By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
The Cordillera Administrative Region has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the entire country. That’s according to the latest nationwide Young Adults Fertility Survey in 2013. I wouldn’t be surprised. I am an Igorot living in the Cordillera since birth and I know that Cordillera women normally had their first baby while still a teen-ager. My Mom was a teenager when she had her first pregnancy. Try asking your grandmother how old she was when she had her first pregnancy and chances are, she was a teenager. That is why they had a lot of children then – 10, 11, 12, 16 and more. My Mom had 11 pregnancies. They were strong women. At age 60, my Mom was stronger than me at age 40. Super women.
In the indigenous Igorot culture, it was natural for a woman to get married and get pregnant once she starts menses. In those days when the Igorot diet was organic, whole foods, all from nature in harmony with the seasons, girls had their menarche (first menstruation) when they were 16 or 17 years old. Old enough to know how to take care of themselves and siblings, farm and do other work to produce food and relate with others. I know of an Igorot child who learned to cook rice when she was grade 1 and that was in 1989. She was 7 years old and I admired her and her parents for teaching her. It’s not child labor- it is a survival skill. We, Igorots, as their parents or guardians and as community members, teach our children early on how to live well by showing them the way.
In those days also everybody was a farmer, save for a very few teachers and office workers in the municipio. Even if you were a teacher or office worker, you were a farmer after office hours. In those days, we lived by tilling the land to produce food. In those days, there was not much choice as to what you would be. People were happy that way.
Igorots are also strongly independent, in the sense that, as long as you can, you do the task at hand. Like you, whether you are male or female, learn to plant rice and camote and beans at an early age because you don’t just sit around and wait for your parents to bring home food for you. Food independence is, I think, a necessary empowerment. After classes, I would chop camote leaves and “ta’ba” (banana stalk) for pig food, cook it, feed the pigs, chickens, etc. My parents brought us along the farm on weekends and, when I was younger, my task was to wipe off the soil from the camote & put them in the sack. That was after we went alumani (blueberry) picking in the nearby mountains. When I was older, I would already dig for the camote and carry a small sack as we walked home. And so on. That’s how we were able to build strong bones and muscles – because of the various, natural, physical activities. It was natural to help parents and others. Thus when women and men got married, even at the age of 16 or 17, they not only survived, they flourished. They grew up, got married, got pregnant, delivered in their homes naturally, without complications, raised their children until they matured and established their own families. And the cycle naturally went on.
The conditions prevailing then in indigenous Igorot society encouraged people to get married early. There was no high school or college nearby where they could go to keep them busy while feeding them. In the late 1930s, my Dad and his companions had to walk for days from Besao to La Trinidad just so they can enroll in free high school education with food and accommodations, although they worked in the gardens (it was an agricultural school). (In those days, school was seen by some parents as teaching kids to be lazy.) Igorot homes then were one room affairs. Once children became a bit older, a boy would sleep in the “ato” or “dap-ay” and the girl would sleep in the “olog” or “ebgan”. These were not big houses either thus they had limited capacity. And when an Igorot marries, the couple is expected to bear children. Natural. And, just like the generations before them, their parents and grandparents and other community members would be with the children all the time, caring for them and teaching them, showing them how to live well. Remember, there were no classrooms then, only the University of Life.
Now, why are we so stressed about teenage pregnancy? Because of many reasons, I will just mention two. First, have we taught our children how to be independent? At least man sana independent in terms of food. We cannot say our teenage child is food-independent if all she knows is buy instant noodles and infertile eggs in the store, puts them together with vetsin in a pot and boil them. What if she has no money? And where will she get money? Does she know how to cook rice well? Have we taught her that real food is whole food, not hotdog or those highly-processed foods? Have we taught her that white bread is not whole food? Have we taught her that vetsin is not food? When I say “we”, I am not only referring to the parents or guardians but to teachers. School is supposed to prepare students for life. Geez, we really should be worried. Our young people are getting sick with diseases that are caused primarily by unhealthy eating and sedentary life. Some of our high school students are already hypertensive. They are still teen-agers and yet they have diseases of adults. We really are making our children age prematurely. It’s dangerous for a woman, at whatever age, to be pregnant and hypertensive- dangerous for the pregnant woman herself and for her baby in the womb. She can just go into convulsions. The baby would be choked in the womb by the high pressure. Just imagine. Bad food does not only cause hypertension in the pregnant woman, it could also cause diabetes, pneumonia, kidney infection, abnormalities in the newborn, premature birth or small babies, stillbirth, etc. A diabetic pregnant woman has the tendency to have big babies and they won’t be able to pass through the birth canal.
Second reason to make us worry about teenage pregnancy is that girls nowadays are starting to menstruate early. 9 years old and even 4 years old. Does a 9 year old know how to take care of herself? How much more if she has a baby? How about a 4 year-old? Gives me the creeps. And why is this? We have discussed this phenomenon in earlier columns. The short explanation for early menses is again bad food – there’s so much estrogen or female hormones in today’s foods that will tamper with the natural design of life. Hormones are present in feeds for layer hens, hormones are present in milk and other milk products. The natural design of nature is that when a girl menstruates, it is a signal that she is mature enough to get pregnant. So in the past, it was ok for a teen-ager to get pregnant because they menstruated at age 16 or 17 and at this age in the past, they already were taught how to live in the University of Life. So at that age, they were mature physically, emotionally and psychologically. Today, it is not okay to be pregnant at 16 or 17 because you still have to go finish college and get a stable job. Unless you know how to farm and you like the job. Nagaget ka ay mensama. For me, farming, especially organic rice farming, is one of the most honored jobs because it produces good food. You cannot eat coins or bills. But our society now does not prepare teen-agers for independence- majority are still so dependent on their parents for support, financially, emotionally and psychologically. How much more for a 9 year old child? She’s supposed to be out there playing patintero. But we train them to be Miss Philippines as early as pre-school, complete with make-up and high heels and all those seductive posing. Who are we to blame?***
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“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
