teen parenting makenna

Makenna Byers Pd. 5
Teen Parenting In 2010, approximately 16 out of every 1000 children were born to teenage mothers between the ages of 15 and 19. Having a baby as a teenager changes everything for the rest of your life. Facing parenthood as a teen not only affects you but everyone around you. It is important to understand the all the things that come with having a baby which can be a struggle for people who are happily married with a job let alone a teenager in high school or college. There are numerous struggles and impacts of teen parenting. Teens get pregnant for all kinds of reasons, but some are more likely to have a child than their peers. These include teenagers who experience regular conflict in their family, suffered violence and sexual abuse in childhood, had a mother who was a young parent, have unstable housing arrangements, have trouble performing at school, are from a low socioeconomic background, have an absent father, have low self-esteem. Teenagers are more likely to get pregnant than older women because they don’t use birth control or because they have romanticized ideas about having a baby. It is imperative that teens know a baby won’t make the father stay or make the relationship stronger. 8 out of 10 fathers don’t marry the mother of the child. Absent fathers also pay less than 800 dollars annually for child support, often because they are poor themselves and can’t afford legitimate support payments. Teens who have a baby are less likely to finish high school because school comes second it is the second leading reason why teen girls drop out of high school. Less than half of teenage mothers ever graduate from high school and fewer than 2% earn a college degree by age 30. Teens are more likely to rely on public assistance, more likely to be poor as adults and more likely to have children who have poorer educational, behavioral, and health outcomes over the course of their lives compared to children who are born to older parents. Children of teen mothers are 50% more likely to repeat a grade, are less likely to complete high school and have lower performances on standardized tests. Teen parents cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars due to lost tax revenue, increased public assistance payments, and greater expenditures for public health care, foster care, and criminal justice services. The good news is that in the United States have declined almost continuously since the early 1990s including a teen percent drop from 2012 to 2013. These declines are associated with negative outcomes for parents, children, and society. For example, results from economic analyses suggest that implementing evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs, mass media campaigns and other ways of promoting safe sex may reduce teen pregnancy and save taxpayer dollars. The teen pregnancy program addresses teen pregnancy rates by supporting guarantees in replicating evidence-based models and implementing demonstration programs to develop and test additional models and innovative strategies. Also, the Pregnancy Assistance Fund was set up to help pregnant and parenting teens receive the education, health care, parenting skills, and additional supports that they need. This help may improve the likelihood of success in adulthood for these young parents, and reduce the probability that they will have or father other children as teens and that their children will grow up and become teen parents. Even though the United States is seeing this decline, the birth rate is still higher than that of many developed countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. Teen parenting also has a serious effect on the kids. More than half of all mothers on welfare had their first child as a teen. Two-thirds of families begin by a young, unmarried mother are poor. Children who live apart from their father are 5 times more likely to be poor than children with both parents at home. The daughters of young teen moms are 3 times more likely to become teen mothers themselves. The sons of teen mothers are twice as likely to end up in prison. I don’t think teenage pregnancy is taken seriously enough these days. Although, the teenage birth rates are lower than ever for the United States they are still the highest compared to other developed countries. In the article by Meghan Duam she talks about how when she was in high school being a pregnant teenager was the worst possible situation you could be in. Not that it is a good situation to be in today but it is taken a lot lighter. There are several ways to prevent teen pregnancy and teens need to realize that sometimes their actions will have consequences that will affect their lives forever. In my opinion, I think teen pregnancy is not acceptable at all. Your teen years are for being with friends and getting an education not having to take care of an infant. I think it is good that programs are set up to encourage safe sex and also help teens understand what having a baby will actually do to your life. Teen parenting is not something that should ever be taken lightly even if the rates in the United States are going down it is still a problem.

Works Citied
Daum, Meghan. “Teenage pregnancy just isn’t scary enough anymore.” Chicago Tribune. 21
January 2015.
Malone, Gloria. “I Was a Teenage Mother.” New York Times. 21 January 2015.
Roan, Shari. “U.S. teen pregnancy rate remains highest in developed world.” Los Angeles
Times. 21 January 2015.