Teen Pregnancy: A Form of Deviance - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... Since change is inevitable, problems also adapt to the evolution happening in the surroundings. No matter how people strive for perfection, there will always be some challenges and problems that will come out. Providing solutions to the societal problems cannot eliminate those problems completely, but those issues can be controlled (Jamrozik and Nocella 1998: 1). Despite of being controlled, there are a number of factors that affect the existence of those kinds of problems. To make the discussion clearer, take teen pregnancy as an example of the societal problems that exist today. The issue of teen pregnancy has caught the attention of people for decades even the popular media had branded it as “Children having Children” (Pillow 2004: 18). That shows how the young people have started exploring their sexuality and engages with the act of sex without knowing anything about pregnancy. Probably education has something to do with that issue as the norms are broken down and the young people tend to explore due to their curiosity (Pillow 2007: 137). Some western nations like United Kingdom and other European countries dealt with the issue of teen pregnancy and sexuality by having sexual openness and sex education. Sex education then is used as an intervention that has various forms and may have different effects on the teen behavior and teen fertility rates. Some forms of sex education may have moderate term effects while others usually have short-term effects. The differences in impact depend upon the nature, methods and effectiveness of the education programs on sexuality. The programs then also have different aims ranging from abstinence to the increase in sexual knowledge, change in sexual behaviors and promotion of contraception for preventing unwanted pregnancies (Arai 2009: 95). The effectiveness then varies from one method of education to another in terms of reducing the cases of teen pregnancy. Some studies have proven that abstinence was able to lower the unwanted case of pregnancy specifically teen pregnancy as the youths learned to postpone sexual engagement. Some experts criticized the effects of abstinence and that only education as the sole solution to the prevailing societal problem was not enough as it was not able to reduce the ignorance of people on sexuality. The youths may not be able to know how sexual diseases are transmitted and how to protect themselves. They may also have no awareness on the mechanics of sex towards pregnancy that leads to inability to protect them from unwanted pregnancy. Also the abstinence only education has some adverse effects on the motivation of the young people to protect themselves from diseases caught from sexual acts (Parke and Stewart 2011: 447). Abstinence-based education actually started in the 1990s and they primarily used fear to drive the motivation of the youths away from any form of sexual contact. They made use of some mottos that depict the following: the dogs are to be pet and not the date and also do the proper thing by waiting for marriage before engaging into sex. That form of education exaggerated the effects of sex as harmful and very risky. In particular, the system endorses sex as an activity that is not for children, and that sex outside of marriage is harmful for the body. In addition, the children formed outside of marriage may experience many difficulties in the society and may not ...Download file to see next pagesRead More