Becoming a parent permanently and profoundly changes any ones life. Most girls forget about their dreams, goals and college is almost always out of the question.
Many mothers today are only fifteen or sixteen years old, some are even as young as twelve. All of a sudden young girls are forced into a world of responsibilities, where the babies needs come before her own. Young girls are expected to balance school, work and the full time task to raise a child. Her world is changed from dates, parties and sleeping in on Saturdays to the world of doctor appointments, diapers, bills and day care. Many experts say that girls have babies due to a lack of self esteem.
In some cases it could also be a symptom of having no better options. They need someone to love and someone to love them back. A baby gives them something to look forward to it gives them a meaning for life. A lot of teenage moms don?t think they have anything to loose. Many young girls never even receive any help from the babies father.
This is a world wide problem. Communities and government help these young girls but sometimes that is just not enough. Many young girls don?t have any help from family and even worse they are kicked out of there parents home and have to turn to shelters. Another huge problem is having a child that will never know there father and sometimes spending a lifetime on welfare. Maybe if these young girls were given another chance, they would have taken another path, and not have kids at such an early age. This is a very strong topic for me, I was once one of these young girls trying to make ends meet and take care of a baby.
I never finished high school and never had a good salary. A lot of time I would find myself going without so my child had everything he needed. I rarely ever received any help from my babies father it was a great struggle for me. I was very lucky, I had a great support group, parents, family and friends. Not every young girl has that support. Many young girls get pregnant not from guys there own age, but older guys and some may even be raped.
Many communities help teen girls they will provide them with prenatal care, encourage them to make use of medical facilities. Teens need to be more educated about the complex role of parenthood. Teach them about nutrition, child development, health care, discipline and many more related topics. These young girls need to be encouraged to stay in school and develop job skills.
We need to sponsor programs for pregnant teens for the prevention of pregnancy before they are ready. Many girls under the age of fourteen will get pregnant, many will give birth and some may have abortions. It is surprising that that in the end, the kids who receive help now, will most likely be the ones who escape the cycle of children having children. In my opinion, the next generation will be kids whose parents are still kids.
The parents are not that much older then their kids. Kids wont have a hard time understanding there parent because there parents will better understand them. If you look at this situation from another angle, what can inexperienced teenage girls offer there children? They cant teach there child right from wrong because many of them don?t know it either. This has been an issue of wrong and right for a long time, ideas of how to work through it are there, but somehow somewhere we have to enforce better ideas.
What is being done is I guess not enough to work it out, if it is such a major issue and it concerns many I don?t know if in the future something will give, but for now, there are a lot of young girls with a big and serious task and there is definitely no need for young girls to have that task.
