With teen pregnancy on such a rise, there are many issues that can be discussed: the many risks of teen pregnancy, society’s approval of teen pregnancy, the responsibilities of those now teen parents, and ways to handle or prevent teen pregnancy. Although these are not the only important factors that arise in the subject of teen pregnancy, they are among the most important.
There are many risks for teens when they become pregnant. Young girls who get pregnant do not know what they are getting themselves into. Most young girls get pregnant by mistake.
The social change that leads to this visibility is not only based on a change in sexual behaviors, but it also is based on a change in the nature of adolescence. These changes begin with the decline of the average age of menarche. The average age for menarche in girls ten years ago was 14.2; this age has dropped by two years since then. The average age for menarche today is 12.2. This statistic suggests that since girls are capable of having children at younger ages they are also more apt to have sex at a younger age.
The social changes that effects these statistics deal with the raising of the average age of marriage, standard attitudes towards marriage as a sacred institution, and economic shifts which have led to a need for longer educational careers. These changes have produced pockets of urban poverty where education is often not valued or taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the need for higher education is reflected in the fact that only at levels after high school has enrollment increased in recent years, and only in the late teens are whites more likely than blacks to enroll in an educational institution. Due to the demands of the economy many young people are dependent on their parents for a longer peroid of time which has left some groups without access to the economic options that allow them to prepare for the future.
Despite the fact that the teen birth rate is slowly falling, there are still an estimated one million teen pregnancies in the United States alone. About 85% of these pregnancies are unplanned, which in any population can increase the risk for problems.
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