¿Tienes hijos?

Do you have children? This is a question the children at the comedor ask me regularly. It was the first question many of them asked when I first arrived - even before asking my name, age, etc. After I tell them that I do not have children, they ask me how old I am. They always look really shocked that I don't have children. One day, some of the middle school age boys asked me how old I am. As soon as I answered, they started talking about how old their parents are (30ish) - not much older than me.

Many girls, especially in the poor barrios, like where the the comedor is located, start having babies as teenagers. I don't think I've ever met so many pregnant teens in my life. When families come to the comedor for meals, I'm never sure if a child is someone's younger sibling or their child. I've learned of a number of 13-year-old girls who are pregnant. And 15 seems to be a normal age to have your first child in the barrio where I work. After having this knowledge, it's no surprise the children are all shocked I don't have any children of my own - if I had had a baby when I was 15, it would be the same age as many of them.

Beto and I have had discussions about this and he said that many families just don't talk about sex with their children. After 6th grade, you're not required to attend school here, so people don't go to school and are just hanging around the house and the barrios. I learned that sex ed in schools has been a big controversy between the government and the Catholic church for the past 15 years, so it hasn't really been taught. The Catholic church was adamantly against sex ed until recently, but the damage has already been done, as one of my friends put it.

Teen pregnancy seems to be more of an issue in the poor barrios than in the wealthy areas because sex isn't sensored as much for the poor. They live in small houses where there's no privacy. The children at the comedor regularly tell Beto stories about hearing and/or seeing their parents having sex - the parents think the children are asleep. Or stories of seeing older siblings having sex. But they don't talk about it in their homes, so the children are uneducated about sex and copy what they see, maybe not knowing potential consequences.