Teenage Pregnancy In The United States

Today teenagers are more familiar with sex, have more sex partners, and are engaging more in unprotected sex than any other generation. When teenagers engage in unprotected sex they fail to seek out all the consequence that may follow from having unprotected sex, one of the consequences is getting pregnant. Teenage pregnancy is an overwhelming problem in the United States. Over one million American teenagers become pregnant each year this means that 1 in 10 girls will become pregnant annually. Also, every 26 seconds a teenage girl becomes pregnant and every 56 seconds a child of a teenage mother is born. More than 600,000 of these teenage girls will give birth and only ninety percent of these girls will elect to keep their baby. Since these girls are so young their babies will have a higher chance of being born with birth defects such as being born prematurely, suffer from mental retardation, and other birth defects. Many reasons contribute to the high rate of teenage pregnancy. Some of these reasons include, not being educated about the birth-control methods made available to them, such as the birth-control pill and condoms, which are supplied at free clinics. Such pregnancies are marked with
She may feel humiliated and ashamed after her pregnancy begins to show, then she refuses to finish school and as a result she lessens her ability to effectively raise her child. From this scenario teenage mothers are more likely to live in poverty than mothers who wait to a later age to have their children. Since teenage mothers are working so hard to provide for themselves and their child, there is a chance that their child will suffer from neglect from their mother because the mother does not have enough time to work and spend time with the child. Some teenagers may view having a child as an achievement, and something to be proud of. Furthermore, the parents and the teachers should promote