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Just before noon, the mothers arrive at the day-care center. They join their children for lunch at small picnic tables on the enclosed blacktopped yard. To an outsider, it looks as though the children are eating with their much older siblings-that's because the mothers are still in their teens. They are students at Business Industry School, an L.A. Unified adult vocational facility that offers day care to its teen-age mothers for $5 a week.
It is a hard life for these young women. Most are single, many are in abusive relationships with their boyfriends, many live with other family members in crowded apartments. They are striving for high-school diplomas and better lives.
I sat on a bench with 19-year-old Claudia as her 3-year-old, Jerry, played nearby. Claudia and Jerry live four blocks from the school in a two-bedroom apartment with Claudia's parents, her four brothers and her grandmother. Claudia and Jerry sleep together on the bottom of a bunk bed. Jerry, she says, irritates her brothers, and the tension is constant. Two weeks ago, Jerry's 20-year-old father broke up with Claudia. As she told me this, her eyes reddened.
"We were planning so much stuff," she said....