Structural-Functionalist Perspective On Teenage Pregnancy

• Applying a Structural-functionalist perspective can help understand how the issue is affecting society. A way that teen pregnancy in low socioeconomic areas helped shape society is the production of more jobs in certain industries; e.g. planned parenthood
• Another way this theory can be applied shows the increase of taxes Australians pay. According to the NCPTP “teen childbearing costs taxpayers at least 9 billion each year” [1]
• Studies also show that 52% of mothers on welfare had their first child as a teenager.
• Lack of education in low socioeconomic communities is a high cause for this huge percentage of young teens becoming pregnant.
• This theory looks at the details of the situation and how it can affect the nation. However, functionalism
Since teens are so young and struggle to get a good education, they become so dependent on the government that they lose their human freedom. Pregnant teens in this situation will be helpless and dependent of the government.
• Pregnant teens living below the poverty line will most likely be living in isolated and confined spaces with lack of freedom. The lives of these young mothers would become dominated by their emotional needs and they would have to learn to adapt themselves to new ways of routine to survive and take care of their child.
• Weber would argue that pregnant teenagers act based on their social environment of being young pregnant mothers, interpreting their actions by focusing on “a causal explanation of its course and effects.” [2](Weber, The Methodological Foundations of Society).
• Studies find that most teenagers are well informed about the risks of unsafe sex, but they also think that sex is cool, that they themselves will be safe from harm, and that having sex projects a positive image to their peers, whom probably do the same thing. However, teens with a low socio economic background are more susceptible to fall into this pressure because of the circumstances of their upbringing e.g. low education, and what is portrayed by their
By tracing its origins to Max Weber’s assertion that individuals act according to their interpretation of the meaning of their world.
• From a feminist theory, the young mother is a victim as she physically carries around her growing ‘shame’ for everyone to see and discuss for nine months. And often, not only are these girls labelled, but they are denied a helping hand in the upbringing of the child by the father, and the law.
• This world allows for comments like “they must have worn something provocative.” or “He only did it because she was asking for it” as explanations of rape. From a feministic perspective, we cannot blame the young mother, and the teens should be able to wear what they want without being preyed upon by men. Other causes are porn and magazines that the young teens may see or read show them women sexualising themselves which in turn may add to a cause of the rates of teen