Research Paper

Emanuella Garcia
Sociology 201-D01
Teenage Pregnancy Research Paper
December 13, 2013

Abstract Teenage pregnancy is a great deal in society of the social world. Teenage pregnancy can either be a good or bad influence among other teenagers of the world. Teenage pregnancy is often foreseen as a horrible aspect of life because the mothers are too young to raise a child. Teen mothers have a hard time in life and go through major problems with themselves and the child’s life. Teenage pregnancy deals with low self-esteem, depression, and drug abuse. Their life is hard to live but they make it and try to succeed even though it takes them longer to get their high school diploma and college diploma.

Teenage pregnancy is a major problem in many countries and societies. Most teenage girls really do not plan to get pregnant but they eventually do. In every teen pregnancy is a high risk to the teen mother. Most teenagers also do not get prenatal care because they find out too late about their pregnancy. These teenagers also have a high risk for pregnancy related things like premature births, high blood pressure, and low birth weight. Teen pregnancy is a very big deal in most societies because it is not looked upon as a good thing. It shows that the parents were not doing a good job in raising their children. Most teenage pregnancies are shunned upon because they had sex before they are married, mostly single parents, and most of them do not even finish school. There are eleven facts about teenage pregnancy. There might be more facts but in this article there are only eleven. The first fact about teenage pregnancy is that 3 out 10 teenage American will get pregnant at least one time before the age of 20. The estimated number of American teenage girls is 750,000 teenage pregnancies every year. Most American teenage girls usually have more than one pregnancy before they turn age 20. The parenthood is the first reason why teenage girls drop out of middle and high schools. Most of the teenage girls that are teenage mothers do not graduate from high school. They drop out of school because most of them do not have the support system from their parents at home. So they choose the easy way out and drop out of school. The third fact about teenage pregnancy is that less than 2 percent of teenage mothers earn a college degree by the age of 30. Teenage mothers probably feel like they are not good enough to be successful in life and just decide to work at restaurant and store jobs. There is another fact which is that about a quarter of most teenage mothers has a second baby within 24 months of their first child. Being a mother is very important to teenage mothers and they feel loved by their child. Teenagers had fewer babies in the year of 2010 than in any year since the mid-1940s. The 1940s was the year that a lot of children were born. Half of teenagers never really considered how a baby would affect their lives and how much their life would change because a child was born and it is a lot of responsibility. A teenager that is sexually active and does not use any protection like birth control or condoms will become pregnant 90 percent of the time in a year. Protection prevents pregnancy most of the time so it is wise to use protection. The United States have one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates on the western side of the world. Most countries believe that American teenagers are wild and have no parental control over their children. From the year 1990 to 2008, teenage pregnancy rate decreased 42 percent which is 117 to 68 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. Basically teen pregnancy is dropping year after year probably because of protection. In the year 2008 in the African-American and Hispanic teenage girls from the age of 15 to 19 there was over two and half more teenagers getting pregnant than white teenage girls in the same age group. Most African American and Hispanic girls do not have positive role models in their house, most people in the family are teen mothers, and they live in poor communities. One of the major last facts about teenage pregnancies is that 8 out of 10 teenage fathers do not marry the mother of their child. These facts give a lot of information about why teenage pregnancy is hard to except in the social society of the world (Anonymous 1, 2013). Teenage pregnancy comes from teenage girls that live in a very disadvantaged and dysfunctional social economic world and environment background. Most teenage mothers live in a routine life of teen mothers are depression, low education level basically not finishing high school, stress, they are not that healthy, and live in a poor life habitat. Most teenage fathers leave the mother of the child because they do not want the responsibility of being a father because it is a whole lot of work. The father of the baby usually leaves the mother when she is either still pregnant or two years after the child is living in the world. Most teenagers do not use protection to prevent any pregnancy are because they fear rejection if they try to ask to use condoms, they are not mature enough to be responsible with sexual relations with one another, they do not prepare enough time with each other in order to use protection while having sex, the teenage girls do not have enough responsibility to take their birth control pills, and promoting safe and healthy sexual behavior will sort of prevent teenage pregnancy. Most places try to prevent teenage pregnancy by having family life in schools to inform the students about sexually transmitted disease, protection, and unplanned pregnancies and youth clinics can also prevent teenage pregnancies because they give the same information like the family life class but with more important information in better detail (Anonymous 3, 2013). There are many ways that teenage pregnancy can be changed in order to get the social problems of this situation under control. One major problem is that the children from teenage mothers have a harder time with teen pregnancy and childbearing because there is a higher risk in economic, social, and health problems. The children from teenage parents have higher rates in abuse and neglect. These children have these problems because the parents are too young to be responsible with parental duties. The statistics of the sons of the teenage mothers are twice more likely to end up in jail than the mothers who had children at age 20 and 21 and the daughters of young teenage mothers that are three times more likely to also be teenage mothers too. In this article it is said that preventing teenage pregnancy is a very critical thing to do in today’s times but it is hard to control now. In this article the only way they can improve child well-being is to basically reduce the amount of children born to teenage mothers. But this will be a difficult task to achieve because half of these teenagers do not use any protection and they are reckless to the reality of the world. A fact about most teenage pregnancy is that they experience more violence and sexual abuse than a regular teenager. They say teenagers that use drugs and alcohol are very sexually active and they have a tendency not to use protection when they have sexual relations with one another and they also have more sexual partners. These teenagers also most likely started having sex at a very young age. Teenage pregnancy is a social problem in the world of sociology stated that 38% of teenage girls that have a child before the age of 18 will get a high school diploma by the age of 22. The percentage rate of these mothers move out of their families’ household live below the poverty level is 67 percent. There are 63% of teenage mothers that get help from the government in the first year of the baby’s life (Anonymous 2, 2013). In the article called School-based Groups to Support Multiethnic Sexual Minority Youth Resiliency: Preliminary Effectiveness is basically related to teenage pregnancy because most studies are done on teenage mothers and foster children. These teenagers are related and have a lot of problems because their lives are difficult to handle. This article also relates itself to teen pregnancy because they get treated wrong just like them and that they have a lot of emotional problems too. These teenagers experience depression, sexual orientation, and low self-esteem. They really do not have any authoritative or parental help to help guide these teenagers in the world and they are off track and not focused (Craig, Austin, McInroy, 2013). Sayantani DasGupta stated that teen pregnancy is basically called an “epidemic” which basically means a “moral panic.” This article basically discriminates against minority teenage mothers instead of every race with poverty, gender, and sexuality. An example is that a weeping boy of color beside a slogan saying “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen,” showing the social problems of moral outrage and hostility towards the young colored teenage mothers. A lady named Haydee Morales stated that “it’s not teen pregnancies that cause poverty, but poverty itself causes teen pregnancy (DasGupta, 2013).” Therefore, teenage pregnancy is a hard life to live most teenage mothers. These mothers try to do the right thing in life but they feel shamed because everyone in school, family, and friends. Most teenage mothers are looked upon as bad people and unworthy. They really do not have the responsibility as an adult but they have to grow up fast and most likely drop out of school to raise their child honorably and with parental guidance. These are some of the major reasons why teen pregnancy is frowned upon and is a social problem in today’s world. The church sometimes show that they do not like the fact that these mothers are unwed and committing a sin. Some church families help the teenage mothers get through life. The family can either be supportive or not but most of them are not supportive of a teenager having a baby. These teenage mothers can form a group in the community with other teenage mothers to help each other out in the time of need. Teenage pregnancy is a big deal to me but I do not judge these girls I try to help them get through life with a positive path.

APA Works Cited
• Craig S., Austin A., and McInroy B. L. School-based groups to support multiethnic sexual minority youth resiliency: preliminary effectiveness. (2013) Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10560-013-0311-7.
• Anonymous 1. (2013) 11 facts about teen pregnancy. Retrieved from http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-teen-pregnancy#.
• Anonymous 2. Why it matters: teen pregnancy. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/why-it-matters/wim_teens.aspx.
• Anonymous 3. Teenage pregnancy. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.msss.gouv.qc.ca/en/sujets/prob_sociaux/teenage_pregnancy.php.
• DasGupta S. Teenage pregnancy as moral panic. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.psmag.com/health/teenage-pregnancy-moral-panic-66765/.

Cited: • Craig S., Austin A., and McInroy B. L. School-based groups to support multiethnic sexual minority youth resiliency: preliminary effectiveness. (2013) Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10560-013-0311-7. • Anonymous 1. (2013) 11 facts about teen pregnancy. Retrieved from http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-teen-pregnancy#. • Anonymous 2. Why it matters: teen pregnancy. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/why-it-matters/wim_teens.aspx. • Anonymous 3. Teenage pregnancy. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.msss.gouv.qc.ca/en/sujets/prob_sociaux/teenage_pregnancy.php. • DasGupta S. Teenage pregnancy as moral panic. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.psmag.com/health/teenage-pregnancy-moral-panic-66765/.