Everybody is doing it: married people, un-married people, people living in sin, people on the Internet, and people under the age of 20. Teenagers have always had sex and teenagers will continue to have sex. When those raging hormones kick into overdrive, teens almost cannot help themselves. If this is true, then why do lawmakers and educators try to make teenagers abstain? All the lawmakers and educators are doing it too. Is this merely a case of “Do what I say not what I do?” This is a strategy that has never worked, especially with teens. Tell them not to do something and they will do it just to defy you.
That tidbit of teenage rebellion should have been taken into consideration before telling teens not to have sex. The Guttmacher Institute reports that 46 percent of teens from the age of 15 to19 have engaged in some form of sexual activity. By age 19, seven out of 10 teens have had intercourse.
Sex education, sex in the media and cultural beliefs about sexuality are all factors that contribute to rising teen pregnancy rates.
The problem with teens having sex is that unprotected sex often results in an unwanted pregnancy. Not to mention sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Most infections can be medically treated while babies, on the other hand, are forever. There are many choices available to teenagers to prevent infections and infants. Why aren’t they using them? Some teens want to be pregnant, some teenage girls get pregnant on purpose.
Reasons surrounding a teenage girls desire to become pregnant are varied. Some girls believe that a baby will insure that the father of the baby will never leave them. Some think that having a baby will make them mature, responsible or give them someone who will always love them.
A 1997 study by sex researchers, Corcoran et al. showed that teens believe the positive effects of pregnancy include: achieving independence and adult status; maintaining relationships with the male partner; receiving love, attention and recognition; proving that she is capable of having a child; and improving negative family environments.
Not too many of these naïve ideals pan out for the teenagers. Babies born to teenagers are more likely to have low birth weights, higher rates of infant mortality, increased hospital admission in early childhood, poor cognitive development and less supportive home environments, according to Donald Langile, of the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics the United States teen pregnancy rates continue to exceed that of any industrialized nation — despite efforts to reduce teen pregnancy. The Guttmacher Institute reports that 750,000 teenage girls become pregnant every year, yet this is the lowest level in 30 years, down 36 percent from its peak in 1990. The big question is why?
Why do teenagers continue to become pregnant when there are a plethora of contraceptives available? The contraceptive choices for sexually active teens are not only varied and many, but they are readily available and are often free, because nobody wants to see a pregnant teen. Boys can wear a condom, this is first and foremost the best line of defense against STIs, but not the only choice when it comes to stop contraception.
Girls can also take birth control also known as “the pill.” This way, if no one has a rubber, or the guy refuses (or fakes) wearing one, at least pregnancy is covered. And if remembering to take one little pill each morning is too hard, girls can also get the hormones in the pill implanted under their skin for time-release secretion. Contraceptives can also be injected into an arm once every few months to keep a girl from getting pregnant. A quarterly shot, and no unwanted babies. Sexually active teens could also choose a diaphragm to cover the cervix, or an inter uterine device (IUD) to create an inhospitable environment for embryo implantation. There are many more ways to help protect teens from STIs or unwanted pregnancy, like: female condoms, cervical caps, contraceptive sponges, spermacide (to kill the swimmers) or even the morning after pill.
Teens can acquire contraceptives at any Planned Parenthood or County Health department, usually without parental consent. Yet the birth rates rise. Are teens not educated about contraception availability? Or is sex education part of the problem?
Abstinence only sex education is the only program the United States will fund, thanks to the Bush Administration in the 1980s. If schools want to teach kids how to avoid getting pregnant and acquiring human immunodeficiency virus, they have to do it on their own dime.
The Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) was the first government program to fund Abstinence Only Education (AOE). AFLA funds only programs that promote “self discipline and responsibility” as well as “chastity” among young people.
An additional, automatic $50 million-per-year was directed toward AOE in 1996 when President Clinton signed into law an overhaul of the nation’s welfare system. In 2000, a program called Special Projects of Regional and National Significance- Community Based Abstinence Education (SPRANS-CBAE), was also signed into law and soon AOEs had triple income streams.
The federal money came with conditions. Curriculum must adhere to the definition of what constitutes AOE programs. SPRANS-CBAE requires that all eight components be taught, where as the other two sources of funding merely require that these principles not be taught against.
The eight principles are:
• Exclusive purpose, which teaches the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
• Teaching that abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage is the expected standard for all school-age children;
• Teaching that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems;
• Teaching that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity;
• Teaching that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;
• Teaching that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful effects;
• Teaching young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances; and
• Teaching the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.
It might work if they were consistently brainwashed, but teenagers today receive little sex education. A few weeks of sex education during health class is the norm. Teenagers report they never even took the sex classes seriously. A few classes with a teacher telling them that sex between married people is the only acceptable kind of sex isn’t exactly absorbed by a classroom full of teenagers with raging hormones. Teens are bombarded with so much sexual media nowadays that they know everybody is doing it long before they tie the knot. Teens also know that half of marriages end in divorce. Should educators be teaching teens to shove all their raging hormonal sexual desires into the far recesses of their minds and instead focus on entering into a marriage that has a fifty percent chance of failing?
With the induction of the Obama, sex education is going through an overhaul. President Obama did not renew title V funding for abstinence only sex education. Abstinence only education has proved ineffective and a major factor was the absence of information about contraceptives and how to properly use them. The programs that have evidence of making a positive impact on teens are programs that give the message “no sex is the safest but if you do have sex, always use a condom and contraception,” says Douglas Kirby, sex researcher. Teens sometimes forget the “always” part.
Religion
When a teen does become pregnant, she has several choices: abortion, motherhood, or adoption. Even though there are literally thousands of infertile couples dying to adopt, less than 1 percent of pregnant teens choose the option of adoption.
Pregnant women whose mothers completed at least one year of college were three times more likely to place their babies for adoption than those whose mothers did not complete high school. 29 percent of pregnant teens choose abortion, while 70 percent of pregnant teens become mothers. In Arizona those mothers are mostly Hispanic.
Persons of Hispanic or Latino descent make up more than 30 percent of Arizona population, reports the US Census bureau. That is double the national rate.
Compared to teens nationwide, Hispanic teens in Arizona are about one-third more likely to become pregnant. Hispanic teens in Arizona are three and one-half times more likely than white teens to become pregnant. Part of the reason: culture.
Sexuality is often a taboo subject in Hispanic homes and communication about sexuality is often absent. Hispanic culture promotes early and high fertility, and Mexican-Americans are more likely than whites to believe that marriage affirms one’s womanhood. Although Hispanics have more culturally conservative attitudes toward sexuality, they are more likely to become sexually active at a young age. Perhaps a result of their desire to marry early and perhaps religion plays a part also.
Hispanic populations are largely Catholic. Catholic traditions teach that birth control is a sin and every child is a gift from God. The comedy troupe Monty Python made fun of Catholic tradition often in their program. Songs like “Every Sperm is Sacred” and scenes of catholic women giving birth by lifting a leg while washing dishes made fun of a real issue: Traditional catholic families are large. No birth control equals lots of babies because no one stops having sex.
Hispanic teens are caught in a quandary of pressures relating to the peer, cultural and religious aspects of their life. To have sex or to not have sex, to use a rubber or not to use a rubber, to remain steadfast or to commit a sin.
Here in Flagstaff, these pregnant girls usually end up in the Teenage Parenting Program (TAPP). TAPP helps pregnant teens get their high school diplomas, as well as helping them cope with the struggles of motherhood. Some girls arrive at TAPP as early as eight grade but most of the students are in the 9th through 12th grade.
The girls at TAPP also benefit from guest speakers who help them learn about contraceptives, healthy relationships, infant first aid and parenting strategies. The girls who arrive pregnant tend to have a romanticized idea about pregnancy and motherhood. These romantic ideas dissipate after watching the struggles of the girls who have already given birth.
Being a parent is a struggle. But to be a parent when a girl is still a child herself, multiplies that struggle tremendously. Teenage participants in a research study said that they would take the consequences of sex more seriously if they heard teen mothers speak for themselves about the difficulties faced by teen parents. An adult touting the benefits of abstinence didn’t deter them, but their peers might.
Hope lies in the wake of changing sex education. Hope for the future that fewer teens become pregnant and more teens practice safe sex. Hope that teens can be teens, instead of parents. Perhaps this change will be enough to counteract the unchangeable in this equation: pervasive sexual media and traditional cultural beliefs.
Media
Mass media is defined as media whose purpose is to reach a large audience. This can be dealt through numerous mediums including: television, newspapers, books, radio, magazines and movies.
Within the large audience that mass media aims the main focus is teenagers. But why is it that teenagers, especially girls, are able to believe many of the false information about pregnancy from the media?
Marsha Yowell, a communication professor at Northern Arizona University, who focuses on sexism and bias in the media, said one explanation as to why teenagers believe many of the falsehoods about teenage pregnancy is that media focuses on the economical service function of media.
“The movie Juno looks at the economical part of the media,” Yowell said. “It certainly doesn’t look at the surveillance aspect of media as a warning or like a documentary about teen pregnancy.”
According to Clint C. Wilson II and Felix Gutierrez, there are five different functions of mass communication in society. The five functions are: surveillance, which is the lookout role of media watching society for threats to the established order and information on people or places of public interest; correlation, which interprets media so that the audience can understand, interpret and comprehend the different things that are happening in and out of society; transmission, which defines the society, its norms, and its values to the audience; entertainment, which serves as enjoyment through stories, features, music and films; and economic service, which is the role of the media within the economic system of the society where corporations serve the needs of their shareholders and other corporations by attracting audiences that will pay for the product.
“In Juno, it really looks at the effects of love and acceptance,” Yowell said. “You have this girl who looks at the life of the child and chooses to do what is best for the child. Because of her choice of what is best for the baby, you get this environment that loves her, that accepts her choice of helping the baby.”
However, it is not only Yowell that believes the media falsely portrays teen pregnancy. A teenage mother in the Teenage Parent Program (TAPP) named Marie (whose last name we cannot give, due to her age) said movies like Juno and the television series The Secret Life of an American Teenager give teenagers a grand fantasy of what pregnancy is like.
“Juno I really liked, I was pregnant when that came out and it even got me a little teary eyed, probably because of my hormones,” Marie said. “I don’t think those kind of movies should be promoted because it makes teenagers think, ‘Oh, pregnancy cute.’ I was like that when I saw movies like that. I was like, ‘She looks cute or…’ No, you don’t. It was a nice movie, but I don’t think they should make a whole lot like them. It just makes it seem like something it’s not especially as a teenager it’s not as easy as it seems. Everything was played out, it was calm and weepy. It’s a whole lot more than that.”
When Juno was released, 17 girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts made a pact to become pregnant and raise their children together. Time magazine had named this the “Juno effect.”
Kristelle Miller, an adolescent professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said the so called “Juno effect” was nothing more than media hype.
“The ‘Juno effect’ is how media glamorizes pregnancy,” Miller said. “How pregnancy is also redemptive of any past problems.”
Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said movies that generally have an upbeat ending, oversimplify the tough choices that girls and women face.
“Hollywood is in this for money and entertainment,” Cullins said. “They are shying away from having the characters fully explore all their options when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. In the real world, it’s important to weigh all the possible options and then come up with the best one for the teen, the family and the child. That will be different for different circumstances.”
Yowell said usually different mediums of media will try to portray the same topic in a different light; however, each medium usually takes a lighter note of the situation rather than portray the circumstance truthfully.
“Different types of mediums portray different parts of media,” Yowell said. “If you look at Home Box Office and Showtime, you’ll notice a difference between that and Lifetime programs. Another example is Christian television. They will have shows about teen pregnancy, but in order to get the same acceptance and loving that you see in Juno, the teen must go through hardships. Once they are redeemed in the eyes of God, then they can receive happiness from their ‘sin.’ However, no medium really goes into the outcomes of abortion or adoption. Try to think of the last time you saw something that talked about abortion, you can’t, can you?”
Casie, a teenage mother to be at TAPP (whose last name we also cannot give due to her age), said any media she watches about teenage pregnancy, like MTV’s 16 and Pregnant or ABC Family’s The Secret Life of an American Teenager, will make sure to not mention what happens to the body through pregnancy.
“Well Juno is a funny movie,” Casie said. “Juno as far as the whole pregnancy thing, I notice that all the movies and all the shows when they show your baby on the ultrasounds, it’s not what it’s like. I mean they don’t tell you how hard it is to be pregnant. You can’t sleep, your hips hurt. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night about to cry because there is so much pressure on my bladder and my hips. I’ll be wanting to go to the bathroom because she’s getting lower. I’ll wake up ready to cry. Most people just think, ‘Oh, I’m going to have a baby blob. It’s going to be so cute and everyone’s going to want to touch me and rub my belly and give me attention.’ No. No, this isn’t fun. There is no experience like being pregnant at all.”
As investigations and agonizing thought over the contributors to teen pregnancy in Arizona continue, I am led again to the role of Catholicism. The majority of pregnant teens and teen mothers in Arizona are Latina.
Looking at Religion
Again and again, I have heard from interviewees and internet reports that socioeconomic factors play a role in the numbers of girls who become pregnant each school year, but I wonder if it is more than just being broke. It is easy to look at the statistics for teen mothers and say the majority are poor Latinas, but poverty stricken is not all these girls are; they are also Catholic.
The Catholic faith is intertwined in such a way with Hispanic culture that the two cannot be separated. The Catholic faith teaches that using birth control is a sin. The Catholic faith teaches abstinence only in pre-marital sexual situations. Just like the federally funded school system. A correlation? Perhaps.
According to a 2006 report from the Guttmacher Institute, Arizona has the second highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. What is it about Arizona teens that have them doing the nasty without protection?
The majority of pregnant teens in Arizona are Hispanic. Arizona has twice the population of Hispanics in this fine state, could that account for our high teen pregnancy rates?
Latinas have one of the highest rates for teen pregnancy
Arizona also (thanks to the Bush administration) teaches Abstinence Only in its sex education classes. Sex educators are not allowed to talk about condom use except in the context of the condom failing. Could this account for our high teen pregnancy rates?
Most Hispanics in Arizona are Catholic. Catholics tout abstinence only AND no birth control. So if a teenage Hispanic Catholic is going to have sex, they are probably not going to use birth control, as that would be breaking two of Gods Catholic rules.
Though teen birth rates were on the decline for many years, rates have been rising again since 2005. Teens are doing it, and if one were to speculate, teens are doing it more, and unprotected since the onset of Abstinence Only Sex Education.
Amy Iniguez, a teacher who works with Teenage Parent Program (TAPP), and teenage mothers discuss how the alternative school has helped them succeed in not only school but motherhood as well. The mothers also talk about the difference between how the media, such as the movie Juno, the television series The Secret Life of an American Teenage or MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, portrays teen pregnancy and the reality of being a teenage mother.
Why do teenagers end up pregnant? It is so easy to not get pregnant, and there are so many ways to not get pregnant. Why are the birth rates rising for teenagers? The contraceptive choices for sexually active teens are not only varied and many, but they are readily available and often free, because nobody wants to see a pregnant teen. Boys can wear a condom. This is first and foremost the best line of defense against sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) but not the only choice when it comes to keeping from making a baby.
Birth Control
Girls can take the pill. This way, if no one has a rubber, or the guy refuses (or fakes) wearing one, at least pregnancy is covered. And if remembering to take one little pill each morning is too hard, girls can also get the hormones in the pill implanted under their skin for time-release secretion. Contraceptives can also be injected into an arm once every few months to keep a girl from getting pregnant. A quarterly shot, and no unwanted babies.
Sexually active teens could also choose a diaphragm to cover the cervix, or an IUD (inter uterine device) to create an inhospitable environment for embryo implantation. There is even a female condom. Or a cervical cap, a contraceptive sponge, spermacide (to kill the swimmers) or the morning after pill.
Come’ on kids….one trip to Planned Parenthood or the County Health Department and you can be bopping it all night with no worries….Why Not?
When a teen becomes pregnant, she has several choices: abortion, motherhood, or adoption. Even though there are literally thousands of infertile couples dying to adopt, less than 1% of pregnant teens choose this option. Why?
Maybe education is the answer to this question. Pregnant women whose mothers completed at least one year of college were three times more likely to place their babies for adoption than those whose mothers did not complete high school.
Pregnant teens we interviewed said that they couldn’t imagine giving up their infants after growing them for 9 months. The amount of babies placed for adoption has decreased since the 1970’s, when abortion was legalized. This decrease is mainly attributed to a declining number of white women placing their babies for adoption; the rates for minority women have remained stable.
Adoption is another option for teen mothers
Again, maybe education is the answer. If more teens understood what a gift adoption is, not only for the infertile couple, but also for the teen birthparents. Women who place their children for adoption voluntarily have greater educational goals for themselves than do teens that keep their babies.
Maybe adoption should be considered more as an option by pregnant teens. The lifelong rewards of not only being a life giver, but to also give that life to someone to love and care for who cannot be a life giver herself. One decision can change so very man lives.
When going into the Teenage Parent Program (TAPP), almost every mother in the program is talking about going into college. When ask what they want to do when they graduate from high school, those wanting to go to college say they want to become a nurse.
Most of the girls in TAPP say that they are already planning on taking college classes or are already taking college classes to become certified nurses. One of the mothers in TAPP is ready to start working by the end of 2010. She said that she did not want to be another statistic for a “no-where” teenage mom.
Reasons that the mothers gave to why they wanted to be nurses are that they love kids. Another reason is the experience that they have by being with TAPP; it has taught them how to work and take care of other children while working.
Many of the mothers said that by being in the TAPP program, they have already learned a lot about taking care of a baby, so becoming a nurse was not far off from what they were doing all ready.
To become a nurse it can take anywhere from four to seven years depending on what area of nursing the student chooses to go into.
Teenage Pregnancy In Flag's Blog 