Imagine teen-agers who want to have a child to fit in with their friends.

This concept may sound drastic, but it’s the leading reason for children wanting children, said Leon Dash, professor of journalism and Afro-American studies at the University of Illinois, during his presentation “When Children Have Children: Urban Crises of Teenage Childbearing” Tuesday night in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

“I found in almost every instance, they (the teen-agers) had purposely and consciously gotten pregnant,” Dash said. “What I didn’t understand initially was why.

“What I discovered was that in almost every case, it came down to peer pressure and the attention a child brought,” Dash said.

Dash said he discovered other reasons why teen-agers wanted children.

“Having a child was also a status symbol amongst their peers and an indication of the right of passage from adolescence to adulthood,” Dash said.

In July 1984, Dash rented a small apartment in Washington High Lance, a 100 percent African-American neighborhood with the highest teen-age child-bearing rate in Washington D.C. During the next 17 months, he interviewed six entire families for an adolescence child-bearing project for The Washington Post .

“What I discovered at first was that no one told me the truth,” Dash said. “Until I completely gained their trust, all I received was the answers they thought I wanted to hear.”

These answers are what experts have been telling us for years, Dash said. These excuses include moments of passion, ignorance about reproduction and lack of knowledge about birth control.

Dash divided his interviews into four parts – school, family, church and peers. As he conducted the interviews, he noted inconsistencies that led him to his conclusion.

“Some girls would say they didn’t know anything about sexuality or birth control, but when we discussed school, they contradicted themselves and admitted they were knowledgeable due to sex-education classes,” Dash said.

One common trait Dash discovered among all of the families was poverty and lack of education.

“To most these adolescence parents, this was a last chance for the model of American success because they know they don’t have a chance at college,” Dash said. “To them and their peers, a child equals success.”

Dash worked for The Washington Post from 1965 to 1998. He won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for his work “Rosa Lee: Poverty and Survival in Washington.”

The presentation was sponsored by the African-American Heritage Committee.