Sunday, May 17, 2009

Glamorous Life of Teenage Mother


I know this is a little off topic of the subject of birth control, but when I saw this video, it really made me feel bad for this young girl. She is 19 years old and has an 18 month old son. The father of the child is not around, and she is left to raise the baby on her own. She does not have a job and lives with her mother and grandmother, who do help her.
The short video shows clips from the movie Juno and pictures in magazines from when Jamie Lynn Spears (Britney Spears' little sister) had a baby. The video was hinting at the fact that the media can have a tendency to glorify teen pregnancy. I am not sure how I feel about that statement. I know that teen minds are young and impressionable, but when I was that young, never did the idea of having a baby seem glamorous to me. What came to my mind when I thought about the possibility of becoming pregnant was my parents killing me and the end of my life as I knew it. It is probably the biggest responsibility one can take on. You are in charge of a whole other human being. You have to clothed it, feed it properly, teach it right from wrong-whatever you do is going to shape your child into the person they are going to become for the rest of their lives.
It brought a tear to my eye when the girl in the video started talking about her life and how she has to depend on her mother and grandmother for many things. She said she feels bad asking for things and she knows they get tired of the constant care that goes into raising a child. She had her whole life ahead of her, and now this child has set her back. When teen celebrities have babies, they have money and can go on living a comfortable life. When your average teen has a baby, they usually drop out of school, live below the poverty line and never accomplish the life goals they had before becoming pregnant.
This is a perfect example of why condoms should be distributed in schools to teens who need them and the need for education to inform students how to protect themselves-not only from pregnancy but also diseases.

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