₦airaland Forum

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Anti-teenage_pregnancy_III.jpg/220px-Anti-teenage_pregnancy_III.jpg
Teenage pregnancy is pregnancy in human females under the age of 20. A girl can become pregnant from sexual intercourse after she has began to ovulate which can be before her first menstrual period (menarche), but usually occurs after the onset of her periods. In well-nourished girls, menarche usually takes place around the age of 12 or 13.
Pregnant teenagers face many of the same obstetrics issues as other women
. There are, however, additional medical concerns for pregnant girls aged under 15, who are less likely to have become physically developed enough to sustain a healthy pregnancy or to give birth. For girls aged 15–19 risks are associated more with socioeconomic factors than with the biological effects of age. Risks of low birth weight, premature labor, anemia, and pre-eclampsia are connected to the biological age itself, as it was observed in teen births even after controlling for other risk factors (such as utilization of antenatal care etc.). Every day in developing countries, 20,000 girls under age 18 give birth. This amounts to 7.3 million births a year. And if all pregnancies are included, the number of adolescent pregnancies is much higher.
In developed countries, teenage pregnancies are often associated with social issues, including lower educational levels, higher rates of poverty, and other poorer life outcomes in children of teenage mothers. Teenage pregnancy in developed countries is usually outside of marriage, and carries a social stigma in many communities and cultures. By contrast, teenage parents in developing countries are often married, and their pregnancies welcomed by family and society. However, in these societies, early pregnancy may combine with malnutrition and poor health care to cause medical problems.
Teenage pregnancies appear to be preventable by comprehensive sex education and access to birth control. Abstinence-only sex education does not appear to be effective
Definition
An anti-teenage pregnancy poster
The age of the mother is determined by the easily verified date when the pregnancy ends, not by the estimated date of conception. Consequently, the statistics do not include pregnancies that began in women aged 19 if they did not end until on or after the woman’s 20th birthday. Similarly, statistics on the mother’s marital status are determined by whether she is married at the end of the pregnancy, not at the time of conception.
Effects
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA), “Pregnancies among girls less than 18 years of age have irreparable consequences. It violates the rights of girls, with life-threatening consequences in terms of sexual and reproductive health, and poses high development costs for communities, particularly in perpetuating the cycle of poverty.” Health consequences include not yet being physically ready for pregnancy and childbirth leading to complications and malnutrition as the majority of adolescents tend to come from lower-income households. The risk of maternal death for girls under age 15 in low- and middle-income countries is higher than for women in their twenties. Teenage pregnancy also affects girls’ education and income potential as many are forced to drop out of school which ultimately threatens future opportunities and economic prospects.
Several studies have examined the socioeconomic, medical, and psychological impact of pregnancy and parenthood in teens. Life outcomes for teenage mothers and their children vary; other factors, such as poverty or social support, may be more important than the age of the mother at the birth. Many solutions to counteract the more negative findings have been proposed. Teenage parents who can rely on family and community support, social services and child-care support are more likely to continue their education and get higher paying jobs as they progress with their education.
A holistic approach is required in order to address teenage pregnancy. This means not focusing on changing the behaviour of girls but addressing the underlying reasons of adolescent pregnancy such as poverty, gender inequality, social pressures and coercion. This approach should include “providing age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education for all young people, investing in girls’ education, preventing child marriage, sexual violence and coercion, building gender-equitable societies by empowering girls and engaging men and boys and ensuring adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health information as well as services that welcome them and facilitate their choices.”
Mother
Teen birth rates internationally, per 1000 girls aged 15–19, (2008). United States and United Kingdom have some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the developed world.
Being a young mother in a first world country can affect one’s education. Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of high school. However, recent studies have found that many of these mothers had already dropped out of school before becoming pregnant, but those in school at the time of their pregnancy were as likely to graduate as their peers. One study in 2001 found that women who gave birth during their teens completed secondary-level schooling 10–12% as often and pursued post-secondary education 14–29% as often as women who waited until age 30. Young motherhood in an industrialized country can affect employment and social class. Less than one third of teenage mothers receive any form of child support, vastly increasing the likelihood of turning to the government for assistance. The correlation between earlier childbearing and failure to complete high school reduces career opportunities for many young women. One study found that, in 1988, 60% of teenage mothers were impoverished at the time of giving birth. Additional research found that nearly 50% of all adolescent mothers sought social assistance within the first five years of their child’s life. A study of 100 teen aged mothers in the United Kingdom found that only 11% received a salary, while the remaining 89% were unemployed. Most British teenage mothers live in poverty, with nearly half in the bottom fifth of the income distribution.Teenage women who are pregnant or mothers are seven times more likely to commit suicide than other teenagers.Professor John Ermisch at the institute of social and economic research at Essex University and Dr Roger Ingham, director of the centre of sexual health at Southampton University – found that comparing teenage mothers with other girls with similarly deprived social-economic profiles, bad school experiences and low educational aspirations, the difference in their respective life chances was negligible.
Silhouette of a pregnant teen
Teenage motherhood may actually make economic sense for young women with less money, some research suggests. For instance, long-term studies by Duke University economist V. Joseph Hotz and colleagues, published in 2005, found that by age 35, former teen moms had earned more in income, paid more in taxes, were substantially less likely to live in poverty and collected less in public assistance than similarly poor women who waited until their 20s to have babies. Women who became mothers in their teens — freed from child-raising duties by their late 20s and early 30s to pursue employment while poorer women who waited to become moms were still stuck at home watching their young children — wound up paying more in taxes than they had collected in welfare. Eight years earlier, the federally commissioned report “Kids Having Kids” also contained a similar finding, though it was buried: “Adolescent child bearers fare slightly better than later-childbearing counterparts in terms of their overall economic welfare.”
According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, nearly 1 in 4 teen mothers will experience another pregnancy within two years of having their first. Pregnancy and giving birth significantly increases the chance that these mothers will become high school dropouts and as many as half have to go on welfare. Many teen parents do not have the intellectual or emotional maturity that is needed to provide for another life. Often, these pregnancies are hidden for months resulting in a lack of adequate prenatal care and dangerous outcomes for the babies. Factors that determine which mothers are more likely to have a closely spaced repeat birth include marriage and education: the likelihood decreases with the level of education of the young woman – or her parents – and increases if she gets married.

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Source: http://www.teensaid.org/2016/05/27/teenage-pregnancy/

nice article

Lovely piece. It is only the unpatient people that won't read and later on, go and open their legs or get a girl pregnant and cry foul...

If only i read all that.

But can someone please provide a summary?

Vinshu:
If only i read all that.

But can someone please provide a summary?

The Dangers of TEENAGE pregnancy; its effect to the Individual, 'Her' Economy, Her Family, Society and the World at large.

lalasticlala

Olasco93:
The Dangers of TEENAGE pregnancy; its effect to the Individual, 'Her' Economy, Her Family, Society and the World at large.

Lol society.

Abeg I no come Lagos come preach. come OP that long epistle up there who is it for?