Preventing Teen Pregnancy with Bill Albert's Article, “Parental Influence and Teen Pregnancy

One community member, Jay Coffelt, is a long-term resident of Kansas City in Jackson County, Missouri. Jay is passionate about researching and awareness of issues like teen pregnancy at the county, state, and national levels. Although not directly involved as a parent of a pregnant teen and not being a teen himself, Mr. Coffelt’s community passion is beneficial in providing insight to the level of community empowerment present in Jackson County, Missouri with regards to a major health issue like teen pregnancy. From a community members’ perspective, it was noted that there seems to be a lack of resources available to pregnant teens and their families as well as a lack of ways community members can be involved in the issue. When asked about his ability to participate in decision making regarding teen pregnancy or to attend forums discussing teen pregnancy, Mr. Coffelt was unsure if those resources were available to him. Another important finding from Mr. Coffelt’s interview was the frequent comparisons he made to an adjacent county in Kansas. Having lived in both counties, Mr. Coffelt was able to recall more available resources, awareness, and guidance for teen health and community members in the adjacent Kansas county compared to Jackson County in Missouri. Through the interview, it was determined that Mr. Coffelt felt an increased level of empowerment. According to Clark, “...empowered individuals gain new skills and power to influence others and to affect the outcomes of

Over the last few decades the rates in teen pregnancy have been a debate; did they rise over the past few years or did they actually decline? Contrary to some doctors and politicians the numbers associated with teen pregnancy have decline over the last couple of years. Although there are still people out there who believe this to be an issue it’s made more of an issue than it actually is. The ads and commercials are set out to scare teen-agers into believing that were at an all time high for this issue, but realistically its actually the exact opposite. Teen pregnancy rates haven’t dropped on there over the course of the years. There are a few major factors that have contributed a great deal to this change. Those changes include but are not limited to: more resources being available to these teenagers to prevent themselves from becoming pregnant, society is more open to talking about this issue as well as the religion and culture change aspect of families today. Despite the beliefs of others, teen pregnancy rates are at an all time low for the first time in decades.

The main concern in this topic is how to minimize and possibly eliminate teenage pregnancies. . One of every 10 girls in the United States gets pregnant each year (Kasun Jacqueline, 1994). Both sides believe that this statistic should go down and no teenager should be getting pregnant before they are ready to have or support children. While opposers may argue that introducing condom use to children early in their lives may be encouraging teenage sex and consequently teenage pregnancies, they must also embrace the changing times and acknowledge that in this day and age, they are bombarded with all forms of information, both positive and negative. Therefore, they are compelled to at least provide them with reliable information on this subject that will allow them to make wise and informed decisions in matters of their sex lives. If they do not do so, they are exposing them to an even greater danger of misinformation which is more dangerous than the first option. Opposers must realize that when they do not provide teenagers

Planned Parenthood programs are important programs to help individuals learn family planning. Sex education programs like Get Real which is a comprehensive sex education program taught in middle schools and high schools has rendered successful results (Berenson, 2014). Teens are still learning about life and are very susceptible to their environment. A study on young girls who say they are pregnant at age seventeen, because their mothers had them at age seventeen is an example of Banduras (1986) social cognitive theory of learning by observation (Oppong, 2014). These negative behaviors teens exhibit when they do not have a relationship between their fathers affects girls and boys

Evaluation: I choose this article because it goes into details to describe why it’s unhealthy for teenage girls to start having kids when they are still teens. It shows what happen when young adults are not properly educated about sex. Therefore, teenage pregnancy is more common in less developed countries because they are not teaching kids how to properly protect themselves during sex. It tells us why it’s unhealthy for teenage girls to be having unprotected sex. And, also it shows us why teenagers are at a much have the rate of not serving labor than adults women are. I plan on using this article in my writing to inform my reader why it’s unhealthy for adolescents to be pregnant at such a young

Based on the readily available images broadcast from films, MTV and other mass media, one might assume that the teen pregnancy epidemic is on the rise. In one respect, this health risk condition has rarely been more culturally visible than it is right now. However, it does bear noting that teen pregnancy has actually been on the decline in the United States over the last two decades. According to the source provided by Sheets (2012), "from 1990 to 2008, the teen pregnancy rate decreased 42 percent (from 117 to 68 pregnancies per 1,000 teen girls)."

The healthy people are apart of the foundation for many federal prevention initiatives. I decided to look at the federal teen pregnancy prevention initiative. This initiative provides grant funding to support teen pregnancy prevention approaches and demonstration projects to test innovative strategies. Their goals for this program include reducing the rates of pregnancies and births to youth in the target areas, increasing youth access to evidence-based and evidence-informed programs to prevent teen pregnancy, increasing connections to community-based clinical services, and educating stakeholders about effective strategies to reduce teen pregnancy (healthypeople.gov). There are three government offices that are connected to the teen pregnancy

“Nearly all (89.5%) of the participants received free or reduced cost lunches at school.” There was a high representation for a mother figure in the participant’s life, (75.6% and 11.% in respects to having a mother/ grandmother as a mother figure). 15.3% of the males identifies as not having a father figure. 73.4% believed that participant parents would be angry/or unhappy if participant was subjected to teen pregnancy. She points out how there was a significant gender difference in terms of the perception of parental views on getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant during the next year. More girls reported their parent would be angry/ or unhappy if they gotten pregnant in comparison to boys (77.8% vs. 67.0%, receptively). From this experiment they found that there was a high correlation between the way participant perceived the attitudes of their parents in regards to getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant and engaging in sexual

While parents would like their children to wait as long as possible to begin having sex, the reality is that teens are having sex much younger than many parents think. Some teens, or preteens, begin having sex or engaging in sexual behavior in junior high. By the time they are seniors in high school, an estimated 65 percent of teens have had sex, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2007. (Dawn, 2009). Unfortunately, a percentage of those teens will become pregnant. After more than a decade and a half of decline (a 27 percent drop from 1991 to 2000), teen birth rates rose again in 2006, which was the last year for which data are available. It is still unclear on what caused teen birth rates to rise again, with supporters of abstinence-only sex education programs and contraception-based programs each blaming the other side for the increase. However, a 2007 study in the Journal of American Public Health attributed the trend in decreasing pregnancy rates to improved contraception use among teens during that time. (Anderson Orr, 2009).

Recent studies have shown that pregnancy rates have declined from 117 out of a 1000 to 64 out of 1000 teens over a teen year period (Nihira, 2012). Not only has it declined but it is becoming brought out more to the public attention how many children are coming out they are pregnant. A couple of reasons why it is declining attributes to the rise of parents giving a more clear “birds and bees” talk. All parents have to go through the talk with their children and depending on if they explain the consequences of growing up to soon most will never know until it occurs (Czarnecki, 2008). The attention of HIV/aids has also helped the decrease in teen pregnancy due to the fact couples are engaging in safe sex more the ever with proper

Many teenagers are now becoming parents these days. In fact, from the ages of 15-19, there were 249,078 babies born in the United States. (1) Many of these unwanted pregnancies can be prevented with the help sexual education. Yes, in some schools there is sexual education. But, if it was in every school many of these could have possibly been prevented. At the school I attend, sexual education is not offered. We are faced with several unwanted pregnancies, and with sexual education, I think these could be prevented.

The information gathered from this source is definitely devoted to the topic of teenage pregnancy because it is a helpful guide to those handling unplanned pregnancies. The author’s aim in this book is to educate teenagers who are pregnant this clearly identifies the audience the author is targeting has an aim to educate. The context in this book also goes beyond just explaining how to deal with pregnancy at a young age but also ways to prevent it. It’s as if the author is speaking to the audience reading this book rather than outlining the negatives of this social issue or making it an argument. From this book it doesn’t state that what is included has to be what a teenage pregnant mother should do, it shouldn’t influence a young mother to change her mind about how she should deal with her pregnancy but helps with her current situation and from reading this source she can determine what is best for her to do, from the choices of keeping the pregnancy or terminating the book is split into sections to offer advice for both factors and ways to undertake that step.

Corcoran, Franklin and Bennett (2000) confirm, “being part of a single-parent household seems to act as a risk factor for early pregnancy.” Among singe-parent households, “conflict within the family, stress, and less monitoring and control of children” occurs, which the authors say can increase the risk of teen pregnancy. In addition, “teenagers experiencing family problems might be more at risk for influence by a negative peer group” that could potentially lead to motherhood at an early age. They also claim “support is indicated for parental control over teen activities as a protective factor against teenage pregnancy” that a lot of times isn’t found in single-parent homes.

"Teen pregnancy in the United States: In 2015, a total of 229,715 babies were born to women aged 15-19 years old, for a birth rate of 22.3 per 1,000 women in this age group. This is another record for U.S. teens and a drop of 8% from 2014. Although reasons for the declines are not totally clear, evidence suggests these declines are due to more teens abstaining from sexual activity, and more teens who are sexually active using birth control than in previous years. Still, the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is substantially higher than in other western industrialized nations, and racial/ethnic and geographic disparities in teen birth rates persist (cdc.gov)." As teenagers (in the United States), we are peer pressured or tempted to try new things. Some teens tend to try out drugs, and alcohol. However, some are having unprotected sex in which, is leads to having babies. This is called, teenage pregnancy. This has caused the United States to create records based off of the statistics and facts given from, researchers across the United States. In order to help prevent teenage pregnancy in the United States, teenagers must understand why, having a baby now isn’t such a smart move on their part.

The teen pregnancy rate had decreased by the maximum of about 55 percent. Most teen birth rates had also gone down about 64 percent, but yet teen pregnancies and birth rate for teenagers ages 15-19 in the U.S still remains one of the highest comparable countries. Due to parenthood, most of teen moms drop out of school. More than 50% of teen mothers never graduate to get their diploma. Sexually active teens that don’t use any type of protection has a 90 percent chance of becoming pregnant within a year, 84 percent of teen pregnancies are unplanned.