Essay Sample on Causes of Teenage Pregnancy

According to the CDC, in the year 2018 alone about 194, 377 children were born to teenage mothers. In the United States alone more than 4 out of 5 teens or 80% were recorded pregnant (Banspach et al., 2016). From these increasing numbers, teenage pregnancy has become a global problem. Developed nations are affected just like developing ones. The impact of teenage pregnancy is even worse in poorer and marginalized communities. There are considerable pressures placed on girls to marry early and become mothers when they are still very tender and young. A group of feminist or women rights activists has argued that most teenage pregnant girls have been denied basic human rights platforms to make basic decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. Appropriate healthcare services and education have been suggested as the key ways to solve such a menace. While many feminists have focused on the effects of the problem on teenage pregnancy and made it a societal concern, very little has been talked about concerning its causes. In this paper, the focus will be to highlight and discuss the causes of teenage pregnancy globally. Teenage pregnancy is a growing problem globally and is caused primarily by family structure, age at first intercourse and sexual abuse.

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Family structure is considered one of the major factors contributing to adolescent pregnancies. According to the CDC, a relative number of adolescent females live in relatively unstable families. A lot of girls from unstable families have fallen into the trap of early pregnancies. Being in unstable families pushes these girls into short term search of comfort zones. The short terms sense of comfort makes them become intimate while they are still young.

Parental rejection and lack of affection or warmth from the family lower the self-esteem of most ladies. When ladies suffer from low self-esteem they tend to search for affection elsewhere. Teenagers who look for relationships outside the family normally get intimate with their partners which in turn leads to early teenage pregnancy. A relatively unstable family structure influences the way teenage members of the family take and accept advice from their parents. A missing link or connection between the parents and the teenage girls will make the defiant of these pieces of advice. When they don't get pieces of advice from their parents, they definitely get it from their peers. Advice from peers explains why peer pressure is also a cause of teenage pregnancy. Accepting pieces of advice from peers is only possible when a link within the family structure is missing. Peer pressure as a factor leading to teenage pregnancy exists under the family structure as a cause of teenage or early pregnancies. Within the family structure, the absence of a father has been analyzed as a major cause of teenage pregnancy. Teenage girls need very much the father's love and in the absence, they are likely to become intimate with another elderly person. Most teenage pregnant girls according to UNICEF were assessed to have daddy issues. As analyzed in the above paragraph, family structure has remained one of the most outstanding causes of teenage pregnancies.

The second cause of teenage pregnancy is the age of the first sexual intercourse. In recent times, puberty in adolescents occurs relatively early. First-time sexual encounters among teens and the youth occur at a very early age. At the time teenagers reach the epitome of their teenage, they are more sexually experienced adolescents than scientifically and societal expected. At the age of fourteen, a lot of females claim to have had their first sex. Practically at the age of seventeen, they could be sexually mature to get pregnant. According to the national campaign to prevent teenage pregnancy, there is really not any relationship between when a girl gets to puberty and the likeliness of them getting pregnant (Zimlich, 2018). However, the CDC rebuttals this reasoning by arguing that the earlier onset of puberty for girls, coupled with changes in the environment that affect biological activities in the body influence the girls to make premature sexual decisions.

Early-onset of puberty, coupled with peer pressure and minimum parental supervision in the life of adolescents influences a lot of teenage girls to engage in sexual activities which act as the cause of their teenage pregnancy. Adolescents whose siblings have engaged in intercourse and are pregnant are influenced into early puberty. Adolescents who are exposed to others of their kind who have children are convinced that they can have them too which then leads to teen pregnancy. These adolescents might not be ready for teenage pregnancy but exposure to others like them stirs up their puberty while they are still very young. At this young age, they might end up getting pregnant. Even adolescents whose mothers gave birth as teenagers are likely to get teenage pregnancy through engaging in early sexual intercourse. Such kids are likely to become teen parents as well.

The media and society also play a role in influencing early puberty in adolescents (Zimlich, 2018). Social media platforms contain explicit content that exposes young puberty minds to adult sexual content. At the click of the hand, children just reaching their puberty are exposed to sexual activities online. Mainstream media also air musical shows and films with explicit content that makes adolescents know about sexual activities at the early stages of their puberty. It is then that they stand the risk of getting teenage pregnant. From the analysis above, it is clear that the early onset of puberty and exposure to sexual activities from peers and the media exclusively contributes to teenage pregnancy.

Finally, sexual abuse is another cause of teenage pregnancy. Sexual abuse psychology alters an adolescent's perception of sexual behavior. An abused sexual teenager is likely to have multiple sexual partners due to frustration. Unresolved feelings of sexual abuse especially from an adult person to a teenager make the teenage engage in sexual activities with several sexual partners in the search for gratification. If the first female sexual experience of a teenager is voluntary, the teenager is likely to take precautionary measures. However, in the case of sexual abuse, the teenager in pain and trauma avoids taking pre-cautionary measures which lead to teenage pregnancy. Female engaging in sexual activities with older partners are more likely to become pregnant than their mates who engage with partners of the same age. In terms of statistics conducted by the CDC, about two-thirds of teenage mothers have confessed to having engaged in sexual intercourse with an older person. Sexual abuse like rape by a father, an uncle, stepfather or any member of the family who is an adult makes a lot of females depressed as they suffer from low self-esteem (Dongarwar, & Salihu, 2019). They are not likely to open to anyone who they think would believe them easily. Going into such a state of trauma and pain, they are likely to get pregnant most likely unintentionally. Most of the female teenagers who think their future is bleak prefer getting into motherhood as a way of getting back hope. As explained in the above paragraph, sexual abuse is one of the major causes of early pregnancies globally.

In conclusion, the three major causes of teenage pregnancy as discussed in the paper are; family structure, sexual abuse, and tender age when attending first sexual intercourse. Poor family structures expose the adolescent to pieces of advice of peers which is physically not good for them. Sexual abuse psychologically traumatizes most young girls thereby making them vulnerable to early pregnancies. Finally, young women accessing sex at a tender age just before puberty exposes them to sexual activities which increases their risk to teenage pregnancies. Just as mentioned in the thesis, feminist organizations and human rights organizations should focus mainly on solving the causes of teenage pregnancies rather than focusing on its effects.

References

Banspach, S., Zaza, S., Dittus, P., Michael, S., Brindis, C. D., & Thorpe, P. (2016). CDC grand rounds: adolescence-preparing for lifelong health and wellness. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 65(30), 759-762.

Dongarwar, D., & Salihu, H. M. (2019). Influence of sexual and reproductive health literacy on single and recurrent adolescent pregnancy in Latin America. Journal of pediatric and adolescent gynecology, 32(5), 506-513.

Zimlich, R. (2018). CDC: Teens missing the nutritional mark. Contemporary Pediatrics, 35(11), 28-29.