Teen defies deadbeat stereotype
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By The Associated Press | Tuesday, November 14, 2006 |
DES MOINES — Nate Watson was 16, and he was scared.
Watson had just learned his girlfriend was pregnant. Nearing the end of his sophomore year at North High School, he didn’t know what to do. He thought about dropping out of school and getting a full-time job. He cried on his mother’s shoulder. He went on long, soul-searching walks by himself.
The next nine months went by quickly, Watson said. He moved in with his girlfriend, Jessica Fattig, and waited on her every need. He cooked and cleaned and brought her buckets when she had to throw up. He endured her mood swings. He ran to the store to pick up foods she was craving.
Watson felt too young to be a father. But he saw plenty of young men around his neighborhood and in school who had children but didn’t care for them. Being that sort of “deadbeat dad” — a term that spews from Watson’s mouth with disdain — was the last thing he wanted to be.
Two days after Christmas 2004, Jessica started feeling contractions. They rushed to Broadlawns Medical Center. Watson held Jessica’s hand as doctors performed a Caesarian section.
A baby girl, Jalia Lynnae Watson, arrived.
“It was like I’d won the lottery,” Watson, now 18, said of his first days as a father. “You just can’t stop smiling. It was a responsibility I needed to take care of. I had to make sure, over everything there is, I have to be there for my daughter.”
Even after he and Jessica broke up, he knew he wanted to be a parent, not a “baby daddy” who hardly sees his child.
“In this day and age it’s a rarity,” said Kittie Weston-Knauer, principal at Scavo Alternative High School, where Watson transferred after learning Jessica was pregnant. “He had to grow up whether he liked it or not. So he just said, ’I’ve got to do it and do it right.“’
Among black fathers in Iowa, Watson’s decision is even more of an anomaly.
“That’s the exception, but that’s what he’s supposed to do,” said Jonathan Narcisse, a black community activist who in 2001 wrote the “State of Black Iowa” report, a 3,500-page comprehensive study on blacks in the state.
According to the State of Black Iowa report, 53 percent of black children in Iowa are raised by a single parent. (Thirty percent are raised in a two-parent home, and 17 percent are living in a home where both parents are absent.)
Almost 90 percent of single black parents in Iowa raising their children are mothers, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report.
The effect on a child of growing up in a fatherless home is astonishing. The National Fatherhood Initiative says more than poverty and race, fatherlessness is the highest predictor of juvenile violence. Fatherless teen girls are three times more likely to become chronic juvenile offenders; fatherless teen boys are 10 times more likely, according to the NFI.
Watson didn’t want his baby’s outlook to be that bleak.
“I know a lot of people who are just not ever there for their kid,” Watson said. “They don’t even know their child’s name. That was the reason I kept with it. I didn’t want to be a deadbeat. It seemed like everyone would say, ‘He’s a deadbeat, he’s not going to be there for the baby.“’
Instead, Watson set out to prove everyone wrong.
Creeping up on 2 years, a rambunctious Lili eats everything he serves. She has curly black hair, grey eyes and a joyful, open-mouthed smile. She sometimes hits people, and Dad admits it’s difficult to be tough on her. Her first words, Watson said, were, “Give me it now,” when he took away a toy.
Watson’s parents are astounded seeing the transformation of their son — from a struggling boy who didn’t care about school to an ambitious young man who factors his daughter into every decision.
“All he thinks about is his daughter now,” said Jeffrey Watson, Nate’s dad. “He’s just working hard and trying to support his daughter. Just stepping forward and being a man.”
“My son ... buys diapers and milk and clothes and toys,” Nate’s mother, Jessie Burrage, said. “For him, being an early dad means he doesn’t run the streets. He does the father thing. He doesn’t really go anywhere anymore. His friends have to come to him.”
For Watson, being an active, involved father is just something he must do. Watson and his mother share custody with Lili’s mother, Jessica, who says he is a good father.
Watson joined a parenting group at Scavo. Over the summer he worked in concessions at Principal Park. After graduating from Scavo in January, he wants to go to culinary school.
He’s been accepted at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in the Twin Cities, where he plans to start school in March. He worries about missing his daughter growing up. Lili will be staying with Watson’s mom, but he hopes to take the Greyhound home from the 60-week culinary program as often as possible.
“It’s gonna be tough being away from her so long,” Watson said. “But I know I’m doing something to better life for me and for her.”
Someday, he wants to achieve his dream: having his own restaurant.
He wants to name the restaurant “LiLi’s.”
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