The Sexual Issues and Especially Teen Pregnancy - Essay Example

Teen pregnancy Teenagers (between the age of 13 and 19 years) undergo a lot of issues during these seven years ranging from tackling the challenges of adolescence and the changes it brings to the body and emotions, substance use and abuse, peer pressures and eating disorders among others. The worse of them all however is the sexual issues and especially teen pregnancy. It brings about its own share of challenges and changes the life of the teenager completely. The following paper will delve deeply into the challenges teen pregnancy brings, how to prevent it and how to tackle the challenges. Parenthood is not as easy a task as some people want to make it be. It involves dedication, immense and ever increasing responsibilities as the child grows, financial stability, compassion among other others. This is not something that a hormonal teenager is ready to undergo and especially considering she has a whole growing up to do before they can handle the growing up of another tiny human being that is demanding everything of the parents. The teenagers have their whole life ahead of them to even figure out issues such as the colleges they want to go to, the career choice, life partner to choose as well as enjoy all the other stages of development both social and psychological. Having such a person change their course of life as a result of an unplanned pregnancy is confusing, challenging and a burden to not only themselves but to their parents or guardians as well. Teenagers due to adolescence start discovering their sexuality and find the need to experiment. A combination of the developing hormones, substance use in parties, peer pressure and sometimes lack of adult supervision or advice on sexual matters lead to lack of decision making and the eventuality is an unplanned pregnancy. The teenage boys responsible for fathering the girls are quick to remove themselves from the equation leaving the girls to handle all the stress, the societal rejection, the judgmental faces and comments as well as the stress of raising the child all on their own (Arai 8). Recently the statistics on teenage pregnancy have been reducing but the number is still high. When teenagers find out they are pregnant, they are left with few options to choose from: get an abortion, raise the child or give it up for adoption. If the father of the unborn child opts to leave and deny the involvement in the baby making process or choose to ignore his responsibility, the girl has to face the issue and decision making alone. Most girls opt to undergo an abortion in order to save themselves and their families the shame and harsh judgment from the society. The girls who choose abortion save themselves from the life of early unplanned parenthood and continue with their lives as usual. There are a few cases however that die during the process of abortion and especially in countries where abortion is illegal and hence the abortion conducted on them is by backstreet unqualified people. The real problem is on the teenagers that chose to carry the pregnancy to term whether they will give up the baby for adoption or not. When people discover the pregnancy, they stigmatize the teens. They publicly insult them calling them unpronounceable names even without knowing them. Some of these teens got pregnant at their first sexual initiation and hence do not deserve some of the names they are called. Some schools expel the teens that are found to be pregnant and to some this may mean the end of their education (especially those learning on scholarships). Some parents also shun their own pregnant children and chase them away from home to avoid the shame. The pregnant teenagers end up in shelters or even as homeless living in the streets with no one to assist them guide them throughout their difficult pregnancy period or even offer them medical advice. These teenagers some of them end up committing suicide, attempting to abort the child, having a miscarriage, dying or giving birth and throwing or even selling their children. For those who do not leave school, they face the negative comments from their fellow students and even teachers on a daily basis. Most of these comments are negative and very stressing to the already stressed teenager by the pregnancy and the end result is a significant drop in their performance, leaving school to avoid the ridicule and stigmatization, running away from home to a place where no one knows them among other negative options. For teenagers that do not receive support from their families, they face financial troubles of how to raise money for the medical bill during childbirth and even for taking care of themselves and the baby. Since they are not qualified, they get jobs with minimal wage and this is not enough. Many therefore opt to become exotic dancers and others go into street prostitution as well as becoming drug smugglers and peddlers all in order to put food in their shunned and unplanned baby’s mouth and buy clothes or even pay fees. There are also health complications during teen pregnancy and giving birth. Their reproduction system is not fully developed and may still be too small to handle a baby. This is especially the case for those teens that become pregnant before the age of 18 years. In some of the cases, the foetus does not get enough room to develop due to the small uterus and hence ends up being born with defects. The teen mother may even experience miscarriage or a very difficult pregnancy requiring a lot of bed rest and this translates to missing school and increased medical expenses. For those who survive the pregnancy, some of them find it difficult to deliver normally and have to undergo a caesarean section and some even die during childbirth or the children die due to birth-related complications. For the teens that get support from their parents, they still have to take considerable time off school and delay in graduating or starting college due to the presence in taking care of the child. Some also end up not going to college at all due to the increased financial burden or raising a young child which is very expensive. The dreams they had are shattered and their lives changes from then. There is however a few whose lives is not altered greatly as their parents once they have delivered and recovered return them to school and life returns to normal for them but this is the case for very few ones. There are attempts to prevent teenage pregnancies by having sex education incorporated in the school syllabus as well as distribution of contraceptives such as condoms and pills to the teenagers who are sexually active. This has contributed greatly to the earlier mentioned reduction in the number of teen pregnancies especially in the US and other developed nations (Arai 58). The challenge however still remains in the developing countries which also experience the issue in great numbers. There are very few people willing to teach sex education and those who do beat around the bush so much that the pupils end up understanding nothing or very little to even make any significant impact to the teenagers. This is majorly as a result of culture and this is what needs to be addressed first. There is also the option of early marriages for these pregnant teenagers and this even affects their lives more as they are married of very young men who are not financially stable or have no clue about marriage or to old people are second and third wives leading to a whole new stigmatization. When considering or continuing with the distribution of the contraceptives to the teenagers, there is bound to be negative effects. The teenagers are likely to view engaging in sexual activities at such an early age as an accepted issue. The distributors should first of all explain that the contraceptives are a preventive method but it is not okay for them to start engaging in sexual activities just because the preventive paraphernalia are present for them to use. The teenagers are supposed to be taught even in ethics class the importance and value attached to sexual intercourse including issues such as enjoying it with a life partner or doing it at the right time in life when dealing with the consequences will not be as harsh as it can be during the teenage years. They should also be told that these contraceptives are not 100% effective and accidents can happen and still get pregnant. The importance of abstinence should still be taught and virginity openly discussed as not being such as bad thing as the teenagers make it to be. Parents should also be on the fore front of sex education to their children and not leave the issue to be entirely handled by the teachers or even the teenagers to make their own discoveries which may be too late to undo and have to deal with consequences mentioned above. Work Cited Arai, Lisa. Teenage Pregnancy: The Making and Unmaking of a Problem. Bristol: Policy Press, 2009. Read More