Abstract
Teenage pregnancy is an important social issue because so many teenagers now a day are getting pregnant younger and younger. The rate of teenage pregnancy has gone up an expediential amount over that years. Becoming pregnant as a teenager could cause so many different problems for the girl carrying the baby as well as the baby itself, and everyone around her. Four of every ten girls gets pregnant and most are unplanned; usually eight out of ten. They will live in poverty; causing their children to grow up in poverty as well, most of the time never work, and will not complete a basic high school education. Teenagers ages fifteen to seventeen are more than half the time impregnated by a man that is twenty years old or older. The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rates out of all the other nations as well as beingtwo times more likely to have an abortion than other nations. Since the rate of teenage pregnancies is so high the article talks about the ways we can help pregnant teens have healthy babies. With all these teenage pregnancies happening around us every day we should be fully educated on them and how we can prevent, reduce, act, or help out in these situations. It used to be such a shocking and horrid thing to become pregnant as a teenager but it is happening so much lately that it is becoming more accepted by communities, but that does not mean we cannot try to lower that rates.
This paper will discuss teenage pregnancy and if there are any ways to effectively reduce or prevent it. First, current rates, cost, ethical issues, social exchange theory and an action plan will be discussed. Second, I will talk about the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and the programs that make a difference. Finally, an experiment that was done on teenage pregnancy and risk exposure will be looked at to show us how some other teenage females feel about the topic and how we can decrease the number of pregnancies.
Literature review
The first article I looked at was called, “Teen Pregnancy 2001— Still No Still Easy Answers”, and it talks about the factors that coincide with teenage pregnancy today. Current rates show that from 1986 to 1996 birthrates decreased by 8%, pregnancy rates dropped 9% and abortion rate dropped by 24%, and from 1991 to 1997 an even bigger drop happened. Statistics show that African American teenage girls had the deepest decline in teen pregnancy rates from 1991 to 1996, Hispanic teen pregnancy rates dropped by 6%, and California, Texas, Florida, and Illinois had the highest number of teen pregnancy rates, while the lowest was in Vermont, North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota and Alaska. The cost of being a teenage parent can be a lot. A parent spends around seven billion dollars a year on stuff to take care of their children. Social consequences are also a cost of being a teenage parent. Only around one-third of teenage mothers graduate high school. Ethical issues also come along with being a teen parent. Topics such as being abstinent, being safe during sex, abortion, and deciding to keep the child are very sensitive issues that nurses face when dealing with teenage parents. The American Nurses Association (ANA) require nurses to be nonjudgmental when caring for a client. They must follow the ethical decision making; for example, respect, beneficence and no maleficence, and justice. In this article, we also read that there is a strong correlation between high school dropouts and teenage pregnancy. Teenage mothers also have higher rates of school failure than those who do not have children. 20% of teen pregnancies are planned. The Social Exchange Theory was created in 1958 by Homan. The social exchange theory uses an equation; rewards – costs = profits. This is used to see if certain behaviors will be continued or stay ongoing. The concepts of this theory are that people will steer away from behaviors they believe have high costs and will go more towards behaviors that provide them with rewards. For a pregnant teen, a reward could be that her partner will stay with her and provide her with more attention but a cost could be that she will have to go through a painful delivery. Examining these rewards and costs through people with help effectively reduce the downward trend in teenage pregnancies. The action plan we see in this article is for nurses to care for pregnant teens. They should identify options, talk about consequences, evaluate these consequences, assessing the likelihood of the consequences and the decisions. Nurses should care for these teens before, during, and after their pregnancies.
The next article I read was called, “Preventing Teen Pregnancy, It’s Time to stop Kidding Around”, and it talks about how there are about one million teenage pregnancies in America and about The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. This campaign began in February 1996 and the goal was to reduce teen pregnancy rates by 2005 by one third. The campaign was led by four task forces: media, religion and public values, state and local action, and effective programs and research. Strategies include taking a strong stand against teen pregnancy, enlist the media’s help, support and stimulate local and state action, seek common ground via national discussions around the roles of religion, culture, and public values, and ensure that community efforts are based on research about what works. The campaign is guided by six principles; tolerance for diversity views toward interventions, commitment to no partnership, desire to work, recognize teen pregnancy is a symptom and cause of poverty and other disadvantages, commitment to work, and focus on boys and girls. The campaign is trying to curb the rates of teen pregnancy and will do so by trying to provide help for these teens. Some examples include school-based health clinics, school dropout preventions, peer support, contraceptive services and health care, after-school activities for teens, and developing real-life options, including career counseling, job trained and college. The article also talks about the barriers to prenatal care. Mothers get late or no prenatal care because of money, waiting times, hiding the pregnancy, or personal problems.
The next article I read was, “ Preventing Teen Pregnancy By Avoiding Risk Exposure”. This article talks about a study was done looking into two questions,” What is the basic social psychological problem faced by adolescent females living in a rural community with a high teen pregnancy rate? and What basic social psychological process do these females use to deal with this problem? (Weiss 203). The study was done in a South Florida High School on the female freshman. The data was collected and separate into three different levels. Results showed a broad variety of perspectives toward teen pregnancy. For the first question, the problem shared by these participants was living in risk promoting environments. For the second question, the process these participants used to deal with the problem of their risk-promoting environments was seeing beyond the immediate appeal of risky behaviors, and avoiding risky situations. The participants in this research spoke just about the negatives of teen pregnancy. These participants had a desire for future success, believed in their ability to make choices, avoided exposure to risky situations, owned the consequences of their choices and talked about people who have pointed them in positive directions. This study helps get some insight from other teenage girls’ perspectives on teen pregnancy. We can recognize the risk promoting environments where teens live and the process some use to avoid risky situations. Health teachers may be able to provide a more effective teen pregnancy prevention strategy. Incorporating the factors identified in this research with accurate information about safe sexual practices could lead to more effective interventions to prevent teen pregnancy.
These articles have shown that there are ways we are trying to prevent or lower the rates of teenage pregnancies. We see some risks of teenage pregnancies as well as some data that goes along with it. We are provided with campaigns that are telling us how to effectively reduce teenage pregnancy. Another campaign tells us how nurses should help out pregnant teenagers and the rewards and costs that go along with teenage pregnancy. A study was done to show us how some female teenagers feel about teen pregnancy and then we are told ways that the researchers think we can reduce teen pregnancy. What we can take home from all these articles is that there are some effective ways to prevent teenage pregnancies and we should do our best to try and follow them to help the numbers to gradually decrease.
Aims of the Study
Teenage pregnancy has become a very popular thing that we see in today’s age. It almost seems as if it is becoming a trend to be a young parent. What we know is that it is not all the fun and games that it has become made out to be today. I want to find out if there is an effective way to reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy and how we can make it happen soon.