According to the National Teen Campaign to Prevent Teen
Pregnancy, four out of every ten teenage girls will become pregnant
before they reach the age of twenty, resulting in over 900,000 teen
pregnancies a year. With this alarming statistic, the United States
has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the fully industrialized
world.
According to the National Teen Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, four out of every ten teenage girls will become pregnant before they reach the age of twenty, resulting in over 900,000 teen pregnancies a year. With this alarming statistic, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the fully industrialized world.
When I found out about the incredibly high rate of teen pregnancy, I was totally blown away. I had no idea that there were that many teen mothers out there. The fact that there are proves that we still have a lot of teaching to do in high school. It seems that the regular Sex Ed course just doesn’t do the job.
There are a lot of factors involved in teen pregnancy, and I feel the biggest one is that young teenage girls just aren’t aware of all the risks of unprotected sex. We don’t receive the crucial knowledge about responsible behavior, such as abstinence and use of contraceptives until well after we’ve already been exposed to the dangers of sex.
It’s everywhere. Movies, magazines, signs, songs, clothing…sexual innuendo sells merchandise. It’s so commonplace, we don’t always notice it. But the commercials and programs on television directly impact styles and behaviors of teens today. The language and the subject matter of movies and songs is accepted and emulated by kids.
I have a friend who was pregnant in her senior year of high school and I’ve heard and seen for myself the consequences it brings. On the night of her senior prom she stayed at home, nine months pregnant, while the rest of her classmates danced away one of the most memorable nights of high school. But missing her prom wasn’t even the icing on the cake. Since the day she became pregnant, she’s been forced to make sacrifices right and left. Things have never been easy, but she is very lucky to have her husband there for her to get through every tough step.
She had to have a fulltime job right out of high school and was unable to continue on to college. She missed out on all the fun, carefree times that teens rightfully deserve. But although it has never been easy, she has stepped up to the incredible responsibility of having kids at such a young age. She loves her children unconditionally, but she knows that she sacrificed a major part of childhood to have them.
Many pregnant teens aren’t as fortunate as she was. The guys don’t always stick around to help out, and finding a fulltime, well-paid job right out of high school isn’t easy.
Most teen mothers are less likely to complete school and more likely to become single parents. Less than one-third of teens that are pregnant before the age of eighteen even earn their high school diploma.
“What troubles me is when another girl finds out I have a daughter and she says, ‘That is so neat.’ A car is neat, an outfit is neat, a baby is not. They take a lot of time and work. When you become a mom, you become responsible (physically, emotionally and financially) for a child for the rest of your life. There are no weekends or summer vacations, the child will always be there,” said one teen mother regarding her experience.
Teen pregnancy is also closely linked to poverty and single parenthood. A 1990 study showed that almost one-half of all teenage mothers and over three-quarters of unmarried teen mothers began receiving welfare within five years of the birth of their first child. The increase of single parent families remains the single most important reason for rising poverty statistics among children over the last twenty years, as was documented in the 1998 Economic Report of the President.
There are also several health risks involved in teen pregnancy. Young adolescents, particularly those under the age of fifteen, experience a maternal death rate two and half times greater than that of mothers aged 20-24. Other common medical problems among adolescent mothers include poor weight gain, pregnancy-induced hypertension, anemia, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and cephalopelvic disproportion. Later in life, adolescent mothers tend to be at a greater risk for obesity and hypertension than woman who were not teenagers when they had their first child.
But the health risks affect not only the young mother, but the baby as well. Children born to teen mothers suffer from higher rates of low birth weight and other related health problems. The proportion of babies with low birth weights born to teens is 28 percent higher than the proportion for mothers age 20-24. Low birth weight raises the probabilities of infant death, blindness, deafness, chronic respiratory problems, mental retardation, mental illness and cerebral palsy.
Plus, to make it worse, low birth weight doubles the chances that a child will later be diagnosed as having dyslexia, hyperactivity or other disabilities.
To worsen the health problems, the children of teen mothers receive less medical care and treatment. In the child’s first 14 years, the average child of a teen mother visits a physician and other medical providers an average of 3.8 times per year, compared with 4.3 times for a child of an older mother.
Another risk for children of teen mothers is inadequate parenting. These children are at a higher risk of being subjected to poor parenting because the mother – and often the father as well – is typically too young to master the demanding and stressful job of being a parent. Still growing and developing themselves, teen mothers are often unable to provide the kind of environment that infants and very young children require for optimum development.
It’s hard for me to imagine what I would do if I had a child right now. Although I recently turned eighteen, I still feel I have a lot of growing up to do before I really consider myself an adult. The world is full of harsh responsibilities and I’d much rather take them one at a time. I still rely on my mom and I don’t make enough money from my job to support my shoe and purse fetish, let alone a small child.
Before you have sex, just realize the consequences and responsibilities that come along with it. If you’re not able to prevent them, then maybe abstinence is the best thing until you can. When you become pregnant, it doesn’t change your life for the next nine months, it changes it forever.
