Out Here By Ourselves

Book excerpt: Despite the significant number of AIDS affected youth in the United States, the plight of these young people has been largely disregarded. This book presents the stories of several young people whose mothers had AIDS or had died from the disease. They speak directly about their experiences and their concerns. Individual and common themes in their stories are analyzed to gain insight into their problems and to develop an understanding of how best to respond to their needs. Some prominent themes shared by the participants are: longstanding unstable living arrangements; serious conflict with their mothers; multiple losses in the youth's lives, even before the AIDS crisis; the mother's past drug use; behavioral problems and difficulties with limits in the family, school, and the community; unsafe sexual behavior; and childbearing within a year of the mother's death. These issues are exacerbated by the poverty, discrimination, and violence in the communities in which these and many AIDS affected young people live.