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/