“That’s my child, not my sibling!”
I have been working on a feature about pregnancy complications in women aged 35 and older, so it’s interesting to read about a study in the UK finding that girls as young as 13 are actually choosing to have children, contrary to popular belief that such girls get pregnant accidentally.
The findings from the Trust for the Study of Adolescence challenges the assumption that schoolgirl mothers are all irresponsible adolescents who are ignorant about using contraception. The revelation that teenage girls are actively choosing motherhood is backed up by official figures obtained by this paper which show that nearly a quarter of pregnancies to under 18s are second children. - The Independent
The research was based on interviews with 13- to 22-year-old mothers living in six deprived parts of Britain who deliberately set out to have children either by throwing out the contraception or planning for a baby with the support of their partners. The article states, “…the parts of the country that have most teenage births are areas of poverty and high unemployment; girls from low-income families are 10 times more likely to become teenage mothers than those from affluent backgrounds.” That tells me that these girls are using their kids as an escape from reality.
Don’t you think that all this is just so wrong? In my mind, anyone aged below 20 shouldn’t be thinking about having kids, they should be busy getting an education and doing whatever else is necessary to have them set for life.
Sure they should date, but I don’t think anyone in this age group in their right mind should be thinking about having kids until they’ve got their groundwork right. I for one know what was uppermost in my mind when I was in my teens, and it wasn’t getting pregnant and having kids. Sure I thought about sex a lot, but kids? No way!
Apparently, nearly three-quarters of the girls surveyed in the study were in steady relationships with the father of their child. A “steady relationship” at that age? I don’t think anyone so young would even know what it takes to maintain a steady relationship.
Either the people who did this study have some kind of warped agenda, or things are seriously wrong with the youth in that esteemed country.
Tags: adolescents, children, contraception, Pregnancy, sex, teen-pregnancyRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Sexuality
1 opinion for “That’s my child, not my sibling!”
Inside Motherhood » Well, this is news.
Aug 10, 2006 at 9:15 pm
[…] I wrote sometime ago about a UK study finding that girls as young as 13 are actually choosing to have children and that I think this is highly inappropriate given that girls that young couldn’t possibly be prepared or equipped with the skills and maturity necessary to raise kids. […]
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