Why is anybody surprised? (Teenage Pregnancy)

Member Name: Tristan AC

Product:	Teenage Pregnancy
Date:	19/07/01 (187 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Shares in Pampers are up!

Disadvantages: Unwanted children., Mothers who can't cope.

To be honest the high rate of teenage pregnancies in the UK should come as a shock to nobody. Look at our culture! Here are a few examples:

(1) We have 'role-model' popstars having babies out of wedlock, splitting up with their partners and having babies with somebody else within short periods of time.
(2) We have magazines for teenage girls so obsessed with sex that it's difficult to find an article not related to it.
(3)We've made 'virginity' the biggest joke and stigma of the last twenty years.

The pressure on girls to have sex is so immense that they are made to feel like freaks if they haven't had sex with somebody by age 15.

Guys, frankly don't help the matter with their attitude to girls but then society in the UK molds them in a similar way. "If you don't sleep with as many girls as possible you're a freak and you should do it every chance you get." That's the message television, magazines and so-called role-models give them.

I'm sorry but we're reaping what we've sowed into our kids. The lack of attention or wrong kind of attention (ie. constant put-downs) from a father and the lack of any male friends who aren't interested in sleeping with them in a young girls life will make her seek male approval later on to fill the void. Generally for a young girl to be popular (albeit for ten minutes) in the UK she has to sleep with somebody, that's about the maximum male attention she'll get if she's not in a stable relationship.

It angers me that people all blame the girls for "wanting" to get pregnant to "live off the system". Sure, there are probably a good number who do but the majority of teenage pregnancies are unplanned, unwanted and devastating for the girl involved and her family.

Unless UK culture makes some sort of effort to make sex less of "the be all and end all" of life the pregnan
cy rates in teenage girls will continue to spiral. The media is largely responsible and the lack of father's in many homes just creates a vicious circle where the girls are just victims of circumstance because they make bad judgement calls which they have to pay for a long time.

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