Teenage Pregnancy

There are many times when people feel they have experienced some type of discrimination. People experience discrimination because of their religion, gender, income, and ethnicity. Another reason women may experience discrimination is because she is a young single mother. There is a universal stereotype of unwed mothers. Many people automatically assume that she is going to be on welfare for the rest of her life, never finish school, and not be able to take care of her child. Sure there are some cases where this assumption is true, but it does not apply to everyone. Many young unwed mothers experience some type of betrayal, discrimination, and fear. We must now ask what can be done to decrease the number of teen pregnancies? (Silverstein, 141-299)

After exploring numerous options to reduce this problem, I feel that I have found the most successful one. Because it is not a simple answer, it has many concerns that come along with it. Teaching sex education could be the best way to fight this problem. However, the argument that is brought up every time that this method is spoken about is people asking, “At what age should these kids be taught about sex?” I feel that teen pregnancy has gotten extremely out of control and not enough action has been done to stop the problem. From a teenager's point-of-view, I come face to face with the reality of teens getting pregnant on a daily basis. I have personally gone through my cousin giving birth at age 16 and how dramatically it changed her life forever. I was then left to ask myself, What did my environment do to prevent me from being an adolescent mother and what did the environment not do to my cousin to make the same choice I did? While researching this problem I had no idea what I was looking for. All I knew is that teen pregnancy posed a problem that continues to grow and it doesn't seem like much is being done to facilitate the problem. When researching this problem I found numerous options to help this problem, and also the emotional problems these teen mothers were facing before and after pregnancy. I feel that the benefits will be greater if the problem is investigated more thoroughly. This topic is extremely important to debate because it affects so many people. Many people don't even realize that it is affecting them because this problem hasn't happened to anyone close to them but whom do you think pays for welfare? Over 66% of citizens in the United States who receive welfare are adolescent mothers. This goes to show that the problem does affect everyone who pays taxes. (Seitzm 14-99)

When my friend was seventeen years old, a month away from starting her senior year in high school, she found out she was pregnant. After my friend found out that she was pregnant, she went to all of her friends and talked to them, they told her that they would be there for ...