pursuit of happiness: to have a chance to know what God's will might be for me, to find out what my potential might be, to find out what my path in life was supposed to be. I wanted to pursue the dream I had before I became pregnant. I wanted to go to college, not only for myself but also for my daughter. --------------I didn't have the slightest idea how to get to college. College was something people went away to. I didn't know where it was or where the road was that went there. No one I asked told me I'd never be able to do that. I, of course, had " ruined my life." --------------Where I was was bad. I had no idea where "better" or "good" was but I had to go on the road to find out. After three years of working in the factory I saved enough to move to a place with a college where I thought my chances would be better to find the way into it. A young man that worked in the factory with me became my boyfriend and wanted to go with me. We bought a van and camping equipment and set off for want turned out to be bad luck for me (read my graphic novel THE AMAZING TRUE STORY OF A TEENAGE SINGLE MOM for this part of the story). He battered me and kept me a virtual prisoner with control over my money. I had to leave with nothing and then, there I was, back at zero on my road to finding the way for my daughter and for me. --------------Finally I moved to my closest friend in Colorado where I found a waitress job and started to get back on my feet. There I met Jackie Ward, a single mom of two children, who told me about financial aid and the way to go to college. The minute I walked into my first Metropolitan State College classroom my life and the life of my daughter changed from better to good to unbelievable. Suddenly I, too, had a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. -------------I didn't even know what Anthropology was and suddenly there I was in a class discussing Levi Strauss's theory that men invented war and religion to upgrade their status in a matriarchal society. Suddenly I was asked whether I thought the difficulties that Esther Prim faced in THE SCARLET LETTER are true today. Suddenly I understood the significance of the fact that the employees at the factory were mostly women. Suddenly I pondered the causes of the increase in single parenting. Suddenly I was on the equestrian team and my daughter was taking lessons in another ring of the indoor arena while I learned Hunter seat jumping. Suddenly all of my daughter's friends were the children of college professors and doctoral students. Suddenly all my friends were pursuing their dreams of wanting to invent a new heart valve mechanism, wanting to protect the legal rights of Native Americans, wanting to find new ways for caring for the aged and ailing or wanting to become medical illustrators. I began to consider that I, too, might find meaningful work. ---------------I saw that when people settled for less than what they wanted, they assuaged their unhappiness with material things or worse. I saw that many people found themselves excluded from finding the way to pursue their own true happiness, from finding what their purpose here might be. And I knew that teen moms and single moms were just such a group. ---------------More valuable than protecting my daughter from all difficulties and challenges of life, I saw that if I provided my daughter with a role model of someone that was willing to ferociously keep her dreams before her, and persevere and not be discouraged or dissuaded, that perhaps she, too, would fight for her rights, pursue her own dreams and not give up. That no matter what, she could overcome whatever obstacles life put before her. --------------Teen mothers even now do not have equal rights to education. If a teen mom drops out of high school or is coerced to leave she misses out on guidance counseling which tells her about financial aid and the process of applying to college. If she overcomes the isolation and discovers the way to get her GED, high school equivalency, usually no one there tells her about the process of applying to college. I decided to do what Jackie Ward had done for me so I started visiting GED programs armed with financial aid forms and college applications and I helped the young moms with the process of applying to college. ----------------Single moms do not have the basic rights to equal opportunity in housing, fairness in the courts, employment and education. I recently worked with New York Civil Liberties in a class action lawsuit against the New York City Board of Education for coercing teen moms to leave high schools. Interns at NYCLU pretended they were teen moms and called twenty-eight high schools in the metropolitan area. Only six of those schools would allow the pregnant or teen mom to enroll without any restrictions. The others tried to divert the students to other schools even though the interns explained that they wanted to go to that particular high school because it had a program that they were interested in or it was close to their home or day care. ---------------Now I am working on a book examining the top three hundred colleges in the United States according to accessibility to mothers. The results are dismal. Many colleges require that all freshman live on campus, but have no on campus family housing. I found no college that would allow a mother to bring a child with her into a dorm. Many colleges call their family housing "graduate student housing" or "married student housing," thereby discouraging moms from feeling qualified. The top schools are the worst offenders. Some colleges, such as a college in upstate New York, have token programs to help a handful of single moms for one year in a separate almost segregated setting, but have no mothers or accommodations for mothers on the campus itself. The best schools, usually the large state universities, often have a better accessibility rating for single mothers because they had built "married student" housing for World War II veterans who were returning and taking advantage of the GI bill. ---------------There is much work to be done to guarantee equal rights for women with children. I know that had it not been for Jackie I would have had one bad thing and another bad thing happen to me over and over, that I would be bitter and angry instead of motivated and excited about the meaningfulness of my life and that I would not have dreamed that I could consider that I had the right to my own life, to my own freedom and to the pursuit of what I find makes me happy, which is discovering and developing my potential. My child is still the most beautiful thing in the world to me. I am so proud of my daughter, who received her degree in Sociology and plans a career in medicine. As my daughter has said, " If my mother can raise me, care for herself and go to college then I can do.....anything." ---------Katherine Arnoldi |
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| all illustrations by Katherine Arnoldi |
Katherine Arnoldi has a B.A. in Art from the University of Arkansas, an M.A. in Creative Writing from City College, New York. She has recieved two New York Foundation of the Arts Awards (in Fiction and in Drawing), the DeJur Award, and the Henfield TransAtlantic Fiction Award. Her graphic novel, THE AMAZING TRUE STORY OF A TEENAGE SINGLE MOM (Hyperion 1998) recieved an award from the American Library Association and was nominated for the Will Eisner Award in the graphic novel. home / guide
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