Teen Pregnancy
Anita Bryant
Dr. Chineze Oyejenkwe
July 10, 2013
Social Problems
Soc 2551
There are many reasons as to why an epidemic like teen pregnancy has spread so quickly throughout the nation, and has stayed a rising controversy. Some causes of which are voluntary, and are completely avoidable, others are inevitable and are not of fault of the unknowing teenager. These causes consist of a lack in effort on every façade of teen pregnancy. For example, a simple failure to use contraceptives correctly, a lack of education in sex and preventative methods or abstinence, even the environment can result in pregnancy.
Pressure is one thing that can affect any teenager at any high school. They see it in many different forms, and in the faces of their friends, peers, or even from the things they may absorb from television show, such as MTV’s “16 and Pregnant.” Pressure that if they don’t have sex, they aren’t worth being tolerated, or that they aren’t ‘cool’. Pressure that who they are isn’t enough if they haven’t given it up. This is just one of the factors that lead to teen pregnancy.
Another reason for this societal problem, is that of demographics, as where you live and how you live affects who you are and how you live. Many teens live in unwelcoming environments and are stuck in homes where abuse and mistreatment reign. Because of living in such environments, the way these teens see life is shaped through those rugged lens. Say, for example, if a teen lives with a mother who has had children in her teens, and struggles with the bills, drug or alcohol abuse and has men around the house who aren’t fundamentally appealing to her children, this teen will only know the struggle her mother fought through, and the challenges they know would be how they consider life to be, and will ultimately frame the choices they’ll make. This teens idols, and mother/father figures have become those of drunken men and beat-up women.
Living in a poor, poverty...