Teenage Pregnancy Master Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Teenage Pregnancy Master - Essay Example The recent decrease has been ascribed to more information on this social problem and continued work. Knowledge about this problem has been updated so it is now known that teenage pregnancy is both a result and cause of poverty. Young mothers have other problems such as low achievement and low aspirations (Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, 2008). Despite this, there is still a deficit of knowledge about the young people's views of the effectiveness of interventions to reduce the frequency of teenage pregnancy. It has been suggested that the views of young people, specially teenage mothers may suggest ways to reduce the frequency of teenage pregnancy more effectively. One such example may be that young people emphasise on interventions being person-centred. Young mothers perceive a lack of effective communication of health and education messages. They perceive the staff to be less educated and inadequately sensitive to the needs of young people. Peer education and help and services for young men are lacking. In the youth settings, there must be sexual health services for teenagers (Chambers et al., 2002, 85-90). Researchers have pointed to the roles of socioeconomic factors in teenage pregnancy. With rise in awareness, now the trend is teenage abortion which fails the purpose of preventive services, exposing the teenage mothers to a higher degree of vulnerability. It is true that there is no concrete information as to what would constitute better outcomes when dealing with teenage pregnancy. This points to the fact that it is necessary to ask the teenage mothers whether they perceive a pregnancy to be unwanted that ends in either birth or abortion. Indeed, there is an element of lack of understanding due to broader mismatch in communication. Review of literature suggests that other nonsexual health concerns are priorities in the case of teenagers, and sexual health rates lower in priority (Jacobsen et al., 1993). The Teenage Pregnancy Report shows that the UK rates of teen pregnancy are twice as high as Germany, three times higher than France, and Five times higher than the Netherlands. It has been found that the daughters of teen mothers are twice likely to be pregnant at their teenage. It is unfortunate, as the data suggest, that 75% of the teenage conceptions are unplanned, and about 50% of these result in abortion. The inadequacy of the services is highlighted by the fact that 20% of the births to the teen mothers are second teen pregnancies. The roles played by the socioeconomic factors are further highlighted by the fact that 50% of the teenage mothers exist in 20% of the wards with the highest rates (Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, 2008). It may be argued that this distribution has no socioepidemiologic implications. Reviews of interventions directed towards reduction of poor sexual health outcomes, which include unplanned pregnancy, show that interventions have little to no role to influence sexual behaviour and contraceptive use. This has occurred mainly due to the fact that despite increased knowledge about sexual health, knowledge does not seem to influence the decision of the teens to have safe sex practices, cautious and risk-free sexual behaviour, and contraceptive use (Levine et al., 2001). These happen due to generalisation of such interventions across a varied population. Populations are