Teenage Pregnancy

"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports 900,000 teen pregnancies occurring each year among teen girls aged 15-19." (Troubled Teen, 2009). I would like to argue that teenage parenthood should be avoided at all costs, mainly because there are many challenges to face when becoming a young parent. Adolescents face disciplinary issues, "role strain", and education problems. Parents and teachers should be educating these teens on how to practice abstinence or use some type of birth control or protection to prevent pregnancy; they aren't doing a very good job. Considering the fact that most babies born in the last few years are from teens.

Adolescents who become involved in a pregnancy experience are normally unaware of the circumstances of raising an infant. Due to recent research conducted by Sol Gordon, a pioneer in the field of explaining to us about teenagers and their sexuality, we can now focus on the five topic areas to provide better services to adolescents to help counsel them more effectively. Statistical facts and figures meaning that we all need to know and understand the demographic characteristics and consequences of the teenage sexual activity, parenthood and pregnancy in order to place certain things into a better perspective. An article by the author Honig stated that:

About two million women aged 15 to 19 years are sexually active and presently in need of contraceptive services. Only one in five sexually active teenage females uses contraception consistently. Three in ten sexually active teenagers become pregnant, and nearly one in every five births in the United States in 1974 was a teenager (Honig 1978, p.113).

As far as teenage pregnancies there are medical risks that they should be concerned with, considering that a pregnant teen runs a four-to-five times higher risk of complications than women in their twenties. "The major complications that teens can face are toxemia, premature births and a higher infant mortality" (Honig, 1978, p.114). Many of these complications can evolve into risk of mental retardation and physical defect of the infants.

Second off we should gather knowledge about a teenager's relationship with their parents. The problems of teenage parenting may be made easier or more difficult by the kind of communication skills with their parents. The family development research program studied that Honig in Syracuse had some different scenarios of communication from parent to teen, these examples are:

One mother would yell at her, "Your accident is crying, go and take care of it." Another of our teenage mothers told us, I couldn't tell my mother when I got pregnant. When I first got my period my mother said she'd kill me if I ever got pregnant. But she had never told me about sex and how you get pregnant (Honig, 1978, p.115).

With further research and evidence it makes it clear that the heritage of a parent to child relationship that a young adolescence can have a huge impact on how he/she feels about themselves and others. In order for an adolescent parent to develop into a reasonable self-reliant, adaptable, and self-disciplined person they must have many opportunities to learn these patterns during their formative years.

Adolescents should have relationships with their parents as well as their peers. This is important because the greater the barriers and resentments between the pregnant teen and their family, the more important a friend can become in that young teens parents life. Many teen parents tend to turn to friends for identity, and social and sexual advice, and sometimes information and support. These peer support groups are not just for the child bearing mothers they are also for the teenage fathers, who are often forcefully put into these programs. Many times we need the background of particular teen cultures to help plan better with the teenage parent. In the article Honig states "In some peer groups it is considered very "Macho" to form only short-term attachments with females. Sexual cafeteria behavior may be status symbol in the peer group. Learning how to handle and work with such attitudes can be a challenge for a program worker" ( Honig, 1978, p. 116). These peer groups are not just for making friends or finding someone new, this is for extra help in raising in the newborn and how they are going to cope with the process.

With having a child when you are a teen means that there is some cognitive, moral and social stages of adolescent development that we as people need to understand. Researchers Erikson, Kohlberg, and Plaget teach us that there are different levels of understanding that we achieve as we get older. These researchers also explain that "One of the hallmarks of the maturing person is the ability to decenter which is to take the point of view of another person. A further hallmark is to develop internal standards of right behavior" (Honig, 1978, p.116). This is that you treat someone right because that is the way you should behave and not just because if you don't you will be punished, shamed or rejected otherwise. They also believe that such indices of emotional maturity may not yet be a part of the adolescent's personality. So many of these teenage parents have faced many struggles that don't always involve the child that they had received, but they do need to understand and face them to the best of their ability.

Besides the things that we need to know and understand to help teenage parents, we also need to know that these teens have a lot of things that they will struggle with during and after the pregnancy. One of these things is that they often have a hard time understanding what the child's needs are. In a n article on adolescent mothers by Elster et al: " because of the adolescents age and because of the stressful events that frequently accompany youthful pregnancy and parenthood, clinicians and investigators have questioned the ability of adolescents to parent their young in a way that promotes optimal child development" (Elster, McAnarney & Lamb, 1983, p.494). Also adolescent mothers can face the fact that during their pregnancy they may not receive the correct prenatal care. In the article Teen Parenting they state that "Many teen mothers do not gain enough weight during pregnancy, and they may develop high blood pressure or anemia. Teens that drink, smoke, or use drugs may restrain these habits during pregnancy, but tend to increase alcohol and cigarette use during the six months after childbirth" (Current Issue, 2003, p.1).

One of the most important components of effective parenting that adolescents need to understand is parental sensitivity. Parental sensitivity is "the behavior that involves the ability of a parent to provide consistent and appropriate responses to his/her

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