Research Project #1:Problem by CuiYingWu
Teen Pregnancy (1st draft) 1/19/07
Teen pregnancy has become a serious issue in the United States. Each year, almost one million teenage women get pregnancy (“Adolesent”). By the age of 19, 66% of teens are sexually active (“Adolesent”). About 31% of teen girls get pregnant at least one before reaching the age 20 (“Teen”). In order to avoid future problems of teen pregnancy, both parents and teenagers have responsibilities to prevent teen pregnancy.

Pregnancy is “ the state of carrying a developing embryo or fetus within the female body (“General”)”. Teenagers refers to the people whose age is between thirteen and nineteen. In United States,2000, the number of teen pregnancies by age from fifteen to seventeen is 281,900; the number of teen pregnancies by age from eighteen to nineteen is 539,910 (“Number”). From these data, we know that pregnancy had become a common thing in the teenagers, people have to pay more attention on this problem and teenagers.

After knowing the large number of teen pregnancies, most of people, especially parents must want to know that what are the causes of this problem. One of the causes is about socio-economic. In some poor areas, they build up a disadvantage community (“What”), such as poor villages, complicated towns. There are different kinds of people who live in these areas, many of them have different ideas and misbehaviors. Teenagers who live it that area, they will see some people misbehaviors in sexual activities and learn from them. So teen girls can get pregnant after they do sex with males. Teens who live in the single parent family, they get less care from their parents, they will go outside to meet more people and do what they want, mostly teen girls meet other males and do sex, they have more chances to get pregnant(“What”).

Family relationship is very important to the cause of teen pregnancy. If the relationship between parents and teenagers gets worst, some of teenagers want to spend more time with somebody they liked and talk with them. These teenagers also not talk to their parents about themselves, so parents do not know what they do and what happens to them. Teen girls who has boyfriends probably like to stay with their boyfriends and do sex, that will make them pregnant (“What”).

Another cause of teen pregnancy is lock of knowledge about sex. “Teenagers who live in dysfunctional family (“Teen”)”, parents would not have ideas and time to give them sexual information because most of their parents are low educated and have to work for long time to make money for living. These parents do not spend lots of time on their children and try to know about them, or talk with them about sex and give them correct sexual information.
At school, “education about responsible sexual behavior are not frequently offered (“Adolescent”)”. School is the place teens stay in long time, teens get most of their knowledge from school education. However, school do not give teenagers enough sexual class, so students can not get as much as sexual information they need.

Sexual activities are the primarily cause of teen pregnancy. “All teenage pregnancies are the result of sexual activity, whether voluntary or involuntary (“Causes”)”. Some of teen girls get pregnant take park in loving relationship for a long time because girls must do some sexual activities with her lover if they together for a long time. Some teenager girls get pregnant after they raped. (“Causes”) Rape is somebody force teen girls to have sex with them using violence. Even thought these girls are not willing to do sex , they probably get pregnancy after raped.

Teen pregnancy had caused many effects both on teen mothers and children of teens. Low graduated rates of pregnancy teens in high school and college (“Teen”). “Only one-third receive a school diploma and 1.5% have a college degree by age 30 (“General”). Pregnancy teens have to spend time to go to the doctor and check their bodies, most of time in class they can not concentrate themselves. They also have some other problems about their baby to solve. So in pregnancy teens’ eyes, study became less important to them. pregnancy teens have serious health risks (“Teen”). Common medical problems among teens mothers include “poor weight gain, hypertension, anemia, sexually transmitted diseases and cephalopelvic disproportion (“Teen”).

Children of teens are effected a lot by teen pregnancy. Children of teens often have poorer parenting or single parenting (“Teen”). Their parents are too young to be a parent, when they have baby, they don’t have idea how to raise the baby and how to educate them because they do not have that kind of knowledge and their mind are not mature. Some of them even can not take care of themselves, how can they raise the baby. So children of teens most can not get good care and family education from their parents. There are also some healthy problems in children of teens. They “suffer from higher rates of low birth weigh and related health problems (“Teen”). “Low birth weight raises the probabilities of infant death, blindness, deafness, chronic respiratory problems, mental retardation, mental illness an cerebral palsy (“Teen”).

Teen pregnancy also causes some economic problems. It will make the family poorer(“Teen”). Teen mothers can not make enough money to raise the baby even she has a job, so the family have to take some money to help the teen mother raise the baby. To raise a baby is not easy, it must be considered lots, many of them involve money. “Teen pregnancy costs society billions of dollars a year(“Teen”). Most of teen mothers are unmarried , many of them will end up poor and on welfare. “Each year the federal government alone spends about 9 billion dollars to help families that began with a teenage birth (“Teen”).

Even though teen pregnancy has become a such bad problem, there still some solutions to prevent it. Both parents of teens and teenagers have responsibilities to reduce the number of teen pregnancies. Teenagers should wait until they are older to have sex (“General”). If they are older enough and have ability to raise a baby, so they can avoid some healthy and economic problems. They should talk to someone they trust when they have sexual problems (“Especially”). Before they do sexual activities, they ask someone they trust for some correct sexual information, so they probably can prevent pregnancy.

Parents of teens also can help to prevent teen pregnancy, they should talk to their children about sex and give them correct sexual information (“General”). They are the closest people to their children, if they can give children some sexual class and tell them something about sex, it will help children to know what they should do and what they should not do about sex.

We can not ignore the problem of teen pregnancy because it already made lots of negative influences on teenagers and society, it causes low graduated rates, healthy problems of teen mothers and children of teens, government spend billions dollars on it. Do you support teen pregnancy? If not, we should try our best to prevent it , parents of teens and teenagers are the most useful helpers to solve this problem and make teenagers growing up more healthily.