Published: 21 October, 2007, 10:00
Edited: 21 October, 2007, 10:00
Approximately one in ten new mothers in Russia is under age, and despite the severity of the problem it's one that remains largely ignored.
Teenagers who become parents is an issue that won't go away. But what can be changed is an attitude – that giving birth to one life is not necessarily the end of another.
Inna Dytskova was fifteen when she discovered she was pregnant, and she kept her secret from her mother, a single parent herself, for seven months.
“She dreamt that I would graduate from a university, get a degree. And there I was – pregnant, as my grandmother said. I was now destined to be a cleaner for the rest of my life,” said Inna Dytskova.
When the going gets tough, the tough get
going, thinks Inna Dytskova – a young mother
Inna was expelled from school. She managed to scrape along by sheer force of character, and completed her studies.
Now aged 30, she's a fully qualified psychologist.
With the state providing next to no support, pregnant teenagers who refuse an abortion are forced to give up their education to eke out a living.
“I never thought there might be any organisations that could help me. No one wrote or talked about them. I knew I could only rely on myself,” Inna explained.
Since the Soviet social services were swept away in the early 90s, individual charities have slowly emerged in their place.
For ten years, a special commune in St. Petersburg has been providing young mothers and their babies with a supportive environment in which to live and learn.
In the country's capital no such shelter exists. But there are some people still determined to help.
Marianna, a former teacher, runs the Goluba day centre in a Moscow apartment. It offers practical, legal and psychological help to girls, taking on roughly two new cases a week.