Teenage Pregnancy

Teenage pregnancy is pertaining to women who are getting pregnant within the ages of 13-19. Do you think this is a problem in the society? That depends on which region or country you belong to. In developed countries, teenage pregnancy is usually within marriage and does not involve a social issue. Among developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom have the highest level of teenage pregnancy, while Japan and South Korea have the lowest. In developing countries, among Asian countries like Philippines, teenage pregnancy is a socio-economic problem. Such socio-economic issues are as follows:

Educational levels
Women that are not given a chance to go to school at least having reached secondary high school, haven’t experience proper education and lack of guidance from their parents are resulted to teenage pregnancy.

Poverty
Few teenage mothers are continuing to finish their education giving them less chance or less opportunity to find a better career in the future; they’ll be exposed to find means for a living at an early stage of their lives. Hopes and dreams are mostly ended right after getting pregnant thus it resulted to experience poverty.

Poor pregnant mothers become Poorer
Unplanned pregnancy is usually the outcome of the teenage pregnancy. Teenage mothers suffer from early motherhood responsibilities that they are not much ready to take. Teenage mothers belonging to middle class and lowest class family need to sacrifice a lot of things like education and other dreams just to cope with their new life situation as a mother. Without much income because of unfinished education, they can’t give better future for their children.

Higher rates of Abortion
Teenage pregnant that is afraid to face the consequences of unplanned pregnancy and acts cowardly in accepting the motherhood responsibilities, abortion is her last option. And in this case, Philippines don’t embrace abortion.

One of the ways to limit the growing issue on teenage pregnancy is having a closed-family relationship at home. Parents play a very important role of teaching sex education to their children. A mother is obliged to introduce sex education to her daughter once she experiences the first menstrual period. A father is responsible to remind good values of his growing son on how to respect women.