The Real Experience of Teen Pregnancy

As us females were young we all seem to become mothers, by playing with dolls, and playing house with others our age. It may be easy for us to say that as children we thought they needed some assistance, but in reality that was only our imagination. As little kids did we really think about what it would be like to really have a baby? We were children, but see the thing here is that teens are still children who are having other children. 16 year olds do not just wake up thinking they want to have a baby, most of the time it just happens without being planned. Teens often do not think about what life would be like as a parent which is easy to happen and we should be informed on the reasons why and what it really is like.

Teen pregnancy has become a problem over the past decade. This issue can be looked at using sociological imagination. C. Write Mills explaing the idea of sociological imagination as the ability to see the connection between personal experiences and larger society. On a personal level, teens with children experience many difficulties juggling the responsibilities of parenting, school, work, and everything else. The teenage years can be very complicated, but adding a child to the mix can really impact young men and women’s relationships, emotions, and future. Looking at this problem on a public level, society has a huge role in preventing teen pregnancies. Also, the media plays a large role in influencing teenagers to engage in sexual activities.Many

About “six million pregnancies occur among teenage women aged 15-44“ 18 percent of them result in abortions. Teens had been miscarriages in the United States is “15 -20 “ percent that they don't have the well developed and the teens don’t eat healthy when their pernic .This is why teens baby have it fully developed they don’t know how to take care of themselves because

Cases that involve teenage pregnancy are often complicated and affect a large network of people. The case involving Katharine Westley is a case of teen pregnancy. Katharine is a 17 year old high school student who contacted the Family and Children’s Services: Unmarried Parents Services. Recently, Katharine discovered that she and her boyfriend of six months, James Koslik (age 19), are expecting a child. The parents of both Katharine and James have stated that they have certain expectations for their children. They are asserting their beliefs and moral onto their children. For instance, they think that the two should get married, get jobs, and raise the child. The parents even offered to help Katharine and James “get off to a

In 2008 the popular MTV series 16 and Pregnant aired which followed young girls who got pregnant during high-school. The show followed teens throughout their pregnancy and into the first week or so of having the child. The show was successful in a sense that teen pregnancies dropped and continue to drop, however this show created a societal message that glorifies teen pregnancy through its sequel Teen Mom. Throughout this essay I will show how the series fails to show the negative impacts teen pregnancies have on their family system, the UA research in Missouri on this matter, the general view of teen pregnancy and my recommendation for how to silence the true societal message the show gives in hopes that the MTV producers will take my recommendation

Being a teen and pregnant isn’t easy now on. Got pregnant unexpectedly at a young age. Still in high school and not working when she got pregnant. A year had pass. A man that she need to call a father didn’t give her enough support and kicking her out of the house after knowing that she was pregnant. Damn that father doesn’t have a heart if he deserve to be call a dad. In the other hand, the ex-boyfriend parents was also a pain in the butt for her, the baby and the baby’s daddy. Her father and the parents of the baby’s daddy thought that the first option to take was abortion. They wanted her to abort the baby because she was too young and didn’t have a financial support to raise the baby. There was nothing more isolating that being pregnant at a young age in a society that everywhere is judgment and the first option that comes to their mind is abortion.

In 2012, there were 29.4 births for every 1,000 females ranging from the age 15-19. This is 305,420 babies total born to females in this age group. Eighty-nine percent of these births occurred outside of marriage. The 2012 teen birth rate shows a decline of six percent from 2011 when the birth rate was 31.3 per 1,000 girls. The teen birth rate has declined pretty steadily over the past 20 years. In 1991, the teen birth rate in the U.S. was 61.8 births for every 1,000 teenage girls, compared with 29.4 births for every 1,000 females in 2012 that’s pretty good. The U.S. teen birth rate is still higher than that of many other developed countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. Although the teenage pregnancy numbers are decreasing,

Teenage pregnancy has long been acknowledged as an important health, social and economic problem in the United States, one that creates hardships for women and families and threatens the health and well-being of women and their infants. Unintended pregnancies span across age, race and religion, with a specific negative impact among the teenage population. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC, 2016) In 2015, a total of 229,715 babies were born to women aged 15–19 years, for a birth rate of 22.3 per 1,000 women in this age group. Birth rates are also higher among Hispanic and African American adolescents than any other race. In 2014, Hispanic adolescent females ages 15-19 had the highest birth rate of 38 births per 1,000 adolescent females, followed by African American adolescent females 34.9 births per 1,000 adolescent females (CDC, 2017). In 2010, the public cost of births resulting from unintended pregnancies was estimated at $21 billion, this includes costs for prenatal care, labor and delivery, post-partum care, and a year of infant care (Healthy People 2020, 2016). These pregnancies have led to many social, health, and financial consequences. When unintended pregnancies occur in the younger age group, negative outcomes occur at a higher rate as compared to women of an older age. As a national statistic, 1 out of every 5 unintended pregnancies are from the teenage demographic, with a staggering 82 percent belonging to the ages

This Literature Review gives a deep insight of some of the available literature related to teen pregnancy, neighborhood effects on poverty, and socio-economic effects of teen pregnancies. Teen pregnancy has become a significant issue in society. A large number of teen pregnancy and school dropouts have been recorded in the past and get associated with poverty. To understand teen pregnancy and its association with poverty; this literature review is going to examine some of the academic journals that have covered this topic and try how teen pregnancy is affected by poverty and vice versa. The statistics from the journals shows that pregnancy rates are maximum among teens who come from low-income families and poverty-stricken

I suppose no one ever really expects things to happen to them until they actually happen. At least, that’s how I viewed things until I got pregnant with my first and only child at fifteen years old. It’s almost exactly the way they portray it in Hollywood movies and television shows and books. Although, unlike those books and shows, I never lost any friends from this experience. I will say that people are much more understanding nowadays. Still, no one is ever really ready to be a mom, especially at fifteen.

n the mainstream news, young mothers have received surplus attention due to the large scale viewers of MTV’s shows Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant. Fox News, leaning far right on the political spectrum commented about the extensive publizity. When the stars from these reality shows made front page on US Weekly and People’s magazine Fox News posted an article in response,“ Tabloids Glamorizing Teen Pregnancy By Putting Teen Moms on Covers.” Young teens who became pregnant and now a part of mainstream culture sex is the highlighted deviance described in this article. Fox News argues that we shouldn’t praise these girls for their actions because, they are irresponsible parents that were just looking for a way to make quick money. That, this

There is a prevalence of unwanted teen pregnancies associated with risky sexual behavior. Gelfond, Dierschke, Lowe, Plastino, 2016 claim, “…The United States has the highest rate of pregnancy among adolescents aged 15-19 years compared with other Western industrialized countries” (p. 97). The pregnancy rate and promiscuous sexual action remains problematic for a variety of reasons. In general; adolescents are undereducated about risky sexual behaviors, which can lead sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. The adolescent who bears a child whether intended, or unintended has a higher chance of dropping out of high school as well as not completing college before the age of 30. If pregnancy occurs, a teen mother and father are still in the process of maturing as young adults, yet alone, they have to raise a child. Not being able to obtain an education can be a barrier for having the best health outcomes for the parents and the child. In order to reduce the risk, primary prevention is essential. More specifically, education and awareness of healthy relationships can help reduce the number of unsafe sexual practices. The underlying question to be discovered is, for adolescents, does the use of additional comprehensive sex education reduce the future risk of unwanted teen pregnancies and risky sexual behavior compared with one general sex education course being taught?

Disparities still persist to this day in social and economic context. The conditions that some teenagers face in communities and families may contribute to teen pregnancy. Within the social domain, peers are a big risk factor for teen pregnancy. Some factors include sexual pressure from peers, belief that most peers are sexually active, friends who are sexually active, dating at an early age, and dating someone who is a few years older than you (Southeastern Idaho Public Health, n.d.). Many teenagers feel the pressure from their peers to have sex before they are ready. Those who decide to give into peer pressure often are not informed about safe sexual behavior and therefore may become pregnant. The same goes for those who believe that most of their peers are sexually active. Surveys have shown that many teenagers report a greater percent than actual for the following question: What percent of your peers do you think are sexually active? The pressure that comes from assuming that most of your peers are sexually active can play a huge role in a teenager’s decision to participate in early sexual activity. Friends are just as much of a risk factor as family is. If a friend is sexually active, the pressure to fit in and be similar to them starts developing. In these peer situations, it is most likely a teenager’s first time having sex. In that case, there is a lack of knowledge that puts teenagers at risk of becoming pregnant. Dating at an early age can make a teenager curious

Having a child at the age of 16 was extremely tough for me. I had attended private school up until the end of my sophomore year as that is when I became pregnant. I had hoped to attend college out of state and had a steady grade point average of about 3.5. I lost contact with all my friends as I was either working or staying home with my son. I had to work two jobs in order to avoid being on welfare and yet still continue to go to high school as I was determined to finish. I can proudly say that my son is now graduating from high school and he has grown up to be a very respectful young man. I had seen my cousins’ struggle with their teen pregnancies as well but no one had actually ever sat me down to talk to me about it.

Like Amy and Loeber (2009), when it comes to the ecological paradigm of teenage pregnancy, Corcoran, Franklin, and Bennett (2000) also believe one’s socioeconomic status is a huge factor that contributes to this problem. A person’s socioeconomic status a lot of times determines “education, expanded family size, single-parent household structure, and lessened resources in terms of employment and income.” These three authors claim that educational performance and goals “dictate the potential costs of child bearing at a young age.” Their studies have also shown that teenage girls’ relationships with the school setting and poorer performance in school serve a greater risk for adolescent pregnancy.