The Homeless Youth Estimation Project is designed to provide a reliable estimate of the number of youth in any given school district who have left home and are living somewhere else — a car, a friend’s house, with a boyfriend or girlfriend — temporarily.

About 10 years ago, we started hearing from our direct-service colleagues that the girls in their programs were facing new pressures to look and act in sexual ways. While children in state care had always been at higher risk of sexual abuse than other kids, with all the attending behavioral fallout, it seemed like something new was happening. Something in the culture, perhaps.

In the 1970s, our field barely existed. Now it does, because we built it. And we’re not simply fumbling along, doing our best. We’re being effective. There’s incalculable power in that.

In the first episode, we meet the mom-to-be, a regular, fresh-faced girl from some small town in Kentucky or Texas or South Dakota. Somehow she’s gotten five months pregnant, and everyone — family, friends, boyfriend, the girl herself — still seems a little dazed.

It’s easy for adults like me to be outraged and wounded in advance for little girls like the one I’m describing, who after all are learning at such a tender age to value themselves only through the appraising eyes of their peers and and the frankly predatory older boys who seem to beckon them ever closer