The city's other big issue

MY EDITOR IS nervous about my column today. She thinks it might offend some, hurt others and/or inflame haters.

Also, my skin is white. And my editor, who is African-American, thinks that that alone may influence how my words are read.

My skin is thicker than color, I tell her. And the issue I want to address is too important to let race overtake it. So, here goes:

Mayor-elect Jim Kenney needs to make the reduction of unprepared pregnancies in Philly - no matter the color of the parents - as big an issue in his new administration as he promises to make the reduction of violence.

If violence is an instant rip into a community's stability, the impact of unprepared pregnancy on the city is more slow-motion but just as tragic.

Girls who get pregnant drop out of school at a higher rate than their childless peers, their lives derailed by the responsibility of caring for a little one. Boys who father kids often go AWOL, leaving the young moms to face parenthood alone. The burden of care then falls mightily on the girls' families, who, in a city with a 26 percent poverty rate, are often already financially strapped and dependent on public assistance.

Research shows that babies born to poor, unprepared parents are vulnerable to some of life's harshest odds, with negative long-term consequences for their lives and communities. They're more likely than kids from two-parent households to act out, get pregnant, become truant, leave school and commit suicide.

They're also more likely to go to jail. In fact, stats show that about 60 percent of America's inmates hail from fatherless homes.

If Mayor-elect Kenney could reverse or further slow this depressing trend, the impact on the city would be profound.

Under Mayor Nutter, the Department of Health has been able to reduce teen pregnancies and the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in Philly.

Credit former Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz, who in 2011 launched a free-condoms program aimed at teenagers. Its shockingly straightforward website and offer of mail-order condoms raised ire among those who didn't see what Schwarz's staff saw every day in the city clinics:younger and younger children showing up with STDs and positive pregnancy tests.

In fact, a report that year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified Philadelphia as having the earliest age of sexual initiation - 13 - among cities participating in the study. So it was crucial to make condoms available to younger kids.

"We know that sexual activity in young adolescents doesn't change overnight," Schwarz told me back then. "But children need to be protected while we get our heads around whatever the long-term strategies should be here."

Because most of Philly's poor are people of color, and illegitimacy is highest among the poor, there's a danger in looking at this issue as one only of race. It's not. I can walk you through many Philly neighborhoods where too-young white moms push baby strollers, too. Poor is poor.

Still, Chad Dion Lassiter says that one way to make a big impact on unprepared pregnancy is to focus on the behavior of young black men. Lassiter, the co-founder and president of Black Men at Penn School of Social Work Inc., also sat on the Mayor's Commission on African-American Males, whose charge was to improve life for such men and boys in Philadelphia.

"We have to tackle the racial elephant in the room on this issue," says Lassiter. "We don't want young African-American males or females to lose the promise of their adolescence by taking care of children, trying to decide whether to pay for Pampers or the prom. We need to mentor them to stay in school, to plan for the future. We need their contributions to society.

"If we can't prevent them from being sexually active, we must at least teach them to take preventive measures so no one gets pregnant or gets an STD. And if they become parents anyway, the males need to be accountable in raising that child."

Or, as Mayor Nutter told me yesterday: "A girl doesn't get pregnant by herself. But more often than not, the responsibility falls on the young lady as if it just 'happened' to her, as if the guy wasn't even there."

He had stopped by the Daily News for some Election Day chat, so I asked him about the Mayor's Commission on African-American Males.

"The work we have tried to do around black male engagement is also about mentorship and responsibility and, it sounds corny, but how to be a better citizen," Nutter said. "While we've made some gains in curtailing unplanned pregnancy, it still happens far too often."

In communities of color, he says, "there needs to be serious discussion with these young men about how to be responsible and also how not put themselves in that position in the first place."

He'd like to see more focus on the issue from national groups like Black Male Engagement Community and My Brother's Keeper, President Obama's initiative to build support to tackle the opportunity gaps for boys and young men of color in this country.

Lassiter is more blunt.

"We need to tell young men, 'You are meant to be more than a breeder,' " he says. " 'Fatherhood is about so much more than that.' "

I'd like to hear the next mayor use his bully pulpit to make the same declaration, loudly and often. If we want to reduce the size of the elephant in the room, we first have to acknowledge that it's there.

Email: polaner@phillynews.com

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog

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