Not Your Average Teen Mom.

• Author: Guiden, Mary
• Position: Louisiana Senator Paulette Irons

Being a teenage mother herself has motivated a Louisiana legislator to be a champion for preventing teen pegnancy.

You've seen the statistics: 49 percent of teen mothers are on welfare or public assistance within five years of the birth of a child; 69 percent of teen mothers qualify for Medicaid; in 1995, more than one-fifth of teens who gave birth already had at least one child; and approximately a third of teen mothers don't finish high school.

But here's a less-common profile of a teen mom that adds a whole new twist to the equation: member of the Legislature since 1993; attorney-at-law; vice chairman of the Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee; member of the Health and Welfare Committee; and member of the State and Local Task Force of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

This sketch belongs to Louisiana Senator Paulette Irons, who by speaking about her own experience as a teen mom may break the mold that most policymakers use to think about the issue.

Irons says she hasn't always been forthcoming about the fact that she was a teenage parent. "People would be shocked when they'd see my daughter because, there I was, this very young woman with this little adolescent. They'd say, 'Golly, you must have been young when you had that child,' and we'd just leave it at that," she says.

But when she ran for the Senate in 1995, Irons said that her political advisers thought her opponent might try to use the information in a negative way. To ward off any potentially harmful consequences, they thought she had to speak out first.

"I didn't really want to promote that or talk about it," Irons admitted. "As far as I was concerned, I had overcome the mistake I made, and I wanted to forget it."

Despite the "mistake," campaign workers promoted the idea that to be a 16-year-old mother, to finish high school and then go to college and law school were all "admirable" accomplishments. "I was very uncomfortable with it at first," she added, "but my advisers felt it was truly a way to set me off from my opponents, and we went with it."

Not only did she "go with it," but since that time Irons has become a tireless advocate for prevention of teen pregnancy. As president of the Louisiana Initiative for Teen Pregnancy Prevention, for example, she spearheaded a campaign last year to post billboards in her district which read: Virgin: Teach Your Kid It's Not a Dirty Word. Initially supported by the Louisiana State Baptist Convention, among other groups, the Virgin campaign is now also backed by Governor Mike Foster and has expanded to the northern part of the state. The governor credits Irons with being "responsible for...