SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT TEEN PREGNANCY

The physical changes that occur at pubescence are responsible for the appearance of the sex drive. The gratification of sex drives is still complicated by many social taboos, as well as by a lack of accurate knowledge about sexuality. Since the 1960s, however, sexual activity has increased among adolescents. Recent studies show that almost 50 percent of adolescents under the age of 15 and 75 percent under the age of 19 report having had sexual intercourse. Despite their involvement in sexual activity, some adolescents are not interested in, or knowledgeable about, birth-control methods or the symptoms of sexually transmitted disease. Consequently, the rate of illegitimate births and the incidence of sexually transmitted disease are increasing.

Today there are more birth control options than ever before, but overpopulation and unwanted or unplanned for pregnancies remain worldwide problems. Having more children than one can support may lead to poverty, malnutrition, illness, and high mortality rates for infants, children, and women.

Some documentation indicates that the problem of teenage pregnancy is considerably worse in the United States than in almost any other developed country. Among developed countries, the United States has one of the highest birth rates for women under 20. A detailed study comparing Canada, England and Wales, France, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States suggested that the problem of teen pregnancy in the United States may be related to less sex education in schools and lower availability of birth control services and supplies to adolescents. This study counters the view of some people in the United States who argue that sex education or making birth control devices such as condoms available to school-age children promotes sexual activity.

Nevertheless, there are a number of pressing sexually related health and social policy issues facing countries around the world today. As the first bodily changes of puberty begin, sometime from the age of 8 to the age of 12, the child may become self-conscious and more private. During this period, most children gain experience with masturbation (self-stimulation of genitals). Surveys indicate that about one-third of all girls and about half of all boys have masturbated to orgasm by the time they reach the age of 13, boys generally starting earlier than girls. Because preadolescents tend to play with others of their own sex, it is not at all uncommon that early sexual exploration and experience may happen with other members of same sex or opposite sex. It is the development of the secondary sexual characteristics that serve as more apparent signals to others that the person is becoming a man or a woman. These signals lead to increasingly differential treatment of adolescent girls and boys by parents or other adults. The changes in hormone levels that occur during puberty may cause boys and girls to perceive the world in different ways, leading them to react differently to situations. Thus, puberty augments behavioral sex differences between young men and women. In some cultures and religions, puberty is recognized with rituals that mark the transition into adulthood.

For most teenagers and other age groups in our communities today, engaging in heterosexual intercourse without the use of a condom is the behavior that puts them at greatest risk for infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and is often ultimately fatal. Although there is currently no medical cure for AIDS, there are medications that can help delay the onset of symptoms. Another serious sexually transmitted disease is syphilis, which if left untreated for many years, can lead to paralysis, psychiatric illness, and death. Gonorrhea and chlamydia may produce no obvious symptoms in a woman, but they can lead to sterility if she is not treated. Sexually transmitted diseases should be diagnosed and treated by qualified medical practitioners, and all sexual partners must be treated in order to avoid reinfection.

Teenage birth rates are an important statistic because teenage mothers are less likely to receive proper maternity care, can't negotiate for safe sex , more likely to smoke during pregnancy and more likely to have babies with low birth weights. As a result, children born to teenage mothers are more often unhealthy and have a higher risk of dying within their first year than children born to older women. Other research shows that many teenage mothers become welfare recipients and are less likely to go on to college than their peers. And children born to teenage parents are more likely to grow up in poverty. Individuals can reduce their exposure to such risks by practicing abstinence, using appropriate methods of contraception to avoid unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, and using safer sex practices. Such practices include using condoms to avoid exchanging bodily fluids, limiting the number of sexual partners, and restricting sexual behaviors to those with less risk, such as manual stimulation and massage.

A teenage pregnancy also interprets into increasing number of new HIV infection as teens normally have intercourse with individuals far much older than them. They are also vulnerable to sexual abuse in many ways apart from contracting other infections. Consequently, campaign against teenage pregnancy is a broad-based approach to the HIV epidemic contributing to a reduction in HIV infections among young pregnant women living in towns, cities and rural areas. This is for the simple reason that increases in the rate of HIV infection in the general population leads to the same patterns of sexual risk resulting in more new infections simply because the chances of encountering an infected partner become higher. The age group 15-49 is the worst hit by the HIV pandemic and those in their teenage are most vulnerable in taking a sexual risk than adults leading to new infections in our population. Frighteningly high prevalence rates of infection [exist] among teenagers and women in their early 20s in various urban and rural areas in Africa. The rates among teenage girls and especially among women under 25 defy belief: in 7 of the 11 studies, more than one woman in five in her early 20s was infected with the virus; a large proportion of them will not live to see their 30th birthday. Close to 6 out of 10 women in this age group in the South African town of Carletonville tested positive for HIV.

The infection rates in young African women are far higher than those in young men. In the 11 population-based studies presented here, the average rates in teenage girls were over five times higher than those in teenage boys. Among young people in their early 20s, the rates were three times higher in women. In large measure, this enormous discrepancy is due to age-mixing between young women and older men, who have had much more sexual experience and are much more likely to be exposing the girls to HIV. It is also because girls are more easily infected during vaginal intercourse with an infected partner than boys are.

The fact that, in Africa, women's peak infection rates occur at earlier ages than men's helps explain why there are an estimated 12 women living with HIV for every 10 men in this region of the world. Not only do the young age groups account for a bigger proportion of the population, but individuals who are infected at a younger age tend to survive longer and continue to be counted among those living with HIV.

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JONES . H. MUNANG'ANDU (author)
Motivational speaker, health commentator &
Health practitioner
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