Teen Pregnancy

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             Poverty is the issue at the core of the teen child-bearing problem. Six out of seven of America's teenage mothers were poor before they gave birth. Poverty is even more influential than race or ethnicity. Adolescents get pregnant from all groups, but it is the teens from the lower socio-economic groups, the children struck by poverty, that tend to have children in their teenage years. Lacking communication with a close, loving, and positive male role model, teens approach their sexuality with insecurity and doubt. Male predators are another risk factor for young female teens. Because they are young, inexperienced, their poor self image, and need for attention, they become vulnerable to adult male predators at rates that follow the notion that most teenage sex results in adolescent pregnancy. Fifty percent of the fathers of babies born to teenage women are five or six years older that the mother. Two-thirds of these males are twenty years of age or older. Statistics show, the younger the teen, the older the male. .
             Research has emphasized the importance of considering racial, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds variables to teenage pregnancy. Researchers talk about the vanishing male character. Also they talk about the moral quandary in the black community is deceased. When the teens get pregnant they tend go on welfare because they know that the system would take care of them and their child. These mothers become married to the system. They don't work because they know that they will always receive a government check in the mail every month. This issue is becoming a statistic among our minority groups such as African American and Latinos. Several teenage mothers tend to have poor lives and their children grown up in poverty. This whole issue of teen pregnancy stems from a lack of morals and a lack of self-esteem. And with the vanishing family within the minority communities, welfare is destroying their family, young men are becoming irresponsible, and become promiscuous, and become dependent on government handouts.