Teenage Pregnancy: A Menace in Our Society

Teenage Pregnancy: A Menace in Our Society

The increasing rate of teenage pregnancy in our society, today, is disturbing, pathetic and appalling – the rate at which our teenage girls are having pregnancy should worry everybody. The National Population Commission, in 2013, released a report that showed that about 23% of adolescent women between the age 15-19 years were already mothers or pregnant with their first children.

There are many factors that lead to the increasing rate of teenage pregnancy in the country. Lack of parental care is a major factor. Many girls are easily lured in premature sexual activities, because of lack of parental care. The absence of parental guidance leads many teenage girls to easily be swayed by sugar-coated men, who deceive the ignorant young girls and promise to provide the necessary support to them. This, therefore, leads to engaging in premature sex with the girl-child, and eventually having an unwanted pregnancy at a tender age.

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Peer Pressure in society is also a factor as teenage girls always feel the pressure to engage in what their peers are doing. Lack of good education, financial hardship, lack of sex education, cultural and religious beliefs all constitute factors that lead to the alarming rate of teenage pregnancy in our society today. Consumption of alcohol also encourages sexual activity which eventually leads to pregnancy.

Watching of pornography film is also a factor in the increasing rate of teenage pregnancy. The young girls crave for sexual pleasure after watching porn movies, and this most times leads to having an unwanted pregnancy. Rape and sexual assaults are also causes of teenage pregnancies.

A teenage girl will later drop out of school to cater for her baby, and this further increases the number of uneducated people in the country. Cases like this cause the unemployment rate to be skyrocketing as the young mother will also look for an avenue to feed her child and her. Therefore, the continued abject poverty.

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Teen mothers even face serious depression after giving birth. They have low self-esteem and the society shame and taunt them for having a child when they should not have had. There are many cases of suicide committed by teen mothers after mental depressions. The lack of adequate resources to even cater for the child even leads many to commit suicide.

The dangers of teenage pregnancy are enormous – premature delivery, anemia, contracting sexually transmitted infections are prone to happen. Teenage pregnancy is a problem the society must urgently address because the baby born to a teenage mother is more prone to suffer health consequences compared to others born to older mothers.

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The country must gird up its loins to prevent and curb teenage pregnancy. It is very imperative that sex education must be introduced in the school curriculum to enable teenagers to know the consequences of giving birth at a tender age. There should be sex talks in secondary schools and teenagers should even be encouraged to abstain from sex. Teenagers must be informed and sensitized about the consequences of teenage pregnancy, and the effects it portends to society.

The society must work assiduously towards controlling the alarming rate of teenage pregnancy. All hands must be on the desk to curb this menace.

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