1. Hunter 1
How many of you have seen “Teen Mom “or “16 and Pregnant “? Nearly one billion girls
get pregnant each year. Teen girls can get pregnant the first time they have sex, and every time
after that; the majority of pregnancies happen between fifteen and to nineteen years of age.
Parents must involve themselves in their teen lives.
Teens are showing signs of being conservative sexually. (Teen).There is many ways to
prevent teen pregnancies such as contraceptives, including, birth control and condoms. All
methods of birth control have failure rates. (Teen). Some teens think it’s cool to have sex without
protection but to avoid pregnancy and STD’s; condoms are important. Contraceptives are a good
way to practice abstinence. Abstinence is the voluntary restraint in indulging in bodily activities
that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. (News)
A baby requires a lot of attention, so how could you possibly have enough time for
yourself or even school? Parenthood is the leading reason why teens drop of out school.
(Pregnancy) less than half of teen mothers graduate from high school and fewer than two percent
earn a college degree by thirty. (Pregnancy) Children of teen mothers do worse in school than
those born to older parents. Children of teen mothers are less likely to repeat a grade, complete
high school, and have lower performance on standardized tests. About one-fourth of teen moms
have a second child within a year of the first pregnancy. (Pregnancy).A lot of times a teen
mother is the daughter of a teen mother and they tell their child not to follow in their footsteps to
break the cycle and when they get pregnant they feel hurt and disappointed because they wanted
them to be better than them. Can you imagine how parent(s) feels when her daughter or son tells
them their expecting a baby and their own children themselves?
2. Hunter 2
“Since 2006, health officials at the federal centers for disease control and prevention have
watched warily as the teen birth rate has crept up. The increases come after nearly two years of
steep declines. Rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases among teens, and sexually
activity among certain age groups and ethnic and racial groups, are much more worrisome.
According to Lorrie Gavin, a CDC researcher. “You see overall patterns through the ninety’s and
early two-thousands’ of general improvements in the sexual and reproductive health for young
people. That was true for younger teens; for example, surveys of African American teen birth
rates have always been the highest, show sexual activity dropped from 59.3 percent in 1991 to 46
percent in 2007. Most teens who had sex said they used a condom. One million young people
were infected in 2006; Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Chlamydia infection rates have all increased”
(Wilson)
Most young female teenagers want to have a baby because they want to be loved and they
think that having a baby will make the guy stay around, make the guy happier or make their
relationship better; but did you ever think that getting pregnant was a setup? For example Leyla
W. couldn’t figure out where her birth control pills kept going, one day a few tablets would be
missing; next the whole container, her boyfriend shrugged and said he hadn’t seen them, she
believed him until she found them in his drawer, when confronting him, he hit her, that was his
way of shutting her up, he also raped her and most days left her locked in a bedroom with a bit of
food and water (Teen). According to statistics eight out of ten fathers don’t marry the mothers
and they don’t stay around for the raising of the child. Due to lack of support by the fathers, the
teen’s girls resort to welfare. Welfare is financial assistance program funded by tax payers, for
taxpayers who are no longer capable of supporting themselves. More than half of mothers on
welfare had their child as a teen.(Teen).
3. Hunter 3
There is three main choices when realizing you are pregnant that you have to make;
abortion, adoption or having the baby. An abortion means terminating the pregnancy. Some
young teens decide that preparing for another life other than their own is hard work and that they
aren’t ready so they resort to abortions. Another option is adoption; adoption means that you’re
deciding to give your baby away to a good couple who may not be able to produce children, or in
some cases if they can’t find a family your child goes to foster care. The last and finally option is
having the baby, which means caring for the baby and realizing you are about to have control of
another life.
Have you ever seen the movie the “Pregnancy Pact “? Well it has also broken nationwide
to a very interesting story and wildly watched concept. At a high school in Gloucester,
Massachusetts at least seventeen girls gotpregnant; more than four times the schools pregnancy
rate from the schools rate last year. But what has shocked everyone in the town is that it seems as
though these teenagers made a pact and were trying to get pregnant intentionally so they could
all have their babies at the same time. Kathleen Kingsbury, a reporter for Time Magazine, helped
bring attention to this story with her article “Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High”. (Teen)“She
formed interviews with the girls in the pact, the friends and the principal at the school, among
others, after it came to light”.(Teens) Kingsbury tells NPR’s Michelle Norris that the Principal
Joseph Sullivan made it clear that most of the girls were alone and they didn’t have a supportive
family behind them. Most of the girls were underclassmen. “I have a feeling that these girls
weren’t apart of the cheerleading squad; they were loners”. (Teens) The school first noticed what
was going on when a large number of girls were going to the school nurse to havepregnancy
tests. When they found out they were pregnant; they celebrated, one yelled out “Sweet!” says
Kingsbury. (Teen)“When Sullivan invested, six or seven of the girls admitted that they were
4. Hunter 4
trying to get pregnant. “(Teen) These are the girls who didn’t have a strong life plan and they
decided, collectively to make their own life plan and take control of what was happening, says
the reporter. Another interesting fact is the girls did not havemuch knowledge in sexual
education, which ends freshman year says the reporter; the girls she spoke to had little
background of condoms and contraceptives. One girl the reporter said she spoke with said she
and her boyfriend used a condom every once in a while, but didn’t really know how to use one.
And sometimes the girl and her boyfriend forgot and didn’t think it was necessary. “In May,
school nurse KimDaly and the director of the Student Health Clinic, Brain Orr, resigned in the
protest after the school rejected their proposal to distribute contraceptives regardless of the
parents’ permission, according the Kingsbury.”(Teen) As for the baby’s fathers, Kingsbury says
many of them were way older than the mothers. “One was a twenty-four year old homeless man
who was living in a local shelter, the girls apparently recruited him”.(Teen) Authorities are trying
to decide whether to press statutory rape charges against the fathers or leave them alone and let
them raise their child. I think the girls are ashamed of what they have done and the attention it
brought to the school and town.
I have had a very interesting interview with Mrs. Tanya Foster form Johnston OB/GYN.
We talked about the ups and downs of a typical day and what was the best and worst part of her
occupation. She informed me that the best part of her job was seeing healthy and joyful children
an” handing out lollipops” says Mrs. Foster comically; the worst part of her job is that she
doesn’t know how to care for a child, or doesn’t know what’s wrong with them so they have to
be transferred, “I feel a sense of guilt sometimes” according to Mrs. Foster. A typical day for her
is taking temperatures, checking heart rates, and giving monthly shots.
5. Hunter 5
How do you deal with your teen’s pregnancy? Well, I have some important tips that
might help you analyze the situation and be more involved. “If your daughter is pregnant and
planning to have a baby, many changes await you and your family, and although it’s not what
you expected it happens every day; if your teen is about to become a mother, it can be
overwhelming for everyone.” (For) If you have just found out your teen is having a baby it can
create a wide range of emotions, from disappointment to worrying about what’s going to happen
next in the future. “Some parents feel a sense of guilt, thinking that only if they’d done more to
protect their child this wouldn’t have happened”. (For) So what can you do as the parent of a
teen having a baby? Recognize your feelings and try to work through them so you will be able to
support your daughter; but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel the emotions that you are
feeling, such reactions are common. “You might have a great deal of emotions to deal with at
first. But the realities of the upcoming baby means that you will have to get pass your own
feelings for the sake of your daughter and her child”. (For) Just a short period ago your teen’s
biggest fear might have been hanging out with friends and wondering what clothes to wear to
wear the next day. Now she’s dealing with morning sickness and scheduling doctor
appointments, her world completely changed. And although some parents feel guilty by their
teen’s pregnancy and worried about what family and others will say and do, many other parents
are happy about being a grandparent, especially if the teen is in a good and healthy relationship.
Parents should be involved in their teen’slife; theyare there for support; as I said in my
paper, rand you as a parent have to put aside your feelings to help be there for your child. I
believe that parents shouldn’t give up on their child after they have revealed that their pregnant
or expecting because they need that support from their family. Regardless of whether teen
pregnancy was a mistake or not, a parent’s responsibility is to help their children.