Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Teenage preg­nan­cy–It's re­al and it's hap­pen­ing world-wide. And con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief, teenage preg­nan­cy does not on­ly af­fect a cer­tain de­mo­graph­ic or low­er in­come fam­i­lies; it is a prob­lem fac­ing every teenage girl hav­ing sex. Every young girl be­tween 13 and 19 hav­ing sex­u­al in­ter­course is at risk. In some fam­i­lies abor­tion is an op­tion, while in oth­ers the "per­pe­tra­tor" may be sent to have the ba­by in a for­eign coun­try, where adop­tion would then take place. But those who don't have such op­tions would have no choice but to be­come teenage moms.

As is the "norm," stu­dents in T&T who be­come preg­nant are not al­lowed to at­tend school dur­ing the pe­ri­od of their preg­nan­cy in or­der to avoid "cor­rupt­ing" their peers. "Teenage mom beats odds" was a head­line pub­lished on Au­gust 20 in the Guardian. The sto­ry paint­ed a pic­ture of a young girl–Janelle Rankin–be­com­ing preg­nant while still at­tend­ing sec­ondary school. Rankin has ex­pe­ri­enced this lone­ly, fright­en­ing and life chang­ing jour­ney. Fac­ing the ob­vi­ous em­bar­rass­ment and strug­gles of be­ing a stu­dent and teenage moth­er, Rankin was de­ter­mined not to let her cir­cum­stances cre­ate stum­bling blocks in her life.

Hav­ing re­peat­ed Form Four on her re­turn to school af­ter giv­ing birth to her son, Rankin at­tained four of her sev­en CXC sub­jects, which in­clud­ed grade ones in Elec­tron­ic Doc­u­ment Prepa­ra­tion and Man­age­ment, Eng­lish A and Prin­ci­ples of Ac­counts, and a grade two in Prin­ci­ples of Busi­ness. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, she isn't the on­ly teenag­er who has fall­en prey to "sex too ear­ly...bel­ly come soon af­ter." Many young women are, at this very mo­ment, find­ing out that they are ex­pect­ing while still at­tend­ing school. While Rankin got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go back to school, what about those young girls whose preg­nan­cies have lit­er­al­ly be­come a "dead end" in their young lives?

Need for sup­port

For par­ents, it is un­der­stand­ably dif­fi­cult to face the re­al­i­ty of their teenage daugh­ter be­com­ing preg­nant. Dreams of her grad­u­at­ing from school, get­ting ready for col­lege, land­ing that high-pay­ing job, get­ting mar­ried and rais­ing chil­dren, are shat­tered the very mo­ment they hear, "Mom, Dad... I'm preg­nant." While teenage preg­nan­cy is noth­ing to con­done, it is still a re­al­i­ty that we as par­ents have to deal with. Our chil­dren need all the sup­port they can get dur­ing this time. Af­firm­ing this is Oraine R Ramoo, coun­selling psy­chol­o­gist and cer­ti­fied trau­ma ther­a­pist. Ac­cord­ing to Ramoo, par­ents must re­mem­ber that though they may be an­gry with their child, and they do have that right, the child is go­ing through a range of emo­tions too–fear, un­cer­tain­ty, dis­ap­point­ment, shock, be­tray­al and more.

Be­cause of this she ad­mon­ish­es: "Put your­selves in their shoes, they need you now more than ever! "Par­ents can ex­er­cise com­pas­sion and of­fer sup­port, know this...how you treat your child dur­ing this time could put them on a pos­i­tive path to re­claim­ing their fu­tures, or set them down one that will al­low for bad choic­es, more hurt and per­haps less than suc­cess­ful lives. "Love them and that will guide you well."

Bet­ter sex ed­u­ca­tion

Talk­ing to our chil­dren about sex is still quite a taboo sub­ject for many par­ents. There is the false no­tion that if they are told about it they be­come cu­ri­ous and want to ex­plore it. How­ev­er, your pri­ma­ry goal as a re­spon­si­ble par­ent should be to pro­vide your teen with enough in­for­ma­tion to make in­tel­li­gent choic­es. Clar­i­fy­ing your own thoughts and val­ues be­fore­hand will help you de­cide on the ex­act mes­sage to con­vey. This, in turn, will help you avoid de­liv­er­ing an am­bigu­ous mes­sage that could be chal­lenged, or worse, ig­nored. Teenagers go through enor­mous changes from the stage of pu­ber­ty to ado­les­cence. Nat­u­ral­ly, dur­ing this stage both sex­es go through phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and men­tal changes.

Al­so, they be­come at­tract­ed to each oth­er, deal­ing with feel­ings they some­times can­not un­der­stand. Be­cause of this, par­ents need to be quick on the draw, pro­vid­ing their chil­dren with an­swers to their "teenage" ques­tions. The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem should al­so play a piv­otal role in ed­i­fy­ing these young men and women in prop­er sex ed­u­ca­tion. Sex ed­u­ca­tion does not on­ly in­clude telling teenagers to ab­stain from sex, be­cause as sad and hurt­ful as it is our young chil­dren are hav­ing sex. Prop­er coun­selling should be im­part­ed to stu­dents, us­ing vi­su­als and re­al life case sce­nar­ios to place em­pha­sis on the many com­pli­ca­tions de­rived from hav­ing pre­ma­ture sex which in­cludes–un­want­ed preg­nan­cies, ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reer set­backs, aban­don­ment, STDs, fear and oth­er fu­ture prospects that would be marred by hav­ing sex too ear­ly.

Apart from the use of con­doms, while some may think it in­sane, oth­er meth­ods of con­tra­cep­tion should be in­tro­duced to young women as ear­ly as sec­ondary school. Even though they are taught about safe sex and ab­sti­nence, there would be a great ma­jor­i­ty who would still have sex. And as the old adage goes–it's bet­ter to be safe than sor­ry.