Today's world moves quickly. Back in the beginning of time, when life expectancy was 900 plus years before God was like, "that's it, none of you can live past 120," people tended to have children later on in life. Around 300 years or so was when some of the people had their first kids. Fast forward to the present, 2021. Children are now having kids as early as 13 years of Age. I work at riverside hospital, and in the L&D floors, the average age of the mothers are 21. several times I have served mothers as young as 13m and fourteen. It does not surprise me anymore when I see 16-19 year olds. There is a lot of them. During the 2019 pandemic, the Hospital I work for saw a great increase in teen pregnancy. Even though these girls are barely out of high school, they are expected by society to bare the shame of teen pregnancy, and the agony and discomfort of caring the child full term. Some of these kids are homeless bound. some don't have so much as their mother by their sides. The vast majority of teen moms that come in, the common factor is the absence of the father. Something is wrong with this picture. Even if as a society it would be preferred that teens abstained from sexual activity, the reality is that a lot do not. We pretend that all children are pure and innocent until they turn up pregnant, then for a lot of people, the response it to shame, or disown. I have not done a study on abortion myself, but if that is the response society gives to teen moms, then we as a society cannot turn up our nose when these scared kids try to save face the only way they know how; terminate the fetus or kill themselves. society witnesses this a lot, yet nothing is done but criticism of the choices of women. Laws that aggravate women and forces them to make choices that are contrary to their beliefs. The point I am making is this. Children are engaging in sexual behavior. We can pray and hope that everybody practices safe sex, or stays a virgin till marriage or death. yet it doesn't work that way. What needs to happen is that money needs to be put towards sex education. And even if it is a discomforting conversation, it needs to start happening as early as elementary school. Safe sex practice education needs to happen as early as middle school. parents need to be educated on how best to handle the news that they're going to be a grandparent before their late 30's. The government and school board need to, and have to do better with money allocation to programs that provide sex education as well as programs that help teen moms when they become pregnant.
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Hello all, I anticipate that the original author is no longer on this thread, but other students like myself may be intrigued by the topic discussed and choose to write on this later on. I filtered the blog posts to show the "most viewed" and this is the second most looked at post. My assumption is because it has "sex" in the title and is a somewhat controversial topic.
The original author has intriguing ideas about allocating more finances into better sex education as early as elementary schools. It stems largely from his personal encounters with individuals going through early teen pregnancy. Personally, I am more inclined to think public education reformation would be less effective than family reformation in this area. However, he is very correct that this is more than just a moral issue. It is an economic one. The main piece of literature I wanted to contribute to this thread is a study done by the Brookings Institute. Essentially, it states that the three things any individual living in a poor community has to do in order to become middle class is:
1) Finish High School
2) Get a full time job
3) Wait until 21 to have children
While the study itself is controversial (and this is not an endorsement of the philosophy promoted), I think it has serious offering to provide this conversation. Could an economic argument be a greater incentive for abstinence (or at least safe sex) than current sex education is providing?
References
Haskins, R. (2016, July 28). Three simple rules poor teens should follow to join the middle class. Brookings. Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/
This is something that we see in society is that whatever action you may take you will get talked down. While you see Sexual Education is something that is taught in schools you see it is not affective as teens are still having babies and engaging in sexual activities. So again you see another cycle of the systems in place not being effective and people being shamed for it.
Great discussion to bring awareness to things that we forget are happening in our environment or have looked the other way because we don't feel a need to get involved or it has become such a normality we feel like there's not much that can be done about it. However, sexual education is something that needs to be stressed to adolescents and older to build awareness and stress the reality that comes with the situation. Also, I believe parents need to start planning just in case for these situation finical and emotional. The government needs to find better ways to safely support children pregnancies and older to finical support them and provide the means to help take care of the mother and kid to give shelter for those kicked out by their parents.
I have always heard while growing up to save myself for marriage, when i was younger I did not pay any attention to it because I thought my parents were just being over protective. Now that I'm older I realize that what they were saying was to keep me from possibly being a single father or having a kid and not being able to take care of my child. I had the same reaction as @Al Sears. I never knew how bad it was. I also knew we used to live up to the 900s but I had no idea that mothers had kids around age 300. Imagine when someone asked you how old you were and you said 432 I turn 433 next month. I would forget my age, and at this point math becomes hard to find out my age.
This is something so sad that I've thought about often - teaching abstinence can often have underwhelming results because regardless young people are going to have sex, but in implementing sex education there is always the danger of coming off as if the education system is promoting teen sex. It's a delicate line to walk, but I agree with you in the sense that something needs to be done. And as far as the shame goes, both Christian and secular communities need to do a better job of providing pregnant teens and teen mothers with support and comfort rather than condemnation - I believe whatever the technical cost of that support is, it will be worth it.
Wow, I can definitely say that even through ministry for my church I have witness many teen pregnancies due to the promiscuous thoughts that had them leaving. The shame that follows through and without the proper way of loving and bringing restoration can cause more pain from what has already been done. It indeed is saddening.
Oh my gosh, what on earth? It makes sense now. I had no idea that there is such an incentive that promotes single motherhood. But even so, it seems immoral. I can't imagine any of the mothers, old or young, wanting to parent alone.
The economics of this can go in many directions, lost dreams and production by starting a family so young, the cost of public assistance for these moms and so forth. The one I want to comment on is the incentives created by policy for the dads to not stick around. The system pays more to single moms than to moms who are with the father and that lowers the guilt and costs of abandonment.