Lombardo 1 Jake Lombardo Ms. Olding ENG 200 26 November 2013 Research Paper Sex is a vital part of life.

When one becomes sexually active, he or she must be ready to deal with any consequence of intercourse. It is important for young adults to know about sex and its results, but when the consequences are not known, bad things can come about. No teen is ready for the consequences of sex, especially pregnancy. Becoming pregnant alters the entire life of the new mother and father, and not always for the good. Teens arent ready for the consequences of sex, and culture and society dont help in preparing them. Teen pregnancy is a continued issue in the 2000s because of our cultures negative message of sex towards young adults. Many factors in culture contribute to teen pregnancy. The first is the glorification of sex in the media. Every teenager in society comes across sex no matter where he or she looks. Television shows, movies, and music all include ample amounts of innuendo in any way possible. This is critical because, especially in the 2000s, media has remained at the fore front of culture. Young adults are confronted with the decision of whether or not to have sex (Hurley, 46) every day because of the way our culture depicts sex. Our culture depicts sex as a recreation, something to do for fun, and that sex is something that everyone does. Young people are given the impression that sex is just for fun, and if one is not having sex, then he or she is not

Lombardo 2 normal. This is a problem because it is such a powerful message towards young adults who are so impressionable. The negative thing is that the media never depicts any of the consequences of sex. Because of never showing anything negative involving sex, popular cultures obsession with sex contributes to the pressure teens feel to have sex (Hurley, 47). This obsession with sex creates the mirage that everyone is having sex and that the world revolves around sex. This sends messages that can be tremendously dangerous for young teens. Teens will think that if everyone is having sex that they should be as well. Also, young adults can think that they may be strange for not having sex because everyone else is. Popular culture, and more importantly media, shapes peoples beliefs about what normal behavior is (Hurley, 47). This glorified idea of what sex is can be devastating to young adults who have sex. The teens are not ready for the consequences of sex, which the media conveniently never represents. This can be even more negative towards girls than boys. Even more so than young adult males, girls are the targets of an aggressive marketplace culture that uses images of sex and sexiness to sell products (Hurley, 48). Young women are the targets of sexual images because of the pressure that society puts on young women to look good at all times and be sexual objects. Unfortunately, young women feel pressured to have sex simply to prove to themselves and to others that they are desirable to males (Hurley, 48). With the messages that media in culture sends to young adults, it is easy to see why young men and women feel pressured to have sex. When they do have sex, these young adults are not ready for the repercussions, including teen pregnancy. Since at the end of the day women are the main care takers of children, our cultures messages towards sex are even more impactful on young women. As stated earlier, our culture provides messages of sex but not the consequences of sex. Pregnancy of any kind is life altering. At a young age though, it is especially difficult. Everything in life is changed. The

Lombardo 3 families of the young parents have to help the teens so the baby can survive. The teen parents have no money so they may end up having to rely on their families to support them for the sake of the baby. In just a short time period, the teens go from high school students to parents. The young parents may have to put their futures completely on hold and change any plans that they had of that future. Everyone in the lives of the new parents is affected because every decision that is made or everything that is done is now done for the new baby. That is a very drastic change from being two care- free teenagers. Being responsible for a new life is not what our culture and society market when sex is used as a marketing tool. And since the care for a young child really comes down to the mother, this is especially negative for young women. Our culture doesnt show the negative aspects of sex, making young women especially susceptible to negative consequences. Another factor in culture that contributes to teen pregnancy is poor family life. Family is an extremely important aspect of society and culture, partly because of the things teens learn from family, and because of the consequences of not having a good family life. In the 2000s, family is maybe even more important than ever because of the teachings that are presented to young adults about sex in the rampant media. The family needs to be a teaching voice for young adults to learn about sex. If a teen has problems at home or in his or her family life in any way, he or she has a hole in his or her life. One way a teen can look to fill that void in his or her life is of course with relationships. These relationships can lead inevitably to sex. It makes sense then that findings reflect an abundance of child abuse, poor parenting, and poverty in the lives of girls who have children as teenagers (Ojeda, 71). Young adults who arent taught responsibility because of poor family influence can be even more susceptible to societys influences.

Lombardo 4 In some negative circumstances, young women even feel the desire to be pregnant because of the lack of emotional closeness to their families. In situations like this, the young girl did not have a secure primary attachment to her parents prior to adolescence (Frick, 36). The young girl feels desire to have emotional closeness. Having a baby provides these emotional attachments that the young woman is missing. If family life is not as supportive as it needs to be, a young girl can feel scared about independency. A baby creates closeness for a teen who is struggling emotionally with the transition to adulthood (Frick, 35) and without the support of a parent, a baby represents a re- creation of her own childhood, a chance to parent her child in the way she wishes she had been parented herself (Frick, 34). Because of the feeling of distance between herself and her family, the young female finds the ideas of a baby as an answer to her emotional detachments. Family is such an important aspect for young adults that the effect family life has on a young adult is tremendous. When a teen has a negative family life, he or she is much more likely to put himself or herself at risk for becoming teen parents. In family life, any lacking parental guidance is an extremely important contributor to teen pregnancy. This is especially apparent for teen girls with a lacking relationship with their fathers. Already a vital relationship, father absence places daughters at special risk for early sexual activity (Frick, 69). Teens need both parents to teach them about life, especially something as important as sex. When any relationship is lacking with a teen to a parent, the results can be devastating, especially when the teen has a lot of alone time. Young adults can be without adult supervision for at least three hours a day (Hurley, 37). For teens, this means above everything else that they have extended periods of the day to explore life on their own. With their time alone, teens can either do positive things like play sports or join clubs, or do negative things like do drugs or have sex. If the teens choose to have sex, then pregnancy will of

Lombardo 5 course inevitably follow. The effects of poor family life cannot go unstated because of what lessons arent taught to young adults if the family doesnt teach them. Teens who have no guidance from parents will find ways to explore life their own way. And with media and popular cultures pressure to have sex, it is easy to see why a poor family life can contribute to teen pregnancy. What teens can forget is again the impact of something like teen pregnancy. No teen is capable of raising another human being from birth. The energy and money that takes is truly life changing. All of a sudden, after having sex for the first time to see what it is like, two individuals are in charge of a baby. This means that the new parents have to be able to feed, clothe, and house a new human life. The child is completely dependent on those two teenagers, and if they do not respond, the child will die. Here is the importance of having good parentchild communication about sex. What teenagers do not understand is that if they choose to engage in sexual intercourse, that consequential child is completely their responsibility. Parents of young adults are tremendously important. Parents can help prevent teen pregnancy simply by communicating. However, teen pregnancy is just one terrible consequence of sex when young teens do not have strong parents in their lives. A third aspect in society that contributes to teen pregnancy is the aspect of older men preying on young women. If a teen girl needs a male role model, and the father is not in the family life, it is inevitable that she will turn to another older male for guidance. In these

situations, obviously it is not always true that the male will take advantage of the young woman. But, sometimes unfortunately, it can happen. Besides this, focusing on teen behavior does nothing to eliminate the primary cause of teenage pregnancy: the exploitation of adolescent girls by adult men (Hurley, 42). The young woman cannot be blamed in these situations for being

Lombardo 6 taken advantage of. These young females need a man as a role model in their lives because of the absence of the father. Instead of a fatherly figure, they are taken advantage of and a baby can be the result. Far from a rarity, the problem of adult men impregnating teenage girls is hardly uncommon (Hurley, 43). This horrible situation is more common than many might think. In fact, according to a 1995 study published in Family Planning Perspectives, almost two- thirds of adolescent mothers have partners older than twenty years of age (Hurley, 43). What this shows is that these young adult girls are in need of a father figure, and instead find themselves victim to a sexually assaulting older male. The older male sees an opportunity of a young girl who is vulnerable and takes advantage of her in the worst way imaginable. These situations come down to one thing: the fact that these older males see the young girls and their youth and inexperience make them particularly vulnerable to older men who are looking for sex (Hurley, 43). These situations inevitably lead to situations of sexual assault. When sexual assault comes into play, the truly horrible side of teen pregnancy is seen. Some young girls who have relations with older men feel the need to have a relationship with an older man, as discussed in the previous paragraph. But, even more alarming than these supposedly consensual relationships between adult men and teenage girls are those that are outright abusive (Hurley, 44). After all, teenage girls may be physically mature, but they are still children, and possess a childs need for love and acceptance (Hurley, 43). Teens this young, mainly young females, might be conned into having sex, but she is incapable of giving consent (Ojeda, 50). The older man realizes that he has an opportunity for sex, and takes advantage of the young girl. This sexual abuse makes teens more prone to pregnancy (Hurley, 44) than other young adults who get pregnant together.

Lombardo 7 The worst part is that most cases of teen pregnancy occur because of this sexual assault. Teenagers do get pregnant together, but not at the rate of sexually abused teenage girls. In fact, a shocking sixty- six percent of pregnant teens have histories of sexual abuse (Hurley, 44) from older males. It is easy to see that sexual abuse makes teens prone to pregnancy (Hurley, 44). The idea that most teen pregnancy occurs between teen men and women is false. These years a cloak of silence, denial, and discomfort has covered sexual abuse in (Frick, 73) our culture and it has to stop, because the reality is that the greatest cause of teen pregnancy is sexual abuse. Sexual assault also causes future problems. For example, the trauma of sexual abuse makes teenage girls more likely to engage in the types of behavior that increase their chances of an unplanned pregnancy (Hurley, 44) after being abused. Also important is the self- destructive behavior that follows sexual assault. For young women or even young adult males who have to endure these terrible situations, life after is not easy. These young adults can have to deal with high- risk, self- destructive behaviors such as self- cutting, drug use, excessive drinking, promiscuity, and running away (Frick, 75). Running away from home itself even is a cause for teen pregnancy. For teens that go from foster house to foster house, with no consistency in their lives, the risk is much higher for them to teen parenting (Frick, 76). Sometimes these young adults are running because the perpetrator of their sexual assault can be a parents boyfriend or girlfriend, or even a step- parent (Frick, 75). Not to mention the potential problems of the sexual assault like diseases or pregnancy, the horror of sexual assault is obvious. As the leading cause of teen pregnancy, it becomes the first target to be stopped in the fight against teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy is an effect of the negative message of sex that culture sends to the young generations in society. Because of the media, poor family influence, and sexual predators,

Lombardo 8 teens are sent a message of sex, sex and nothing but sex in culture. Through cultures powerful influence, the 2000s saw a continued problem with teen pregnancy. Teenagers are at such a risk for being responsible for a pregnancy partly because of their susceptibility to cultures influence and partly because sex is an obsession in todays society. What is forgotten is the drastic lifechanging moment when pregnancy is reached. For these teens, sex is only marketed as a fun experience that is natural for everyone to be doing. What is never marketed however is the negative aspects of sex such as diseases or pregnancy. For the young adults who choose to act on their sexuality, the consequences are life altering. Hopefully, teen pregnancy will not continue to be an issue in the future.

Lombardo 9 Works Cited Frick, Lisa, ed. Teen Pregnancy and Parenting. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. Print. Gregson, Joanna. The Culture of Teenage Mothers. New York: State University of New York Press, 2009. Print. Hurley, Jennifer A. Teen Pregnancy. California: Green Haven Press, Inc., 2000. Print. Ojeda, Auriana, ed. Teenage Pregnancy. San Diego: Thomson Gale, 2003. Print.