The world can be a lonely and overwhelming place when you’re a teenager with a child.

Miaya Running knows this all too well. In 2017, she was just 15 years old when she had her son Xaedian. She lived alone in a house owned by her father, though he lived downstate. Here she was, still a child herself, saddled with one of the most enormous responsibilities a person can have.

“Some days I didn’t even know how to take care of myself. How was I supposed to take care of a infant baby?” she tells The Ticker. “I had no job, I had no car, I was a single mother with full sole custody of my son. I had nobody. My life was Xaedian and I.”

Nobody became somebody when Running got involved with a doula program specifically designed for teen parents. The program helped her stay in school (she graduated from Traverse City High School with a 3.8 GPA) and assisted with many other odds and ends.

Now, Running is on the board of Generations Ahead, a local nonprofit organization launched in 2019 that replaced and significantly expanded the services provided by the doula program, which had been around in one form or another since the 1970s.  

“I love Xaedian with my whole heart, but becoming a teen parent is really, really hard,” she says. “I want to be the voice that’s been through it and support others going through the same thing…it’s really hard to open up to somebody who’s never lived the experience you have.”

The six county region (Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau and Wexford) averaged 74 teen births per year from 2017-2022, and the negative consequences of teen pregnancies such as these are well documented. Many mothers struggle to complete school, which leads to poverty and housing instability. Both mothers and children also have poorer health outcomes and higher rates of depression, anxiety and emotional problems. Various socioeconomic issues are also common.

Services provided by Generations Ahead are designed to intervene in or prevent these consequences. Assistance comes in the form of a one-on-one mentor program, baby pantry, social and family enrichment activities, community referrals and much more. There’s also a very heavy focus on education support.

“We know a teen that gets pregnant while still in high school has a much lower chance of graduating, which comes with all kinds of repercussions throughout their life and in the life of the child,” Generations Ahead Executive Director Marjie Rich tells The Ticker. “So one of the most important areas that we focus on is empowering our young parents to return to school and at a minimum get their high school degree.”

Since opening its doors five years ago, Generations Ahead has provided services to 136 moms, 32 dads and 190 children. Its staff of six does as much as it can, but volunteers also play a huge role. Volunteer mentors in particular take the time to build real relationships with young parents, helping them with transportation, job applications and so much more as they navigate life.

Having that “trustworthy, dependable, reliable adult” in their life is often the most impactful part of the Generations Ahead experience, Rich says.

“They provide a lot of support to many of our parents don’t have…and it’s such a beautiful thing” Rich says. “When we ask our clients afterwards what the most meaningful thing was, they'll say (the mentor program). It can be an incredibly rewarding experience for both people in that partnership.”

But it’s also important for teen parents to have face time with others in their shoes, so plenty of social programming is designed to meet that need. 

“Our parents experience very high rates of depression and anxiety, part of that is because they are isolated from their peers either because they've dropped out of school or because they've lost their friend group,” Rich says. “We address that in different ways, one being play groups so that they can get out and meet other young parents and use this as an opportunity to share ideas to talk about their challenges.”

Though most attention on the issue of teen pregnancy goes to moms, Generations Ahead recently hired a fatherhood advocate. Even if the father is no longer connected to the mother, the organization wants to provide as much help as it can to young men.

“It’s been a dream of mine and a goal of our board and strategic plan that we really enhance our support for teen fathers,” Rich says. “Research documents and demonstrates that a father involved in a child's life is beneficial on so many levels for that baby – it's beneficial for their social and emotional intelligence, it's beneficial for their academic readiness. It’s our belief at Generations Ahead is that having more loving caring invested adults in a child's life, the better.”

The organization also hopes to break something that tends to repeat itself by empowering these young parents.

"We know that this is a cycle. Many of our young parents had teen parents themselves, and it's a cultural norm for many of our clients," Rich says. "So one of the things that we are trying to do by supporting our young moms and young dads is interrupting that cycle so that they can give their children advantages that they themselves never had."

Photo: Miaya and Xaedian