The Nature and Factors that Influence Teenage Pregnancy

The Nature and Factors that Influence Teenage Pregnancy Essay Assignment Paper

The vast majority of teenage pregnancies are accidental. According to Miller (1997), only 15 percent of the teen couples actually plan to have a child. Researches connect unplanned occurrence of teen pregnancies to poor sex education. Approximately 50 percent of teen pregnancies happen within the first half of a year after the beginning of a sex life. Moreover, twenty percent of teenage pregnancies occur within the first month. In addition, the half of the teenage mothers will perform an abortion and most will raise their children as single mothers.Teenage Pregnancy Essay Sample Both teenage mothers and their children are likely to fall within a disadvantaged social group when compared to families with mothers who had their first child at older age. Children of teenage mothers frequently have problems in school. The risk for such children to repeat a grade is 50 percent higher than for children of older mothers. Teenage pregnancy and childbearing contribute to health deterioration and increasing crime rates. According to Miller (1997), “a child born to an unmarried teenage high school dropout is ten times more likely to live in poverty by the time he or she is eight to twelve years old.” Studies point out that almost 26 percent of fathers who have abandoned their children live in poverty. Miller (1997), states that teenage high school dropouts “have only a 1 percent chance of getting a job.” Consequently, such teen mothers will have to endure the struggles associated with life on welfare, especially since teenage fathers rarely have as high income as men who have children in older age.

Kindly order now for a custom-written, completely unique essay paper that is free of plagiarism! on The Nature and Factors that Influence Teenage Pregnancy Essay Assignment Paper from Best Nursing Writers

Thus, various factors shape the nature of teenage pregnancy and the severity of consequences that result from this issue. Despite the dismal statistics, researchers cannot state with certainty that teenage pregnancy automatically results in poverty. When debating the notion of teen parents’ welfare, the most discussed factors are the importance and efficiency of sex education. In addition, this social issue often raises such debatable questions as whether sex education contributes to premature beginning of sex active among adolescence. Other discussions address the question whether teen pregnancy is the key factor of high rates of high school dropouts and socio-economic disadvantage of young mothers.

Public opinion about the social groups that are most exposed to teen pregnancy and are often based on valid arguments, such as that adolescence pregnancy, occurs more often among teenagers of working class. However, the issue is surrounded by many biases and prejudices, such as, for example, that young women from disadvantaged groups get pregnant deliberately only to benefit from social welfare and housing. According to Arai (2009), in modern society, negative stereotypes play the most significant role in shaping public perceptions of teen mothers that are most often regarded as having low standards of morals and behavior. A great bulk of studies of teenage pregnancy in developed countries indicates that the occurrences of teenage pregnancies are not equally distributed (Arai, 2009).

One of the mostly discussed factors that is believed to influence the high rates of adolescence pregnancy is television. The study of Chandra et al. (2008) indicates that teenagers who are frequently exposed to sexual content on TV are predicted to premature pregnancy. It is estimated that young people who view sexual content on TV for a substantial period are more likely become pregnant before age 20 when compared to those that constrain from viewing sexual content on TV. The research was the first to establish a connection between exposure to sexual content on TV and reproductive health consequences. The results can suggest that viewing TV can affect various aspects of health among teenagers. Information that adolescents obtain through TV does not usually indicate the risks of sexual life. Thus, television may have a significant contribution to the high rates of teen pregnancy in the US (Chandra et al., 2008).Teenage Pregnancy Essay