Teenage pregnancy: a burden to our society

Introduction;

Over the past few decades, teenage pregnancy has become a public concern which has generated
a great deal of attention in the locality. Increasing awareness of the social and economic
consequences of teenage pregnancy has led to a consensus opinion among policy makers and the
public that teenage pregnancy and child bearing is a significant social problem. It has been linked
to an array of other social issues, such as welfare dependency, child health and well-being, out of
wedlock births, fatherhood responsibility, child abuse and neglect, school drop-out and
workforce development. (Torivillas, The Philippine Star, 2013).
There was a strong agreement that teenage pregnancy rate is still on the increase and and every
increased there has an additional consequences of abortions and fetus losses and yet reducing the
number of births by this age group remains an important goal, Scott (1981)

ProblemTeenage pregnancy is widespread in the Philippines, especially amongst the poor. It is

astory that may not be too pleasant, but one that is repeated all too often.Teen pregnancy is
anobvious rising issue in our society. During the 21st century, the statistics about this issue
continues to rise even though there are a lot of disadvantages that young mothers and fathers
canobviously get in the said issue.Fox(2008) defined teenage pregnancy as:Teenage pregnancy is
one of the most important and alarming issues in today'sworld. A teenage pregnancy, also
referred to as teen pregnancy, comes to be when a girlattains motherhood before she becomes a
major or adult, as laid down by the law of the land
Albano, September, 2010. As a whole, the situation is grim for pregnant teenage girls who are in
school and their babies. Forced with few options with no where to turn to, many girls find
various ways to get rid of the fetus. In a few cases, some simply disguise their bellies and hide
their pregnancy from everyone, and the victim will start to make lost interest at school,
absenteeism from school which resulted to low and failure on test and quizzes and
finally prefers to stay home. As months move on, a teenage pregnant student will start to disguise
their bellies and hide their pregnancy to their schoolmates and to everyone, but everything will
not just end that way, the pressure must go on and being pregnant this will effect on their school
development, others will decide to quit school for the main time and back to school after
pregnancy.

Effects after pregnancy

Common Reasons behind Teenage Pregnancy in the Philippines, Oct 3rd, 2011; Teenagers
could possibly become pregnant as a result of the deficiency of decent educational programs,
hindrances from being able to acquire birth control methods, sexual assault or rape, economic
reasons, and cultural rituals and that is usually handed from family to another family. Teenage
Pregnancy brings about life-changing outcomes and commitments. Their studies and also
ambitions will most likely be hampered as they will need to concentrate their attention on
parenting their child or supporting their new family.

The above literature is relevance to the study for after mentioning the possible factors behind, it
penetrated to the effects brought about by pregnancy against the school performance of the
teenagers which would be temporarily hampered or it could be reason of total separation from
school to give priority of rearing and parenting their incoming child.

According to Eruesgbefe, (2005). Todays teenagers have become more sexually active and
promiscuous compared to their age mates of some thirty, forty or fifty years ago in the Nigerian
situation. He also asserted that, The gradual departures from the traditions, customs and
religious doctrine of the different ethnic groups on the premise of civilization have been largely
responsible for this. Community and families must work hand in hand to shield their teenagers
against these phenomena. Increases in both health and social problems are products of
uncontrollable multiple sex partners among teenagers. Mainly because the youth cannot control
their emotional feelings, they rush into untimely sex, in the belief that the act will be undetected.

According to Albano (2001). In the Philippines, usually in a family, this category are not taught
family life education by their parents and schools because of the sensitivity of the issue, this is
contrary to the wide assumption that family life education is on. In practice, however, not much
of sex education is taught in every Filipino family. Existing government family planning
programs have been directed principally to married couples.