Effects of Teen Pregnancy Essay

A child is like the icing on top of a cake, a finishing touch to a married couple’s journey on earth together. If perfectly planned and periodically monitored, a woman’s pregnancy will be one of the most unforgettable experiences she will ever have. To be able to carry out a safe pregnancy, the ideal age to get impregnated is from the early twenties to the early thirties. This is the time the female reproductive system is fully developed and mature enough to handle multiple activities such as the fertilization of an egg, the carrying of a fertilized egg to fetal maturity, and the nurturing of the newborn by means of milk production (Bullock 1087). Also, if the woman is psychologically ready and wanting to have a child, she will not have a hard time going through the process because of acceptance of the situation, support of the family around her and if married, the spouse’s longing to have a child with her. Unfortunately this is not always the case. The adolescent stage is the period during which the person becomes physically and psychologically mature and acquires a personal identity, from twelve to eighteen years of age (Kozier 385). The establishment of an identity is the psychosocial task of an adolescent according to Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Developmental Theory. Failure to establish an identity will lead to role confusion (Kozier 387). Role confusion poses a threat to the teenager’s social wellbeing. The teenager maybe at a loss as to what her role in society might be or what career path she would take and if she will even go to college. Adolescents are almost always experiencing a roller coaster of emotions in their search for an identity. They tend to look for people with similar preferences and would not want to be seen with other people who do not share the same characteristics as they have, they begin to idolize a person and want to be just like him or her, they become rebellious, they demonstrate forbidden behaviors, they seek attention and admiration from the opposite sex and choose their career paths. Because of the physical changers that are happening to their bodies, they tend to be curious and experimental with these changes. â€Å"Adolescents are sexually active and may engage in masturbation as well as heterosexual and homosexual activity†(Kozier 387). Statistics show that more than 800,000 teens get pregnant each year which places the United States as one of the highest among industrialized countries (Teen Pregnancy: Reality Check). As to why this happens, people can only speculate and come up with studies, surveys and interview. There are however identified risk factors for teenage pregnancy. â€Å"These include: family situations with regular conflict between members, violence and sexual abuse in childhood, unstable housing arrangements, poor school performance, poor school attendance, low socioeconomic background, family history of teenage pregnancies, low maternal education, father’s absence, low self-esteem, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and living in rural and remote areas† (Teenage pregnancy some facts). Dealing with adolescent pregnancy does not only have serious physical effect, but psychological as well. The adolescent is at risk for PIH, iron deficiency anemia, preterm delivery, and cephalopelvic disproportion because her own physical growth maybe inadequate to support the growth and delivery of the fetus. PIH or pregnancy induced hypertension is the second leading cause of maternal death in the United States. This illness is a combination of hypertension, edema and proteinuria during pregnancy (Bullock 93). Iron deficiency anemia or IDA occurs when there is a considerable lower than normal amount of Iron in the blood. Iron is needed by the blood in order to effectively transport oxygen to various parts of the body. Fortunately this can be easily corrected by taking oral supplements of Iron as prescribed by the doctor (Bullock 356). Preterm delivery, which is 36 weeks of gestation or life inside the woman’s womb, is a serious threat for both the fetus and the mother. The normal term is 37 weeks to 40 weeks and less that that the fetus will not be mature enough to live outside the mother’s uterus. The pregnant adolescent’s nutrition may not also be adequate enough, resulting to malnutrition. Prenatal care may also be delayed because the teenager maybe in denial, hence the fetus might not be well taken care of resulting to deficiencies and fetal abnormalities. As for the infant, he or she is susceptible to having lower birth weights, increased infant mortality, increased risk of hospital admission in early childhood, less supportive environments, poorer cognitive development, and if female, a higher risk of becoming pregnant during the adolescent period, as compared to infants born of older women (Teenage pregnancy: trends). Psychologically, a teenager is prone to postnatal depression compared to older women. Reasons for this include societal attitudes, lack of support from family and isolation, and financial pressures (Teenage pregnancy implications). There is also a tendency for the teenage mother to be abandoned by their male partners, especially during birth. Being alone in a very hard process can sometimes be the hardest thing that teenage mothers go through. Not only are their partners abandoning them, but the stigma attached to teenage pregnancy also affects the family of the teenager. There seems to be feelings of alienation from the teenager’s family. All of these may add up resulting to more negative feelings towards oneself, more questioning of identity hence role confusion, wasted dreams and impossibility of going back to her education. All the emotional stress may even lead to a mental illness. Efforts are being made to lower the number of teen pregnancies. A number of organizations have been established and there are even pregnancy prevention programs for males. Education maybe the key, with these programs discussing the consequences of early sexual activities like unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Contraception is strongly advocated, even sex education has been really pushed through, and sexual abstinence until marriage has been a strong banner for these programs. The family physician’s or any health care personnel’s role is also significant. They will be able to explain and elaborate more on the nature of the consequences of sexually transmitted diseases and early pregnancy to teens. In fact, in a study entitled, â€Å"Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use† it showed how much the pregnancy rates declined over the past 7 years. Improvements in contraceptive use included increases in the use of condoms, birth control pills, withdrawal, and multiple methods and a decline in nonuse. The overall pregnancy risk index declined 38%, with 86% of the decline attributable to improved contraceptive use. Among adolescents aged 15 to 17 years, 77% of the decline in pregnancy risk was attributable to improved contraceptive use† was the result of the study by John S. Santelli, MD, MPH, Laura Duberstein Lindberg, PhD, Lawrence B.  Finer, PhD and Susheela Singh, PhD. Sharing intimacy with another person is always a personal choice. But the responsibilities that come with it are not. The freedom of having a choice comes with a price, the burden of being unprepared to raise your own child. And everything else you pick up the broken pieces after that. It matters how much strength and courage you have, how much you can carry alone. But it is important to know that life does not end when hardships begin, it’s just begun.