It is stress that drives a young teenager into a relationship. The confirmation that he has conceived a child creates additional stress for him. She is too young to face this emotional challenge and cannot decide what to do about the pregnancy. In addition, a large number of negative effects follow a teenage pregnancy, one of the main ones being social stigma. This has been proven by research studies galore.
To go into detail about the traumatic effects of teen pregnancy-
(1) What is the age of a teenager? He is between 10 and 19 years old. Getting pregnant at this age can be life-threatening. Mortality rates are four times higher for a pregnant adolescent in the age range of 15 to 19 years, than for women between 25 and 29 years. The fetus is also at increased risk. For girls who are in the age range of 10 to 14 years, it is even worse. If they have live births, the baby is likely to die soon or face serious health problems.
(2) Teenage pregnancy makes it difficult for the girl to continue her education. Therefore, the abandon rate is quite high. Even if they come from similar backgrounds, 61% of teenage girls wait until their 20s or 21s to have babies and thus complete high school. In contrast are those girls who give birth before they are 18 years old; only 41% graduate from high school.
(3) Even after giving birth, the young mother finds it difficult to keep up with her peers when it comes to academic performance. She is forced to repeat classes and exhibits poor grades on standardized tests. Ultimately, she may never graduate.
(4) Finding a regular source of income becomes difficult as each job requires certain skills that are markedly lacking due to lack of proper education.
(5) The only alternative left after a teenage pregnancy is to take public assistance, that is, go to welfare. The majority of these adolescents are not married and more than 75% of them ask for support within five years of becoming mothers. Some researchers feel that adolescents living in poverty welcome pregnancy in order to obtain financial support from the child’s father; this is supposed to be a survival mechanism to escape hopeless poverty.
(6) Children born to such young parents often show retarded psychosocial development and the effects of malnutrition. This is because a teenage mother lacks parenting skills. She doesn’t understand what her child needs and doesn’t realize the importance of smiling, touching, or verbally communicating with her child. Anger against society is vented on the child and physical abuse is possible.
(7) When they grow up, the youngsters of these ‘teenage mothers’ exhibit behavioral tendencies that are considered socially unacceptable. This is, in fact, the worst effect of a teenage pregnancy. The child can become a criminal and end up in jail: the rate is three times higher for these children than for normal criminals. The daughter may follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a victim of teen pregnancy herself.