Teen Pregnancies

English III
10/6/11
Teen Pregnancy
Teenage pregnancy is a large and growing problem in the United States. There are nearly one million unplanned pregnancies each year, in women under 20 years old. Becoming pregnant in your adolescent years will make your life awfully difficult, and it will drastically change your way of living.
As the mother, you will have to make some huge sacrifices in your life to provide and take care of a baby. Finishing high school at the rate you were planning on will be nearly impossible. Mothers miss numerous amounts of days due to sicknesses, doctor’s visits, and other various reasons.   Only one-third of pregnant teenagers even receive a high school diploma, and merely 1.5 percent obtain a college degree by age 30. Aside from these challenging school delays, most expecting teens don’t have much of a social life. While their fellow highschoolers are going out to the movies and football games on Friday nights, the moms are up changing diapers and warming bottles. Sadly, most teens don’t even realize all of the sacrifices that must be made.
On the other end, the babies are also affected. The children of teen mothers are more at risk for serious health problems. They are more likely to be born prematurely and at low birth weights, which raises the chances of blindness, deafness, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and other disabilities. Aside from these medical issues, babies born to teenagers are also more vulnerable to be neglected and experience abuse from their young parents. The daughters are 22 percent more likely to become teenage mothers themselves, while the sons are 13 percent more likely to end up in prison. Statistics also show that these children tend to do poorly in school and on major tests.
Most teenage couples do not stay together when having to deal with a pregnancy. Once this happens, the family has to deal with custody battles and child support issues. The baby will grow up in a single parent home and will not...