In today’s society, teenage pregnancy has become the highest percentage rate in the U.S. In this present day, the problem is continuing and is vastly affecting our communities. The problem is that teens need to know how easily they can become pregnant. They are effected emotionally, financially, and many other ways. Teenage girls are not prepared to take responsibility of a child at such a young age. I believe the society needs to become more aware of this problem and get more involved in preventing teenage pregnancy. There are many possible solutions to this problem. These are the problems that need to be resolved in our society.
To begin, the problems of teenage pregnancy are continuing to increase thought out America. Too many teens are dropping out of school because they are pregnant and not able to finish school; or just don’t have the motivation to finish. Some either go back or get their G.E.D to get their high school diploma, so they can have the proper education. Most teenagers having low self esteem and feel peer pressured by their peers to have sex in order to fit in. Often they don’t know what they are doing and end up getting pregnant and not knowing the consequences. Now in this type of society, there are many teenagers whose relationships are based off sex. Nowadays some teens feel like they don’t have any other option. Another issue is when teens get pregnant it becomes a family problem. Parents have to help get involved financially to help their child help support their new found family.
When teenagers have their baby and drop out of school, they lack job skills; they don’t have the motivation to go find better jobs with better incomes to support their child. Therefore, a teen mother leaves school because she cannot manage the task of caring for a baby and studying, and a teen father usually chooses a job over school so that he can pay bills and provide for his child. These are the problems that they go through while trying to raise their child.
However, there are many possible solutions to prevent teenage pregnancy like sex education programs, teaching teenagers how to use proper birth control, or just an overall promotion of abstinence. There should be more programs on sex education and it should be enforced more in the school systems so teen pregnancy can be avoided. Some solutions can be proposed, life choices and recreation center which focus on giving teens options geared towards bettering their lives. These centers would be places where teens could come to hang out after school, in the evening and on the weekends. They have different activities like teaching the lessons of responsibilities, parenthood, and sex education programs. Another method is changing teenage behaviors in relationships, changing their focus and teaching them more important things other than sex like having better communication skills towards people. When teenage women have babies, they still have financial problems to take care of. Fortunately, the government is there to offer assistance. The government welfare really helps teenage parents maintain and help support their children. Some people depend on this benefit rather than getting a better job or finish school. In some cases, teen mothers may also receive help like Medicaid and food stamps. These benefits help support the child with food and health care without the parents having to worry about supporting because of the government. Lastly, the youth programs would greatly help to diminish teen pregnancy. As stated earlier, the programs should have different activities to help understand more of the importance of this issue. The programs can teach the teenagers about birth control, using condoms, improving parent-child communication, and behavior skills. Teenagers should learn behavior skills such as decision-making and refusing to have sex in their relationships this should be enforced in the programs. If these solutions could be enforced more in the U.S. the percentage rate should be decrease to help our society. Education and mentoring programs are helping but however, every year there are still teens becoming pregnant and entering the programs after the problem. Sex education needs to start in middle school to have a chance to make a difference throughout teen years.
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