CDZ Teen Pregnancy

[AyeCantSeeYou]

What, in your opinion, is the biggest cause of teen pregnancy in middle/high school girls? Is it low self esteem, no parental guidance, peer pressure, ignorance, etc?

What are your thoughts on tax payers having to pay for medical care for pregnant teens and their baby(babies, if that's the case), along with food stamps, WIC programs, housing assistance, etc?

 

[pillars]

This is going to sound incredibly cynical, but I think that some teenagers see a baby as a paycheck...a way to opt out of having to do tasks they don't want to do, such as go to school and get a meaningful job.

 

[AyeCantSeeYou]

No, that isn't cynical at all. There are far too many that believe a baby will somehow make their life turn into a fantasy. They don't like being told what to do (school, homework, chores, etc), so they do something in defiance to try to prove they can 'one up' adults. What they really do is show how immature they are.

 

[pillars]

Sadly, some teen moms think the world owes them a living because they can't keep their legs shut.

 

[pillars]

And, biggest cause? Poor parenting and poor role modeling.

 

[AyeCantSeeYou]

True. Most don't even realize they are the cause of their own problems. Yet, they continue to blame others for their mistake. Some think the baby's daddy should be all to blame. Truth is, it takes more than one person to have a kid.

 

[AyeCantSeeYou]

Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing - The Office of Adolescent Health

Good reading there.

One part:
"At the family level, adolescents with mothers who gave birth as teens and/or whose mothers have only a high school degree are more likely to have a baby before age 20 than are teens whose mothers were older at their birth or who attended at least some college. In addition, having lived with both biological parents at age 14 is associated with a lower risk of a teen birth. At the community level, adolescents who live in wealthier neighborhoods with strong levels of employment are less likely to have or to father a baby than are adolescents in neighborhoods in which income and employment opportunities are more limited."

 

[pillars]

Earlier studies have found that adolescent mothers have high probabilities of raising their children in poverty and relying on welfare for support. More than 40 percent of teenage moms report living in poverty at age 27 (Moore et al. 1993). The rates are especially high among black and Hispanic adolescent mothers, more than half of whom end up in poverty and two-thirds of whom find themselves on welfare. Indeed, a recent study found that more than 80 percent of young teen mothers received welfare during the 10 years following the birth of their first child, 44 percent of them for more than 5 years (Jacobson and Maynard 1995).

...The authors' descriptive statistics indicate that children born to young teen mothers are much more likely to be indicated victims of abuse and neglect than those born to nonteen mothers. And new families in which the mother's age was under 18 at the time of first birth are also much more likely to become an indicated case of child abuse and neglect than other families. The unadjusted data also show that once a child is in foster care, the duration of the foster care placement is higher for children of young teen mothers than for other children.

... the children of young teen mothers are almost three times as likely to be behind bars at some point in their adolescence or early 20s as are the children of mothers who delayed childbearing. When the analysis controls for a number of important background factors the link between young teen childbearing and incarceration remains, although the extent of the difference is greatly reduced.

Kids Having Kids

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

There is no 'biggest cause,' but clearly the failure of 'abstinence only' programs and the lack of comprehensive sex education is a contributing factor.

Study Finds Abstinence-Only Programs Fail to Reduce Teen Sexual Behavior Fox News

 

[pillars]

Personally, I'm completely in favor of providing high quality birth control, such as norplants, to teenage girls who are at high risk of becoming pregnant.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

I blame pop culture. I mean how many single mom's do you see in Hollywood now? And just like something like say steroids in sports, where the high school kids see the pros doing it and then they want to do it, these little girls for whatever reason associate having a baby with living the glamorous life the hollywood single moms do.

But of course reality is FAR different.

 

[pillars]

Other issues related to subsidizing teen parents:

Children born to teenage mothers are less likely to receive proper nutrition, health care, and cognitive and social stimulation. As a result, they are at risk for lower academic achievement.

• Children born to teenage mothers are at increased risk for abuse and neglect.
• Boys born to teenage mothers are 13 percent more likely to be incarcerated later in life.
• Girls born to teenage mothers are 22 percent more likely to become teenage mothers themselves.

Teen Pregnancy Health Risks to the Baby - Teen Pregnancy - HealthCommunities.com

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

Personally, I'm completely in favor of providing high quality birth control, such as norplants, to teenage girls who are at high risk of becoming pregnant.

Providing? I think it should be mandatory.

 

[pillars]

I think that if we stopped paying teenagers to have children and did a better job with sex ed and providing access to birth control, the majority would do more to prevent conception. Most teenagers don't want to have babies, the ones who do typically have serious emotional issues.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

I think that if we stopped paying teenagers to have children and did a better job with sex ed and providing access to birth control, the majority would do more to prevent conception. Most teenagers don't want to have babies, the ones who do typically have serious emotional issues.

That won't stop the cycle though and as your stats proved we're talking about life cycles here, When a a woman is a grandparent at 30 years old , she's failed in life. There is no other explanation.

If we are going to continue with the welfare plan that we have (and I do not think we should , but that's a different topic) then we are going to have to implement mandatory birth control for all post pubescent family members. We can't keep essentially paying people to have more kids they can't afford, whether teen moms or not.

 

[ChrisL]

What, in your opinion, is the biggest cause of teen pregnancy in middle/high school girls? Is it low self esteem, no parental guidance, peer pressure, ignorance, etc?

What are your thoughts on tax payers having to pay for medical care for pregnant teens and their baby(babies, if that's the case), along with food stamps, WIC programs, housing assistance, etc?

It can be any of those reasons or a combination of all of the above. Teens need assistance because they don't have any education or experience to offer an employer, therefore, they will be working minimum wage jobs which are not enough to get by, so they will STILL need support.

Also, some teens don't have very good families. Some come from broken homes, abusive homes, or no home at all. Some are runaways and are desperate.

Social service supports helps all of us by keeping poverty to a minimum, which in turn means less slums, shanty towns, starving, neglected and beaten children.

 

[ChrisL]

I think that if we stopped paying teenagers to have children and did a better job with sex ed and providing access to birth control, the majority would do more to prevent conception. Most teenagers don't want to have babies, the ones who do typically have serious emotional issues.

This might be true. I am all for age-appropriate sex education. However, a lot of teens will still get pregnant because, at that age, they are known to be risk takers. This is just one reason why teens have a higher rate of drug abuse, car accidents, accidents in general, because they have "risky" behaviors. Sometimes this has nothing to do with how a child was raised but is a phase a child might go through and is especially problematic usually in the teen years. So . . . what to do with those who DO get pregnant? What is your viable alternative. Now, remember, this is America, we cannot just take babies away from moms because they are young or because what we THINK might happen. These are just some things you need to consider before answering the question.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

What, in your opinion, is the biggest cause of teen pregnancy in middle/high school girls? Is it low self esteem, no parental guidance, peer pressure, ignorance, etc?

What are your thoughts on tax payers having to pay for medical care for pregnant teens and their baby(babies, if that's the case), along with food stamps, WIC programs, housing assistance, etc?

It can be any of those reasons or a combination of all of the above. Teens need assistance because they don't have any education or experience to offer an employer, therefore, they will be working minimum wage jobs which are not enough to get by, so they will STILL need support.

Also, some teens don't have very good families. Some come from broken homes, abusive homes, or no home at all. Some are runaways and are desperate.

Social service supports helps all of us by keeping poverty to a minimum, which in turn means less slums, shanty towns, starving, neglected and beaten children.

it of course does no such thing.

 

[ChrisL]

Personally, I'm completely in favor of providing high quality birth control, such as norplants, to teenage girls who are at high risk of becoming pregnant.

Some people cannot have the Norplant. What if the parents are against birth control for religious reasons? What if the child is allergic to it? That happens sometimes. There are also some serious side effects that birth control pills can cause, so some women cannot use them at all.

 

[ChrisL]

I think that if we stopped paying teenagers to have children and did a better job with sex ed and providing access to birth control, the majority would do more to prevent conception. Most teenagers don't want to have babies, the ones who do typically have serious emotional issues.

We don't pay them to have babies. We help them to support babies they already have or are expected to have. I agree, most teens do not want to have babies, but they still want to have sex.