Why is teen pregnancy a big deal?
Teen Pregnancy is a problem because children are having children and despite the decline it is still happening a lot here in the United States. According to the article from Harvard Health Commentaries 1 in 4 teens will still become pregnant before the age 20 despite the rate dropping. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy points out that the only way to prevent teen pregnancy from happening for sure is for teenagers to not be sexually active at such a young age. Below are other suggestions to try and stop teen pregnancy before your child/children even think about it. 1. Communicate; talk with your child about sex at a young age. 2. Share your values; let your child know why you feel sex at a young age is bad and why they should wait. 3. Explain the risks and consequences. 4. Rules; set curfews and rules for your child, be sure you know the friends and there families that your child associates with. 5. Know what music your child is listening to and what they are watching on television. 6. Help your child set goals for the future, make sure your child knows that they can go far in life. After doing more research I found a program called SASS. The SASS program or Self Awareness & School Support is a program that meets weekly with young girls and their families, the group encourages abstinence while providing support to these girls during the difficult transition from girlhood to maturity. The groups activities are those that help the girls become aware of what a healthy relationship is and helps with there self esteem, which helps them get through the 7th and 8th grades. A new thing that the group has added is mother-daughter time and father-daughter time to help improve the relationships. I personally think that a program like this should be known to more schools and more children around the world. The whole point of their program is to prevent teen pregnancy one girl at a time.
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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.
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