Reasons Why Teenagers Get Pregnant
Teenagers get pregnant for a wide variety of reasons. Some of them begin engaging in acts of sexual intercourse at an early age. Others are not aware of the real facts behind pregnancy and sex and have sex due to peer pressure, or are misguided because of gossip and rumors.
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Definition
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A pregnant teenager is defined as someone younger than the age of nineteen who has gotten pregnant.
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Statistics
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The United States has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the Western world. More than 750,000 teenagers living in the United States get pregnant each year. Ninety percent of teenagers who do not reliably use some form of contraception get pregnant within a year.
Facts
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Teenagers tend to become sexually mature between the ages of 12 and 16, with girls starting to mature one or two years earlier than boys. This is four to five years before most teenagers reach emotional maturity, which is between the ages of 16 and 20.
Sex Education
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Teenagers whose schools only teach abstinence in their sex education curriculum are more likely to practice unsafe sex and get pregnant. When the curriculum includes birth control, condoms and other contraceptives, the number of teenagers who get pregnant drops considerably.
False Rumors
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Sometimes teenagers believe the rumors that their peers are telling them, and find themselves pregnant as a result of these rumors contradicting fact. They feel ashamed to ask their parents, or another positive adult figure in their lives, about sex in a candid and open manner.
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Resources
- Photo Credit "Two" is Copyrighted by Flickr user: Arwen Abendstern (Kate Weber) under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
