Teenage pregnancy

Résumé du document

Each year, thousands of teenagers and young adults confront (face) the problem of an early pregnancy – wanted or unwanted. Nowadays, this phenomenon is regularly highlighted by Medias or scientific reports as an epidemic social issue in our modern society. But in many developed countries teenage pregnancies have gradually decreased for the last 50 years; “the number of teenage pregnancies has decreased, however, the public perceptions of it has sharply increased”(UNICEF report….).

A teenage pregnancy is a pregnancy below the age of 20 (here we are going to talk about pregnancies between 14 years old and 19). Nonetheless those pregnancies are an increasing issue today. Indeed, motherhood is something nearly all women expect to achieve in their life but only in a social context considered as “normal” while teenage pregnancies is a phenomenon seen as something abnormal, inappropriate and as an adult activity; so in our society we often talk about “underage sex”. Sex is still associated as an appropriate activity only in a marriage situation.

Yet in our contemporary society teenagers are sexually active younger and younger what is bothering more and more people today (while during the past centuries, teenage sexuality and pregnancy was something “normal”). Indeed sexual activities is now considered as a personal achievement; there are several rites of passages such as leaving of familial home, professional and social integration, first boyfriends/girlfriends, cohabitation, marriage, etc.

Extraits

[...] The most recent phenomenon of hyper-sexualization is obviously a significant factor of teenage sexualization. Young girls are more and more encouraged to wear make-up or get dressed as a woman (high heel, handbags, mini-skirt ) by medias or TV shows, thus the frontiers between childhood and adulthood are progressively confused, therefore they are more solicited by sexual activities (often with older boy). In addition it is proved that adolescents from lower-class families are more likely to become sexually active than those from higher-class families. [...]

[...] A baby is a real problem for an adolescent so I am very interested in this phenomenon and tried to understand why it is spreading in our modern society today. Furthermore, I am personally concerned about that because I have some friends who are themselves teen parents. It is something difficult to manage and albeit we think is it rare, this is a real issue for teenage health policies today. In regard to my poster I have chosen mainly the blue colour because it means the innocence of a young, it symbolizes the dream world and the imagination which is a characteristic of childhood. I added pink symbolizing feminity. [...]

[...] This is the main problem: teenage pregnancies call into question this process. But Is there an appropriate age to become a mother? We are going to study this issue comparing the situation in both countries United Kingdom and France. The phenomenon of teenage pregnancy is more important in UK than in France, it is the country with the highest rate of adolescent childbearing in western countries– in per 1000 live birth were underage pregnancies by 19-year-old mothers whereas in France the rate was 14 per 1000 (Nativel p.116). [...]

[...] Many of them are stereotyped as bad mothers (or as “girls of easy virtue”), so their children are also severely disadvantaged later. They are inevitably stigmatized as “incompetent” mothers. Such harassments can also cause depressions and “burn (very frequent among teen parents). Furthermore they often have to live in social housing because they do not earn any wages (or just a low wage). It is very difficult to assume babies, so adolescent parents completely miss out on their teenage; they grow up too rapidly which is bad for their future balance. [...]

[...] So, there is not an appropriate age to become a mother or a father but only if the pregnancy is decided in a safe economic and social context. Rational: I have chosen this subject because it is an important social phenomenon in our society today which is more and more worrying. We all are more or less concerned about it because as we said in the paper, sexuality is over- present in our social, political and economic environment. Since we are very young we are surrounded by images of sex and references of sexuality. We are highly sexualized before being an adult. [...]