i just talked with my friend the other day and she is pregnant, which doesn't suprise me. she is 19 and just moved in with her boyfriend. she doesn't seem in too bad of a situation, she has a very good nursing job, but she probably won't be able to go back to school. but after hearing this, just made me realize that i am the only one of my friends from high school that i have kept in close contact with that is not pregnant, has never been pregnant, or is not a parent. that's not much of a suprise either because there was always at least 10 girls at any given time pregnant at my high school.
what's even worse, i'm the only one out of my group of friends from jr. high that doesn't have a kid. and there were 8 of us. 3 of them were pregnant right after 8th grade, and one of them was pregnant with her 2nd kid(had her first in the 6th grade).
i just thought how sad of a situation that is, and almost how stupid my friends are. anyways, just wondering if anyone else knows anyone who was a pregnant teen.
The statistics are often meaningless, but personal experience makes things real.
Congratulations on staying "un-pregnant." It sometimes seems that a lot of kids either don't know what causes babies or don't care when it happens. (I know one kid in her early twenties who apparently just likes having babies. I think she's up to four now, all different fathers, including her sister's husband.) She started when she was 15-16.
Here's an interesting statistic for you... let's just say that I'm "significantly older" than you, ok? LOL In my small town there were about 30 of us in the same class... we had ONE pregnancy, our senior year.
How's that for progress!
Well, orchid, it is issues such as you raised that brought me to this board years ago. My surgery is in a very small Scottish district and I am the only female doctor for a long distance in any direction. I deal with a few of these situations weekly. Your Nowhere, Arizona, may be a similar town with a different climate. A few of the teen pregnancies I see will have happy endings years from now. Most are disasters for all concerned. Almost all the sex was unprotected. Damn, I want young women to learn.
Sex is an adult game with adult rules. "You break it, you buy it." Usually the women gets stuck with the results.
Thank you for this testimony; I hope someone is educated by it.
Around here we've had at least one person pregnant at any given time, whether anyone knew about it or not. I had a friend (She's 16) that became pregnant near the beginning of this past school year. The baby was born just last week (June 13), exactly a week ago. I'm also friends with her boyfriend and he's 15. The bad thing is, neither of them are very well money oriented, let alone them still being teenagers. I know very much so that they'll give the baby the love and support that it needs but I still wish it could've waited a little longer.
another thing that kind of bothers me moreso than the fact that they are getting pregnant, is that many of them are illegal mexicans, and so the costs of their children are being paid for by the state of arizona. not to mention that they are able to get on welfare, so they can buy food and diapers and other needs for their kids and themselves. however, one girl i knew (not a friend, but i just know of her) she is white, and a legal citizen, and is also very poor and lives in a trailer with several people (which probably made the availability of contraception a little more difficult). but she was not able to get any aid from the state and had to drop out of school so she could take 2 jobs to pay for, not only the costs of her child, but she had to pay off the hospital bills from her delivery too.
i know most of this is a completely different subject (one which i'm obviously very touchy about). but i think it's another thing that could deter further teen pregnancies (at least for US citizens).
That's absolutely no way to go. Whether it's someones wrongdoing or a complete accident or mishap, those types of thoughts scare me. I just hope that never happens to me.
orchid,
That is simply racist. Ok, Arizona is right on the border (I think) but there are plenty of legal US citizens that are getting pregnant, too, regardless of ethnicity.
Throughout the IK, we hear the same about middle easterners or east Europeans of Caribs. Well, up where I live we are all domestic Scots and our teen pregnancy rate is the same as the rest of the country.
I understand the current frustration in the US about the status of various groups. As with terrorism, we in Europe have been dealing with these issues since the mi-20th century. It is easy to be bothered by people with strange sounding names or with questionable origins but do not generalize.
The differences in our health care systems are such that I cannot even identify with the final statement.
don't even dare call me a racist. i don't care what their race is, mexican, chineese, english, whatever, just so happens that because Arizona is on the Mexican border, that it happens to be mexicans. my problem is the fact that they come to this country expecting everyone who's here to accomodate them, not for them to learn to accomodate to us. i know MANY mexicans that immigrated and went through the entire legal process to become a legal US citizen that are even more pissed about the situation with illegal immigrants than i am.
i know that there are many US citizens that get pregnant also, not doubting that one bit. my beef is with the system as far as that matter is concerned. state aid is almost entirely given to illegals, and not to citizens, no matter their race. i'm not saying that aid should be taken away from illegals either, no sense for their innocent child to suffer because their parents aren't legal. all i'm saying is that they shouldn't automatically assume that US citizens are all wealthy and able to pay the costs of having a child. they should make it easier for citizens to apply for the aid that their taxes are providing, not more difficult.
i appologize if the way i worded my last message seemed a little racist, but i just want to clear that that was NOT my intention at all. the immigration situation and stuff like that is a completely different issue than racism. i just take great offense to being called a racist, especially since it is so difficult for people not experiencing this issue first hand to understand that when i refer to mexicans, it is only a matter of geography.