Quinn 1

Calynn Quinn

James Smith

English 2010

April 24, 2023

Preventing Teen Pregnancy in America

Adolescent pregnancy, also known as teen pregnancy, is when a female between the ages

of 13-19 gets pregnant. Adolescent pregnancy is the result that one can sometimes get when

combining social, cultural, and economic factors. This is a major issue that affects not only the

teenager but also family members, the teenager’s baby, and the whole community. Because this

issue affects many people, it is usually also caused by many people. However, as everyone who

is included in this issue tries to help and make the community a better place, future adolescents

will avoid making the same mistakes that their parents made. Teenagers should not get pregnant,

it is not their duty or in their area of expertise. Don’t let one’s teenager get pregnant. When an

adolescent gets pregnant many problems will occur and one of them can lead to the daughter

getting pregnant as a teenager. If this happens, it will be harder for the next generation to break

this problem. To prevent adolescent pregnancy parents and teenagers should understand what

might get a person into those types of situations, what to do if found in those situations, and to

know the consequences of teenage pregnancy.

Being Aware

First, parents need to help teenagers be aware of how they could end up in these

situations. Many teenagers end up pregnant because they did not know that they were even in

that type of a situation. All teenage pregnancies can be avoided, most of them occur because
 Quinn 2

teens don’t tell parents about these types of situations, and they are not well educated enough to

seek help when they should get it.

In the article, “Targeting Unintended Teen Pregnancy in the U.S.”, it summarizes another

article saying, “One important part of social networks for adolescents is parental involvement.

Adolescents whose parents are more involved tend to choose to delay sexual initiation and are at

a lower risk for unintended pregnancy” (Hoskins & Simons, 2015; Viner et al., 2012). In other

words, having a parent know about who their daughter is going out with can help lower the risk

of teen pregnancy. Parents know what is best for their daughters and when a parent knows what

is going on, they can and always will help resolve the situation before it gets into a bigger

problem that is harder to fix. Teenagers should trust their parents even if their parents don’t agree

or look at the problem from their daughter’s viewpoint.

The authors of “Looking back and moving forward: can we accelerate progress on

adolescent pregnancy in the Americas?” The authors discuss what influences adolescent

pregnancy. Some factors are poverty, lack of education and healthcare, and cultural attitudes

towards sexuality and gender roles. (Caffe et al. 3) This, in other words, means that most of the

teenagers who get pregnant are more from the lack of information about the subject, money, or

education in general. Something that was so basic to understand, like gender, started to become

an issue for many teenagers, because they were not getting the correct education from the right

people.

Teenagers should tell their parents where they are, what they are doing, and when they

will be back. Parents should know if their child actually went to school. By keeping children in

school, they will be occupied for a long time, and will avoid the likelihood of teenage

pregnancies from occurring. The earlier a parent knows that their daughter is having sex with
 Quinn 3

someone the sooner the parent can help their daughter get out of this type of situations. If parents

find out about this type of situation early on before the daughter even shows signs of

pregnancies, the easier for the daughter to break this type of habit. If the teenager is pregnant, it

will be harder for them, but they can still be given the opportunities to enjoy life to its fullest

while being a teenager.

Fixing Teenage Pregnancies

For the teenagers who find themselves pregnant, they can still try and be the ideal

teenager. The definition of an ideal teenager in “State of intervention: community stakeholder

discourse on teen childbearing in Iowa” is a girl who is well read, does not get pregnant, and

taught to be self-governed. Though they would have already broken one of the definitions of a

teenager they can still however full the other definitions of being a teenager. Teenagers are

supposed to love life and just enjoy it. Once a teenager gets pregnant their life will never be the

same, but they can still try and live as normal a life as any other teenager.

In “the Mexico Ministerial Declaration: “Educating to Prevent” in 2008, committing to

improve access to and the quality of comprehensive sexuality education for young people, with

the goal to reduce sexual and reproductive health risks” (Caffe et al. 4). By giving teenagers

education and putting them back into school they can try and forget about the experience and

move on with life. They will also be wiser with their choices when they finish school. This will

also keep the teenager busy, if they are busy with schoolwork, they will not have enough time to

think about starting a family.

If they have already started a family, they should still finish their education and gain

respect from their community. This seems really random, but if the teenage mother gains respect

from their community they can help themselves out, and help their child be able to be accepted
 Quinn 4

by their peers. When a mother makes a mistake this big, the child is always affected by it so to

help their child out, know and work hard to gain a trustful relationship with other around them.

In the “State of intervention: community stakeholder discourse on teen childbearing in

Iowa” explained that many of the people who help the teens recover were listening to the teens

story, and they were moved, but the “don’t get pregnant” stance was what helped these teenagers

to become teenagers again (Weare et al. 209). Those teenagers got help from medical people

when they realized they had fallen into this situation. It is completely ok to get help when this

type of situation happens. The people helped the teenagers recover by telling them not to get

pregnant. This might sound funny if they are already pregnant, but by telling them not to get

pregnant the teenagers will not want to do it again. Most people know that not getting pregnant

as a teenager is not that hard but the “don’t get pregnant” phrase is not for them. It is for the

small percentage of people who want to get pregnant and think that it would be a fun experience

to own a child themselves.

Teenagers need to know that they cannot do everything on their own, especially raising a

child. It takes a mother a long time as an adult to raise good children so it would talk even long

for a teenager to raise good children. When they make mistakes, people will always help them if

they let others into their lives. Those other people only want to make life easier for the teenager

and they care about the teenager. By keeping teenagers occupied they won’t create any

unnecessary problems. Which leads us to our last topic about the consequences of having

teenage pregnancy.

The Consequences of Teenage Pregnancy

There are many consequences of teen pregnancy. The consequences of teen pregnancy

affect the mental, physical, and spiritual body. They also affect the teenager, their family, their
 Quinn 5

community, their bank, and many more groups of people. Everyone gets involved in the

teenager’s life when the teenager decides to be pregnant.

The teenage mother will affect the family in the sense that it will be harder for the

teenager’s parent to raise a teenager and her child. The parents will have to be raising their

daughters’ children while their daughter is away at school. This means that the parents will have

to stop the hobbies that they like to do on a day-to- day basis to be able to raise their grandchild.

Their life will completely change back into the adults that they were when their children were

just little.

The health insurance will go up. This is because they are now responsible for another

human being hospital fees. Because they have to look after another child they will want more

payment so the parent will have to pay more to the insurance. The teenage mother will probably

be required to pay some of her earning into the in this insurance as well because she was the one

that decided to get pregnant.

When the teenager leaves the becomes an adult, she will start poor than her peers because

of her poor choice in her teenage years. She will have to work harder and longer than her peers

and she still we'll have to go to college for some sort of education to get a better paying job to get

herself out of poverty. She will also be lose some cognitive brain cells making it harder for her to

learn about her schooling. And get some daily tasks done around the house.

The article, “Using Randomized Designs to Evaluate Client-Centered Programs to

Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy” (McBride and Gienapp), states many consequences that come

from being pregnant. McBride and Gienapp explain that teenagers who “compared with women

who give birth at ages 20-21, those who become mothers at age 17 or younger have worse

outcomes on several dimensions, including the likelihood of completing school, having a

 Quinn 6

subsequent pregnancy and being a single parent. Their children receive less health care than the

children of older mothers, and they have lower cognitive scores, more difficulty in school, poorer

health, less-stimulating and less-supportive home environments, and higher rates of incarceration

and adolescent childbearing.” This in general just means that their children are treated

differently, they are more likely to pass diseases to their children, and they will be poor. Their

children won’t have as much knowledge as peers their age because of a function called the

cognitive function. The word cognitive means to use your brain, when a person is lacking in

cognitive function it basically mans that they are not able to use their brain as much. They cannot

focus, have bad memory skills, execute functions poorly, and take them longer to process

information.

The child will have to work harder to learn the same amount of information as their

peers. They will have a harder time fitting in and making friends because of their mothers’

decision. If the child is a girl, she has a higher likely hood of getter pregnant in her teenage years

as well. This is because daughters follow the example of their mothers and that is what her

mother did. The mother has to try harder to raise good children especially daughter so that they

do not end up repeating history.

To sum up, the teenager and their child end up being in a worse condition then they

started with. Some of these consequences are for a short amount of time. For example, if you

work more, you will eventually not be poor. Other problems are forever, like lacking some

cognitive functions. This won’t eventually go away; you will always have this problem until you

die. To avoid this fate, “don’t get pregnant.”

Another Perspectives
 Quinn 7

On many occasions, teenagers do not want to tell their parents or anyone that they are

pregnant or showing signs of pregnancy. This is usually because they think that their parents will

look down upon them or something like that. They may have been forced or misled and were

told not to tell their parents or guardian about the situation. Other teenagers’ relationships with

their parents are not great and their parents would be against them having a boyfriend, so they

could have gotten pregnant with the boyfriend to let their parents know that they do not get to tell

their daughter what they can or cannot do.

Some teens want to get pregnant; they think that they are ready to start being a mother

and they feel super ready. Mike Fitzpatrick said, “When I told them, they embraced in delight

and I burst into laughter, partly in relief, partly in a spirit of sharing this happy moment with

them” (Teen Dreams). This shows that those teens were happy and delighted about the news. By

the way that Fitzpatrick explained it, they wanted to have a baby. Not all teenagers get pregnant

by accident, but none of them are ready to take care of their child.

The teenagers might have thought that they could have had a child, but they will learn

that they do not want to have a child when they are trying to figure out what their career is going

to be, or where they are going to live. Most places might not want a teenage couple who has a

child to stay at their apartment. Teenage parents also do not know how to care for the child and

that can lead to problems in the future.

In conclusion, to prevent pregnancy teenagers should talk to their parents, get help when

one finds themselves pregnant, and consequences will only happen if one makes the choice to get

pregnant in the first place.

Teenage pregnancy changes a lot for the baby that was born. The babies peers might look

down on the baby for having a mother who decided to get pregnant early on in life. The babies
 Quinn 8

have a more likely chance of having teenage pregnancy herself, because of her mother’s

decisions. The child starts their life with consequences already tied into her because of her

mother’s choice. Teenage pregnancy can and should be avoided to prevent problems for the

teenager and their loved ones later in life.

Some of the revisions that I made to this essay were making it longer. I also fixed some

grammatical errors. I added page numbers, I fixed some spelling, and made sure it was in MLA

format.
 Quinn 9

Work Cited

Weare, Andrea M., et al. “State of Intervention: Community Stakeholder Discourse on Teen

Childbearing in Iowa.” Critical Public Health, vol. 29, no. 2, Apr. 2019, pp. 205–14.

EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.snowcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/09581596.2018.1440069.

Danawi, Hadi, et al. "Targeting unintended teen pregnancy in the U.S." International Journal of

Childbirth Education, vol. 31, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 28+. Gale Academic

OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A440552536/AONE?u=anon~aa4e14be&sid=googleSc

holar&xid=cd4d7217. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Caffe, Sonja, et al. “Looking Back and Moving Forward: Can We Accelerate Progress on

Adolescent Pregnancy in the Americas?” Reproductive Health, vol. 14, July 2017, pp. 1–

8. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.snowcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1186/s12978-017-0345-y.

McBride, Dennis, and Anne Gienapp. “Using Randomized Designs to Evaluate Client-Centered

Programs to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy.” Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 32, no.

5, Sept. 2000, pp. 227–36. EBSCOhost, https://doi-

org.snowcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.2307/2648176.

Moseson, Heidi, et al. “‘…Society Is, at the End of the Day, Still Going to Stigmatize You No

Matter Which Way’: A Qualitative Study of the Impact of Stigma on Social Support

during Unintended Pregnancy in Early Adulthood.” PLoS ONE, vol. 14, no. 5, May 2019,

pp. 1–14. EBSCOhost, https://doi-

org.snowcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217308.
 Quinn 10

Kappeler, Evelyn. “Building the Evidence to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy.” American Journal

of Public Health, vol. 106, Oct. 2016, p. S5. EBSCOhost, https://doi-

org.snowcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303440.

Fitzpatrick, Mike. “Teen Dreams.” Lancet, vol. 362, no. 9391, Oct. 2003, p. 1248. EBSCOhost,

https://doi-org.snowcollege.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(03)14536-9.