Teen pregnancy
Teen pregnancy is an well-known topic among teens and their families. No matter what generation you belong to teens have gotten pregnant. Nowadays more teenagers are getting pregnant. Especially from what I have seen in Hartford. Although the birth rates have dropped in the last 30 years many teens have gotten pregnant. The question is why are teens getting pregnant during high school? How does this have an impact on their social/family relationships? How does teen pregnancy impact the teens life in the long run?
According to the CDC in 2015, a total of 229,715 babies were born to girls aged 15-19. For a birth rate of 22.3 per 1,000 women in this age group. This is another record low for U.S. teens and a drop of 8% from 2014. Birth rates fell 9% for women aged 15-17 years and 7% for women aged 18-19 years. The reasons aren't exactly clear as to why there has been a drop in teen births but some speculate that teens are choosing abstinence.
The CDC teen pregnancy prevention is one of CDC's top seven priorities, a winnable battle in public health. The CDC supports the addition of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs that have a positive effect on helping prevent teen pregnancies or sexually transmitted infections. In addition to evidence-based prevention programs, teens need access to youth-friendly contraceptive and reproductive health services and support from parents and other trusted adults. Those trusted adults can play an important role in helping teens make healthy choices about relationships, sex, and birth control. Efforts at the community level that talk about social and economic factors associated with teen pregnancy. Which also play a critical role in addressing racial/ethnic and geographical disparities observed in teen births in the US.(CDC)
It is very important to prevent teen pregnancy. Despite the obvious implications teen pregnancy can cost taxpayers lots of money with health care and foster care for teens who wish to not keep the baby. Pregnancy and birth are really big contributors to high school dropout rates among girls. See only 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 years of age, whereas usually, 90% of women who do not give birth during their teen years graduate from high school.
The children of teenage mothers are more likely to have lower school achievement and to dropout of high school, have more health problems and many more issues. These effects continue for the teen mother and her child even after adjusting for those factors that increased the mom's risk for pregnancy like having parents with low levels of education, growing up in a single-parent family, and having poor performance in school.
Teenage pregnancy affects the family of the teen and baby, but its effects on society are those that affect the public. Pregnant teenagers do not have a life built up to support a baby, so they often need the help of those around them. More time than not that support comes from immediate family. This help can come in the form of informal community support, such as babysitting or hand-me-down baby essentials. These parents also usually need help from the local, state or federal government agencies in the form of food stamps or housing assistance.
Long-term effects include lack of education of both the parents and child. Teen parents tend to leave school or not attend college, which limits their potential contributions to society and prospects for career advancement. The children of teenage parents, especially those from working class families, often face many of the same challenges as their parents. This puts a continuing cycle of strain on society, especially social welfare programs. Increased health care costs for both teen parents and their children costs the public a large amount of money, as well.
Teens get pregnant because of the growing attraction towards opposite sex and exploring sexuality during teenage years. As kids step their feet in teenage years, they begin to get attracted towards people of opposite sex and also get increasingly curious about sex. This plus absence of right information gives way to experimentation with sex which leads to pregnancy.
Another reason behind teenage pregnancy is lack of access to contraceptive methods. The teenagers want to experiment with sex and in absence of access to birth control methods they give it a try with half baked ideas about contraception. Like the withdrawal method is a good contraceptive, girls do not get pregnant during periods and immediately after periods and other ideas.
Plus ideas about the concept of love cause teenage pregnancy. Teenagers begin to think of attraction for opposite sex as love and in the whim to live life together want to create babies as a proof of their bond. Usauly that leads to breakups in the very first year of their relationship. Lack of services for medical termination of pregnancies for teenage girls makes it compulsory for them to continue with the pregnancy.
"Reproductive Health: Teen Pregnancy." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9 May 2017, www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm.