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Solution to Teen Pregnancy

Solution to Teen Pregnancy

Ferhan Chaudhry

KCTCS
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Solution to Teen Pregnancy

There is a time and place for everything and the same goes for pregnancy. Bearing a child is a huge

responsibility and lets face the fact that bearing a child in your teen years can be very hard, taking care of a

child at any age can be a difficult task but while you’re a teen ager that task becomes 10 times as hard. There

has been a steady rise in teen pregnancy, this can lead to many downfalls, including less education for the

parents and an irresponsible upbringing for the child, along with many other negatives. Therefore adding sex

education classes starting from middle school may lead to a decrease in the number of teen who become

pregnant.

Teen pregnancy has been a rising issue in our society, the numbers of teen becoming pregnant is on a

steady rise, and the age of them is on a steady decrease. Pregnancy which is such a sacred thing is now made

into something so negative, teen age years are for education, enjoyment, and experiencing life and learning

lifelong skills. Every year around 750,000 teen age girls become pregnant and their ages ranging from anywhere

from 15-19. (Dubner, 2008) That is a huge number to consider. Compared to other girls, teen moms are less

likely to attend college or even finish high school, (Dubner, 2008) this is a huge blow to our education system.

Every year around 750,000 girls who would’ve graduated high school will no longer graduate. Imagine what

kind of future they would have, as we all know in tough times like this it’s hard to get a job itself, let alone the

fact of getting a job without a high school diploma becomes almost nil. As we’ve been taught since centuries

that education is key to success. Without some sort of education it can become fairly hard to survive in the

world, it’s not impossible but it’s difficult.

There is a stereo type for people who don’t earn a high school diploma or even a college, that they flip

burgers, along with it being a stereo type it’s also a fact, most people who fill those positions usually don’t have

a high school diploma or a college degree. The average salary of a McDonald’s worker, and I use McDonald’s

because it the largest fast food chain in the United States, is estimated to be around $24,000 a year(2011). So do
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Solution to Teen Pregnancy
you think you can run a family with $24,000 a year? The answer more than likely is no. A single person can

barely survive on $24,000, so let’s not even go how hard it would be to run a whole household.

Research has shown that teen pregnancies are more likely to experience a pre mature birth or a low birth

weight for their babies,(Dubner, 2008) this definitely is not how you want to bring a new born into this world,

with pain and suffering, it’s quite obvious that none of those issues are healthy for the babies. Babies with a low

birth weight are also more likely to develop A.D.H.D. (Dubner, 2008) and kids with A.D.H.D just like their

moms are less likely to graduate from high school,(Dubner,2008) so imagine now another 750,000 people

without a high school diploma.

As we all know being a teen ager can be quite distracting and having a child will just raise those

distractions. Let’s face the facts that teenagers tend to be more irresponsible than others, and bearing a child is a

huge responsibility, now an irresponsible person doing a task that requires a huge responsibility isn’t a good

combination. A child requires a lot of care and attention, usually the way his upbringing is how the child turns

out to be when their adult. It can be very hard for a teen ager to raise a child the right way.

It is quite obvious that our economy recently has faced a huge blow, the economy isn’t in the best

condition right now and teen pregnancy isn’t helping resolve this issue any. The average salary of a teen ager

due to a research done recently in 2011 by Simply Hired is around $36,000 a year. On average teen agers do not

make enough money to support a child and themselves, so where do you think they go for that support, the

government, the government has to aid these teens to help them support their child. “We see that a substantial

share of minor teen mothers (almost 80 percent) receives some public assistance and the share has grown (a

statistically insignificant amount) between the pre- and post-reform periods.” (Acs, Koball, 1997). Yes you

read it right almost 80 % of teen moms receive some sort of government aid, which means the majority of them.

This aid requires a lot of government money that goes toward teen pregnancy. Next how do you think they

would cover the hospital a bill, the answer either is if they don’t have insurance, they usually don’t, and guess
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Solution to Teen Pregnancy
that’s left to pay those bills, yea the government. So this is clearly a huge issue that needs to be resolved to set

our economy back on track.

How do you get pregnant? Well obviously by having sex, and what schools lack is sexual education,

during high school most kids are much aware of what sex is, but do they know the right and wrongs, probably

not because us Americans think that they are too young to learn about sex in their middle school years. There

are rarely any sex education classes being offered in middle schools, to solve the problem of such a huge

number of teens becoming pregnant we need to raise the awareness of sex amongst our teens. Their needs to be

more sex education classes being offered in middle school.

How you build a foundation is how the structure turns out to be, and if we educate our teens with the

cons of teen pregnancy then the problem should be reduced substantially. If at an early age a child is taught how

to practice safe sex, the results of unsafe sex, the responsibilities of bearing a child, they will know that the

results could be a negative impact of their life. Therefore sexual education will obviously educate them enough

for them not to either have sex at a young age or practice safe sex.

A lot of people will probably have a problem with their child learning about sex during their middle

school years, saying their child is too young to talk about sex or be learning about sex or even saying that it is

their responsibility to teach or talk to their kids about sex.

(Why Parents Are Against Sex Ed in School Health Education Programs, 2009). It is the view of

many people that the parents should have the right to teach their children about sex if they

choose and it should not be the responsibility of the schools to provide a sex health education

class. While this may seem like a good idea, many parents do not have the resources or

knowledge necessary to teach their children about sex the way that school health education can.

So many parents believe that it’s their right to talk to their kids about sex, but due to a lack of sexual

education classes being offered in schools, it is more than likely that those parents themselves have a lack of
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Solution to Teen Pregnancy
sexual education. Now ask those parents if they think its fine for them to be having babies at a young age, are

they not too young for that? If they think their child is too young to be learning about sex then they can have

their child removed from that class. Another objection people could have would be that it is morally wrong for

their child to be hearing about sex during their middle school years, but as I said earlier ask them isn’t teen

pregnancy also morally wrong?

Yes there are schools that are especially for teen age girls who are pregnant in Louisville known as

Westport TAPP and their goal is to prevent dropouts of female teens who are pregnant. They accept middle

school and high school students. If you look at the bigger picture these females are being profiled, they are

being separated from other students because they are pregnant, they are being giving a different type of

education than other public school teens and this can leave a permanent scar on their life when they think of the

fact that they were profiled.

Teen pregnancy has many downfalls, whether it is lack of education for pregnant mothers, financial

instability for teens, irresponsible up bringing for the child, a huge blow to our economy. Overall if you look at

the bigger picture it is something that is hurting the United States morally, ethically, and financially. We always

criticize countries in Africa or feel sympathy for them because teen pregnancy is a huge problem and young

females are being forced to bear a child, but that same problem is in our back yard. We need to fix our problem

before we point fingers at others. Offering sexual education classes in middle will not only reduce the number

of teens becoming pregnant but also help them develop sexual education that they can use in their life time

along with also their children’s life. The students who have sexual education offered to them will now be able to

teach their kids, when they do have them. This will lead to less teen pregnancies, as they say share the wealth,

and education is a wealth.

Acs, G. Koball, H. (1997). TANF and the status of teen mothers under age 18. Urban Institute Research of
Record. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/publications/310796.html
Dubner, A, (2008, September 3). The numbers on teen pregnancy. Retrieved from
http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/09/03/the-numbers-on-teen-pregnancy/

(2011). McDonalds worker salaries. Retrieved from http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-