The Epidemic of Teen Pregnancies

The “epidemic of teen pregnancy” as many scholars have called it, has been occurring since the 1940s. In fact, statistics show that the current rate of teen pregnancy matches that of the 1920s rate of teen pregnancy. However, the reason why it is now being considered an “epidemic” is because the majority of these pregnancies are unplanned. Back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, the rates of teen pregnancy was high, but for the most part the girls were then marrying the father of the baby. In addition to this, a lot of times girls were choosing to become pregnant. In today’s world, teenage pregnancy is seen frequently and a lot of the times no one thinks twice about seeing a pregnant 17-year-old. Of course people may automatically feel sorry for them or think less of them, but it is not out of the ordinary. However, it seems that our society has made adjustments to kind of accept teen pregnancies. There are many social programs that have been created to help teens that both chose to keep the baby and teens that choose not to keep the baby. For example, in my high school there was a special course that pregnant teens had to take. It was kind of like a parenting course where you learned all about babies and how to care for them. Anyone in the school was allowed to take the course as an elective, but pregnant teens were required to. Also, schools have become willing to work with students more when they have to leave school to have the baby. The school many times will let the student be “home-bound” which means the teachers go to the students house to tutor them so they do not get behind in school.

Another prominent example of society becoming acclimatized to teen pregnancy is the issue of the young Hollywood celebrities that have become pregnant. Jamie Lynn Spears, who became pregnant at the age of 16, announced her decision to have the baby in December 2007. Jamie Lynn, who is the star of a hit Nickelodeon show Zoey 101, was praised by many for being responsible and deciding to keep the baby. Recently, 17-year-old Bristol Palin, who is the daughter of Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin, announced she was five months pregnant. This teen pregnancy has especially been receiving a lot of attention because many critics have claimed that Palin’s people have been trying to cover it up. However, this is especially a hot topic because Sarah Palin has in the past cut aid to teen mothers and pregnancies. Lily Allen, Brit pop star, announced her (unplanned) pregnancy in December 2007 and although she was 21 at the time, it received a lot of attention also. Lily Allen was approached by a London designer to create a maternity line soon after she announce her pregnancy, Allen reportedly turned down the offer because she said that her audience is majority young girls and she thought that creating a maternity line would not be appropriate or the right message to send to those young fans. Lily Allen sadly miscarried one month after announcing her pregnancy.

So the question arises are all these examples of teen mothers sending the wrong message to young girls? Also, what steps should be taken to prevent teen pregnancies? Should sex-ed be mandatory? Should various types of birth controls be given to teens? What do we a society do to help this issue? From a symbolic interactionist perspective one might say that since the essence of this perspective is meaning is in response, that a teenager sees all of these popular celebrities becoming pregnant and things working out for them, so if they were to become pregnant everything would be okay too. Also, you could argue that because our society has become accommodating to pregnant teens that they think that if they became pregnant it would not be a huge deal. All of these issues are debatable, but one thing is for sure: the issue of teen pregnancy has been around for at least 70 years but it continues to be an important social issue.

Sources: http://www.faqs.org/childhood/So-Th/Teen-Pregnancy.html