Effects of teenage parenthood

Nowadays, more and more teenagers are becoming parents. They have children under the age of 20. However, becoming a parent at very young age has bad effects on the lives of the teen parents and their children. First of all, teen parents are likely to have problems with education and career. Young mother usually drop out of school when the pregnancy progresses and many of them either never return to school. Lower level of education does not allow them to get a proper or high salary job. Their career options are limited as well. They often work as workers, salesperson, maids, etc at low salary. Young fathers have to earn money for his families so they do a lot of part-time jobs, that lead to poor performance at school. Secondly, teenage parenthood has strong influence on children' health as well as the psychosocial development. The teen mothers are not fully grow-up, they often lack milk, knowledge and experience,… that lead to poor maternal nutrition for their children. Moreover, babies tend to have lower weight than average birth weight and low-birth weight babies are 5-30 times more likely to die than babies of normal weight. Because of poverty, poor housing, bad nutrition,… the children often experience high risks to both their health status and potential school achievement. Children of teenage parents may be more likely to become teenage parents themselves. Last but not least, due to many difficulties with raising the babies, young parents often have stress and have problems with each other. Furthermore, they are at such young age, young marriage and having children mean no freedom or later they may find that they do not love each other at all. Many teenage parents end up with divorce. Becoming a parent, at any age, can be life – altering experience. In conclusion, teenage parenthood has many far-reaching consequences for young parents, for children and for the society as