Young And Prepared
Sara Sanchez Fierro Young and Prepared, Well, Sort Of!
When I first came to America I saw a lot of different and shocking things, some good and some bad. The one that affected me the most was the “teen mom” effect. I noticed that in this country, where freedom is valued as one of the most important pillars of society, a lot of young people are chained by the responsibility of being young parents. As I started making more American friends, I started seeing that around thirty percent of them had children, and at least seventy-five percent of them know someone close to them that did. This not only struck me as odd but also as a problem in the society. In Saudi Arabia, where I am originally from, most of the people my age are abroad in college, living with their parents, or learning the family business. If a teenage pregnancy does occur, it is taken care of under Islamic terms. Coming to America and seeing this phenomenon has triggered lots of questions in my mind. How do the parents of the young teens react? Are these teens as promiscuous as I think they are? How are they able to take care of the children they brought into this world? And lastly, I would like to know if these teens were actually ready to be parents? Due to all these questions I decided to seek out a teen mom; her name is Maria, and she had her first child, Santiago at the age of seventeen. Currently, Maria is twenty-one now and Santiago is four, here is their story. After reading it, I believe you will agree with my thesis, teen mothers should not be ostracized from society because of the children they bear, instead they should be encouraged to not be a statistic and educated through the societal resources available for them.
The first question I asked Maria was if she got pregnant because she was out being promiscuous? Although I was quite embarrassed to ask her this question, I wanted to know how many times she had been careless by having unprotected sex. Maria laughed and responded: “It
When I first came to America I saw a lot of different and shocking things, some good and some bad. The one that affected me the most was the “teen mom” effect. I noticed that in this country, where freedom is valued as one of the most important pillars of society, a lot of young people are chained by the responsibility of being young parents. As I started making more American friends, I started seeing that around thirty percent of them had children, and at least seventy-five percent of them know someone close to them that did. This not only struck me as odd but also as a problem in the society. In Saudi Arabia, where I am originally from, most of the people my age are abroad in college, living with their parents, or learning the family business. If a teenage pregnancy does occur, it is taken care of under Islamic terms. Coming to America and seeing this phenomenon has triggered lots of questions in my mind. How do the parents of the young teens react? Are these teens as promiscuous as I think they are? How are they able to take care of the children they brought into this world? And lastly, I would like to know if these teens were actually ready to be parents? Due to all these questions I decided to seek out a teen mom; her name is Maria, and she had her first child, Santiago at the age of seventeen. Currently, Maria is twenty-one now and Santiago is four, here is their story. After reading it, I believe you will agree with my thesis, teen mothers should not be ostracized from society because of the children they bear, instead they should be encouraged to not be a statistic and educated through the societal resources available for them.
The first question I asked Maria was if she got pregnant because she was out being promiscuous? Although I was quite embarrassed to ask her this question, I wanted to know how many times she had been careless by having unprotected sex. Maria laughed and responded: “It