We all hear about teenagers in the city that get knocked up and go through hardships. Some succeed, they finish or attend college, graduate, and make a productive life for them and their offspring. Many of them do not go this route, but it doesn’t mean they fail. They may not ever make above minimum wage, but they try their hardest to make a good home for their family. Then there are the (hopefully) few that don’t try. They force their responsibilities on others or neglect them entirely.

We have heard the stories and the controversies over and over, from talk shows to news reports; debate in high school and college, and parents’ ever so present “do NOT get pregnant” lectures. Should we provide free birth control? Should we teach abstinence or sexual education? At what age do we begin teaching either of these things? If abstinence is taught, should it be in conjunction with religious education? Who should be targeted more, males or females? When a young girl is impregnated, should she get married to the father of her child in order to provide a ‘stable’ home life for their progeny?

These questions have been widely asked and debated as moral or immoral, right or wrong, for the past 20 years at least, probably much longer.

Mostly I see people speaking about urban areas being in need of assistance in this problem. On the news it’s about kids in low income neighborhoods with less after school activities to keep them from doing the nasty, which need the most help.

Why?

• Because they have more people?
• Because they have higher-profile stories?
• Because their parents love them less?

I graduated high school from a tiny Podunk school surrounded on all four sides by cornfield (literally). It’s in Iowa, where the nearest metropolitan area is 25 miles away, and that’s a small metropolitan area. My high school and my husband’s high school were about 8ish miles apart, so naturally we were rivals. When I graduated in January of 2009, I knew of way too many girls in my high school that were pregnant, had been pregnant and aborted, or had been pregnant and now had a child, (we are talking about 4 on average in every 80 person grade). One particular girl has even married, had a child, and been divorced. She is my age, 20 years old.

At my husband’s high school, things were just as bad. Many people were pregnant, and many other
people were getting married directly out of high school and getting divorced within a few years, in a specific case or two within 6 months to a year.

I’m not a hypocrite. I am married at 20 years old, and maybe some people disagree with that. But we dated from the time I was 17, lived together for almost 3 years, waited, and then chose to get married. Both of our families were fully supportive after we had lived together for so long. We also never broke up or did the ‘maybe, maybe not’ game that many young couples play. We have been together nonstop for the entire time.

I guess what I am trying to get at here is that maybe the urban areas aren’t the biggest problem. Out in the sticks, schools struggle to stay open because of lack of populace and lack of funding. If they piss off the more conservative parents by offering too much sex ed. or too liberal of a curriculum, they could easily get closed down completely. So how do you fix the problem? What is the central problem here anyway?

It’s not just about getting pregnant in high school. Having been divorced by the time you are legally of age to imbibe alcohol? That’s a bit extreme if you ask me. Maybe these young adults and teenagers don’t understand how their actions now will affect them later. In fact multiple studies have shown that as a teenager, the part of your brain that understands and processes consequences isn’t fully developed, so you CAN’T understand the effects of what you are doing.

But again, how do you fix it?

Perhaps the main problem behind this is that our country labels you an adult at 18 years old. You can die for your country, vote for your president, but you can’t even drink alcohol. What would happen if we raised the legal age of being an adult to 21 years old?

You would still graduate high school at 18. Go to college (if you so desire) and graduate college as an adult. But a few things would be barred from you at 18, 19, or 20 years of age that are available to you now. You would have more time to consider life changing decisions like marriage, voting for our nation’s leaders, or joining the military. At first this might actually increase the numbers of teen pregnancy, because you would be in that young adult/teenager role for 3 years longer. But I think ultimately it would be the best decision. Too many young girls believe that at 16 they are only 2 years away from being an adult and are mature enough to handle a child. Although physically ready, they lack the emotional and/or financial maturity to handle having a family. If the mentality of your country was not that you are fully capable of running your life at 18, perhaps we would have less adolescents thinking this way.

Also it has been well documented that countries with less conservative views on sex have less pregnancies. When you make it a big deal, it will (obviously) be a bigger deal! What I mean is that because we keep sex a secret and a naughty thing (in most cases, it’s taboo to talk about sex in an average setting which makes it harder to talk about it in any setting), instead of a natural and recreational activity, there is a lack of education everywhere, not just in urban areas.

Rural areas of the USA are in just as much need as urban areas in sex education and teen pregnancy prevention. Pregnancy also isn’t the only issue. Young adults and teenagers need to learn that everything they do as a young adult has massive consequences on their entire life. Even though I wouldn’t change being married at all, there are still consequences to my decision, some of them unpleasant. (For instance my university is not very understanding of a married life).

What do you guys think? What is the biggest problem here and how do we fix it?

_{Photo courtesy of http://www.darienps.org/neirad/images/0810/0810PregnancyShad}ow.jpg .