Teen Pregnancy

Alicia Capellan Mr. Rooney Period 1
Psychology

We’ve all seen the shows about the teen mothers ; young girls getting pregnant at young ages and having to deal with the new responsibilities being thrown at them. According to Segen's Medical Dictionary teenage pregnancy is defined as a pregnancy by a female, age 13 to 19, which is understood to occur in a girl who hasn’t completed her core education—secondary school—has few or no marketable skills, is financially dependent upon her parents and/or continues to live at home and is mentally immature. On occasion, these pregnancies are unplanned to girls who are not yet married. No one truly understands these responsibilities unless they themselves have been put into the situation. Pregnant teenagers face many of the same obstacles as 20 and 30 year old woman. Some of the causes of early pregnancy among teenagers are lack of education especially sexual education, poverty, or problems with their family. One of the most important things is that young adults need to be educated on safe sex. Being a high school student myself , and going through countless years in health class, I could see where some kids feel they need to be taught more. A lot of schools raise the matter of abstinence and how you should wait until marriage to have sex. As lovely as that thought is, the truth is many teenagers in high school are already sexually active and should be taught ways to prevent pregnancies and diseases rather than “finding the right person and waiting until marriage.” Remember the old saying curiosity killed the cat ? Many teenagers are so curious about sex and not being taught well enough about it that they take it upon themselves to go out and find answers. Improving the sexual education departments and helping kids open up more and ask questions, could greatly decrease the number of teen parents. Becoming a mother with a young mind is not easy. Dealing with unplanned pregnancy among teenagers is confusing and scary. Depression, frustration, fear, and other emotional problem are some of the emotions that may experienced when they are facing these unplanned pregnancies. The pressure of deciding whether to keep the baby or not is also a great stressor. Also because of frustration, usually some teenage parents dropped out of school and never get a diploma. Based from the article on selfhelpmagazine.com, 80% of young teenage mothers are out of school. These only show that teenage pregnancy is really a serious problem that shouldn’t be ignored. In the United States , although the teenage pregnancy rates have declined , it is still one of the highest percentages worldwide. There are 39.1 teenage pregnancies for every 1,000 women in the United States. According to the United Kingdom , this is more than nine times the amount of teenage pregnancies in other developed nations. Still, roughly 1,100 teenage women give birth every day. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), that means one of every ten new mothers is a teenager. The majority are Hispanic or African-American, with respective birth rates nearly double that of white teenagers