Teen pregnancy in the United States is a major issue because the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of the Western industrialized world. The United States spends 7 billion each year due to the cost of teen pregnancy. Becoming a mother at such a young age may cause issues in a persons life because they now must take care of a child while they are still learning to grow up themselves. The majority of teen mothers occurs with young ladies between the age of fifteen and nineteen. Statistics show that 34% of teenagers have at least one pregnancy before the age of twenty, and 80% of the young women that have a child at this age did not intend to. Among the women that have a child during their teen years 79% of them are unmarried and 80% of these unmarried teen mothers end up on welfare. Many women that have had a child as a teenager do not finish high school or go to college. Only 1/3 of teen mothers complete high school and receive their diplomas and by age thirty only 1.5% of women who had a pregnancy as a teenager have a college degree.
I agree with you that becoming a mother at a young age is really hard. They don't even know how to take care of themselves, so how they can take care of their children. It is a good issue to write about. Thank you for your information, Alyssa! :)