Teen Pregnancy: Stereotypes & Statistics | Teen Ink

Teen Pregnancy: Stereotypes & Statistics

September 12, 2012
By carlaelaine BRONZE, Ocean Springs, Mississippi
carlaelaine BRONZE, Ocean Springs, Mississippi
4 articles 0 photos 3 comments

Favorite Quote:
You Only Live Once.


Did you know that every year 820,000 teens get pregnant? Did you also know that close to 25 percent of teen mothers has a second child within two years of the first birth? When these girls find out their pregnant they always ask these questions:
“How could this happen? We used protection.”
“I was on birth control, isn’t it supposed to stop me from being pregnant?”
The answers to these questions are simple: protection doesn’t always work and missing even a day of birth control can mess up the cycle. It’s always important to make sure you talk to doctors about effective ways to prevent these unwanted pregnancies.
I got the chance to talk to a few pregnant teenagers about how they got pregnant.
Interview #1
Me: Did you use birth control when you got pregnant?
Her: Yeah. I mean I used it every day, and then I stopped. My boyfriend thought it was okay because I used it so much.
Me: It’s your body, you didn’t have to stop. I’m sure you knew what would happened if you stopped.
Her: I did, but…
Me: Well hopefully you learned from your mistakes right?
Her: Exactly.
Interview #2
Me: When you first got pregnant, I remember you coming to school making a huge deal about how you used protection. What do you think happened?
Her: The doctor said that the protection we used wasn’t effective enough and said he was surprised I just go pregnant.
Me: Like doctors say you have to find way more effective way to prevent this from happening.
Her: Yeah, well I learned from my mistakes.
Me: What happened to the baby?
Her: It’s a girl and her birthday was last month, she’s 1 now.

What’s even worse are the stereotypes’ about the mothers:
1.
Teen moms are high school drop outs
2.
Teen moms are poor
3.
Teen moms are bad moms
4.
Teen moms are druggies
5.
Teen moms have no future
Many even say that teen moms are better off dead sine their life is over. But the truth is that, they just bought a beautiful human being into the world. They are now holding two futuresi nt their hands. The teen moms that I interviewed are now preparing for college and have been accepted to the college of their choice.

Their lives aren’t over… they just began.



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