Professional Documents
Culture Documents
March 6, 2016
Hour 5th
Unintended pregnancy among teens can have a number of negative
consequences for those involved including their families, futures and society as a
whole. It is a complex and controversial social issue in the United States where as it
is not so unique but rather usual in developing countries due to the fact that most
girls marry and have children before the age of twenty. In 2014, there were 24.2
births for every 1,000 adolescent female from ages 15-19 making up a number of
249,078 born into this female age group. In 2011, 45% of all pregnancies in the U.S
were unintended making the rate for pregnancy 45 per 1,000 women higher than
any developing country that year. 16 million girls between the ages of 15-19 give
birth every year, 77% are unintended and 4 in 10 teens say the sex was involuntary
or unwanted. If these trends continue, more than half of teenage girls in the United
States will experience an unintended pregnancy by the time they reach the age of
forty. With unintended pregnancy comes the discussion of adoption. In the U.S
397,122 children are living without a permanent homes or families. Of these
children and others with homes they make up 2% of the total child population. So
why dont these precious children have homes? UNICEFF estimates 151 million
children have lost one parent and 15 million have lost both due to a number of
reasons like death, drug related or because their parents werent prepared to take
on such responsibilities. Children who are raised into foster care systems usually
have an IQ of 20 points lower than their peers because of being taken in and out of
different school districts. Could you imagine the amount of stress and concern on a
young ones mind while having to keep up with their education? Kind of like the
During our research we both realized we didn't fully understand the process of adoption. Come
to find out, almost all of our judgments on adoption agencies and how they operate were
completely wrong. People give their babies up for adoption because the pregnancy was
unplanned, they werent suitable parents or because they werent ready financially or
emotionally. It is a difficult process to legally become an adoptive parent. First, you complete an
expression of interest form and from there the department looks at your form and decides
whether you can be entered. If you get passed the expression of interest form that could become
expired within 2 years of being entered if you are not selected for assessment during the time
period, you get selected by the department and go through a number of health checks, criminal
history, domestic violence history and a minimum of 4 to 5 at home interviews. When
completed, a recommendation is made by the department regarding if the couple is suitable
enough to become adoptive parents and if found as such you are put on a list and the department
decides which couple on the list best fits the childs needs and interests. When and if chosen, a
Some things we learned during the course of this project is more about adoption. We found out
that not just anyone can become a legal adoptive parent with a few background checks and that
the process can take up to 3 years before you are titled as such. A few times during this paper we
both found ourselves trying to mentally walk through a teenage parent's shoes. We wanted to
know what other teens would do if they were in the situation of an unplanned pregnancy so we
took the discussion to social media to ask some of our followers what would they do. When
asking the question If you/your partner got pregnant (unplanned) would you give your baby up
for adoption? 68 percent of my followers said no while only 32 percent said yes. I began to
question people when answering my question and the answers I got were shocking. The poll and
discussion was open for both female and male. Most females said that they would never give
their baby up for adoption and that they would just take on their responsibilities while the other
half said they would because they weren't stable enough for provide for their child so they would
want a loving couple who could, leaving the other half with no choice except abortion. My male
followers mostly all agreed that they would never give their child up because they would just
man up and take on their roll as a parent and that they would never go through with abortion
unless their partner was certain and even then some of them said they would talk them out of the
idea. Some efforts to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies in the United States is simple
education. By providing teenagers with more in depth basic health education about parenthood
and safe sex, I believe behavior would change efficiently and reduce the statistics. Also