TEENAGE PREGNANCY

Teenage pregnancy has been rampant nowadays in our society. Teenagers as young as
fourteen usually gets pregnant at an early age .As an effect, most of teenagers become
mothers unprepared in facing the duties and responsibilities of being a mom.

Teenage pregnancy is a result of a lot of factors in the society. One of its main reasons
is sometimes negligence of the parents and sometimes are due to lack of sex education
as well as inclination of the younger generation to porn. Due to these reasons, most of
the teenagers become mother at a young age forcing them to marry early or sometimes
even stop attending school in order to be a mom.

Teenage pregnancy also has significant long term social consequences for the
adolescents, their children, their families and their communities; it led adolescents to
less educational attainment and high school dropout, poor health and poverty. The
children of teenage mothers are also more likely to have lower school achievement and
drop out of high school, have more health problems, are incarcerated at some time
during adolescence, give birth as a teenager, and face unemployment as a young adult.

Although adolescent pregnancy occurs among all racial, cultural and socioeconomic
groups, some adolescents are more likely than others to become pregnant. Factors
such as economic status, education, religion, place of residence, peer's and partners'
behaviours, family and community attitudes, age, mass media, lack of reproductive
health services and knowledge are contributing factors to the increase of unintended
pregnancy among adolescents in Ethiopia.

The government of Ethiopia developed strategies to achieve four major objectives:

increasing access to quality reproductive health services for adolescents, increase
awareness and knowledge about reproductive health issues, strengthen multisectoral
partnerships, and design and implement adolescent and youth reproductive health
programs. However, teenage pregnancy remains high in the country.
Although in traditional societies the majority of these pregnancies are socially desired,
several studies have pointed out the enormous risks which are associated with teenage
pregnancies, such as anemia, preterm labor, urinary tract infections, preeclampsia, high
rate of caesarean sections, preterm birth.

As a responsible citizen of the country, we must do our part to avoid teenage pregnancy
by guiding our younger generation. Parents must always be responsible of their
children. Sex education must also be implemented in order the younger generations be
aware of the consequences of it. Also, the government should be stricter in terms of
regulating films and other materials with adult content. With this, we can lessen the
number of teenagers who become pregnant at an early age.

As for those who get into teenage pregnancy, it is also our responsibility to guide them
once they already get into their situation. As part of the society, it is still our
responsibility to guide them for them to become a more efficient and responsible parent.
 TEENAGE PREGNANCY

BY: PRINCES ANNE NILLAS 12- TVL