Teenage pregnancies have been reported over the recent past. Teenage pregnancy might be considered the pregnancy of female below 20 years. Nancy Bonvillain in her book Women and Women writes that “people in every culture maintain and transit ideas about the roles that women and men perform, the rights they have in relation to each other, and the values associated with their activities” (4). Certainly, this transcends over roles into other cultural factors that affect the relationship between men and women. In most cases, these cultural aspects of gender relationship are constructs that are built and made to become beliefs and values that govern how men and women should act and interact.
Following the concerns of the sociologists, a number of issues and concerns have been raised relating to the topic o teenage pregnancy. The concerns have led to the question of sexualization of women. American Psychological Association (2007) defines sexulization in these three forms. According to them, sexualization is different from healthy sexuality. Healthy sexuality is the ideal sexual actions or interest that is natural, genuine and with respect to both sexes. On the other hand, sexulization occurs when a “person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics” (par. 1). This includes when women are shown in the media only as sexual objects all aimed at pleasing men. The value of a woman in this context is therefore solely based on her sexuality as opposed to her humanity, intelligence, or skill. Words such as slut, bitch, prostitute all show elements of sexualization of this nature. Women are also sexualized when they are put as marketers of products not because of their skills as good sales people but as a source of attraction for the mostly male customer base.
Sexualization of the female therefore leads to the topic of teenage pregnancy. Teenage pregnancy is common nowadays especially in the United States, as a case study. Concerns have been raised on lack of sexual education as a cause of this vice, however, some causes arise from different factors increasing the prevalence if the vice.
Teenage pregnancy is widespread due to psychological factors on the teenagers. For instance, peer pressure on the teenage has been considered as one of the major causes of this problem. While transitioning from childhood and experiencing psychological changes, teenagers indulge in irresponsible and immature behaviors such as involving in relationships that fail to provide them with emotional support, which may lead to misery forcing them to seek love from other members of the society, often opposite sexing an attempt to find support. These steps often bear no fruits but saddening pregnancies. (Natural Home Remedies 2010)
Adolescence behavioral changes mark the beginning of the sexual maturity especially to the teenagers. This makes them curious and increases their urge to explore topics such as sex, which through the support of mass media, get more information pertaining to sexual activities. The teenagers then exploit the ideas learned in these mass media information without adequate sex education resulting to instances of sexual indulgences that spearheads teenage pregnancies. (National Campaign Institute 2012)
Another factor attributed to this remains the lack of socio-economic factors. Low income and high financial demands coupled with low education have also been associated with teenage pregnancy. This result to sexual abuses by able financial bases especially older men in search of money to equip their social and economic situations. Another aspect hat results to teenage pregnancy is lack of self-control and self-discipline. This leads to participation in factors like drug and substance abuses in the pool of opposite sex resulting to lustful behavior that ultimately lead to teenage pregnancy.
Based on this study, the sample of the study area would be identified using variables in to be studied. For this case, the study used was United States teenagers. Sampled data size was dependant of the teenage pregnancy issue and the affected group of people. To make sure the data was balanced and to ensure equal conclusions, three main races in the United States, notably the Latino, Black Americans and the white race was included in the sample size to give a proper reflection of the data before analysis and ensure the researched variable has a balance of variables used. The variables used remaining race factor and location in both towns and suburb regions.
Research involves many ethical issues. For instance, in this case, despite finding the sample data to work with, analysis of the data would dispute the findings based on unequal coverage of the sampled variables. The encounter of ethical issues in data collection and analysis affect the behavior, collection, and analysis of the variables included in the statistical data collected. These ethical behaviors affect the data collected therefore influencing the outcome of the findings.
According to national campaign institute, three in every 10 American female teenagers get pregnant before 20 years resulting to an average of 750000 pregnancies annually. This early parenthood results to high causes of dropouts with less than two percent of teenage mothers making it through college. This makes the United States the country with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the western industrialized countries.
Another fact is that, in 2008 for example, the teenage pregnancy rate among the Black American and Hispanic girls was two and half times higher than the rate among the white girls of the same age group 15 to 19 with eight of the 10 parental dads denying the marriage of the mothers of their kids. This statistical information can help safely conclude that 50 percent of these teenagers have never considered how early pregnancy would affect their lives. (National Campaign Institute 2012)
Work Cited.
National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, (2012) CDC, Guttmacher Institute.
http://www.speedyremedies.com/what-are-the-causes-of-teenage-pregnancy.html
American Psychological Association. (2007).Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls
