Teen Pregnacy

It seems like nowadays you can't walk a block without seeing a 20-something year old woman with four kids. What is so wrong with these 18, 17, 16, even 15 year old girls that they have to have sex? Why do you see so many young mothers? And why is it so hard to use a condom? About 900,000 pregnancies occur each year among American teenagers aged 15-19. Most of these pregnancies are unintended. Almost 190,000 teens aged 17 and younger have children. Their babies often have low birth weight and premature. It isn't only New York teenage pregnancy is a problem, its all around the world. I've seen shows like "Degrassi", where a character Liberty get pregnant and she has to deal with school, going to the doctors, not telling her parents and finding a solution. Her and J.T (the father)'s lives have just changed forever. They now have difficult decisions to make, for the greater good of their child.

Teenage pregnancy is one of those things that just ruin a life. Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of high school than girls who have their children at a later age. A 1997 study showed that only 41 percent of teenagers who have children before age 18 go on to graduate from high school compared to 61 percent of teens from similar social and economic backgrounds who did not give birth until ages 20 or 21. With her education cut short, a teenage mother may lack job skills, making it hard for her to find and keep a job. This might lend into having bad jobs, like stripping, drug dealing, or prostitution. A teenage mother may become financially dependent on her family or on public assistance, which are not going to be there forever. Also, teen mothers are more likely to live in poverty than women who delay childbearing, and over 75 percent of all unmarried teen mothers go on welfare within 5 years of the birth of their first child. These girls may not have good parenting skills, or have the social support systems to help them deal with the stress of raising a child.

The children suffer too. A child born to an unmarried teenage high school dropout is 10 times as likely as other children to be living in poverty at ages 8 to 12.

They are also 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade in school, and are more likely to perform poorly on standardized tests and drop out before finishing high school. Some suffer the same faith as their mother. They are also at a greater risk of being neglected or abused.

I talked to some of my friends and family about their opinion on this problem. One of my good friends, Nancy said "Teenage pregnancy doesn't affect me in any way, because I do not have any friends that are into sex, and