anotherlook

It was not too long ago (well maybe it was a while ago because it was when I was growing up), that to get pregnant out of wedlock was taboo. In today’s world, it seems to be a badge of honor. With shows like Maury and the likes, giving blood tests on a number of guys, just to try to find out, who the baby’s daddy is, being a strong indication that sex has become a part of life for our teens today.
Babies having babies - according to statistics, there are currently 42 births per 1,000 teen females. That’s a whole lot of babies, having babies.
While these preliminary reports, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the 2006 teen birth data, indicates that teen birth rate has risen for the first time in about 15 years, they cite a possible reason being, that these numbers reflect the fact that this provides the first state-by-state breakdown. This report was based on a review of all the birth certificates in 2006, where significant increases in teen birth rates were noted in 26 states with Mississippi leading the list.
Mississippi has the nation’s highest teen birth rate with 68 births per 1,000 teen females, replacing New Mexico with 64 per 1,000 and Texas with 63 per 1,000. New Hampshire has the lowest rate with 19 per 1,000. These figures reflect a
Mississippi one-year increase of nearly 1,000 teen births.
On the other hand, the largest increases were in the states with the largest populations. California, Texas and Florida together generated almost 30 percent of the nation’s extra teen births in 2006.
Some are blaming the national increase on funding for abstinence-only health education which does not teach teens how to use condoms and other contraceptive methods. While, that education may prevent some births, the overwhelming majority of teen births are happening because this is what the child feels they want (a baby).
Others have argued that contraceptive-focused sex education is still common and that the new teen birth numbers reflect the education as a failing venture, which is closer to the truth.
I’m not sure how to combat this situation short of placing more virtue on innocence and morality but somehow, I don’t see that happening when the consensus seems to be what’s in it for me and I can do what I want.
Kids are growing up too fast, simply because of the things they are exposed to on a daily basis; without the proper guidance to help them filter all of the stimuli that assaults their senses, they are bound to make mistakes, simply because in their young lives, they have no base of reference.
I tell my granddaughter all the time that this is what the sexual revolution of the 60s led to. The 60s was an age of freedoms; free love, free drugs, free expressions, free the blacks, the Vietnam War. Women were feeling free to be whoever and whatever they chose to, burning bras and protesting the bondage they had felt and witnessed through their mothers, for too long. Be careful what you ask for is the lesson learned here.
It was a different world back then but it brought us to where we are now. Was that a change for the better????
I watch these youngsters on the music videos grinding like they are working it. If I were a lighter skinned person, I would truly show, by blushing, how embarrassed I am for them. Putting it out there so freely has left something to be desired in the overall picture, of the situation between men and women.
Teenage boys are more about the conquest and less about the commitment and respect. They have more freedom to move on to the next conquest with the assurance that there is definitely going to be another conquest.
Older men are attempting to relive their youth by ssociations with young girls making those young girls think they have something special and even though the young girls don’t always want the old man, they learn something from the experience of being approached, as women, instead of a child, by the old man.
While the media presents it as primarily a minority problem with the three states with the largest numbers of teen births also having large proportions of black and Hispanic teenagers, this is a situation that touches all races and social positions.
The sister of Britney Spears just had a baby at 16, last year, Sarah Palin, presidential candidate, just became a grandmother when her daughter gave birth, out of wedlock, to a baby boy.
Times are changing and communications are necessary. While I feel this conversation of sexual promiscuity should be initiated by the parent, all too often in single parent homes, both men and women are searching for the same things teenagers, by virtue of being teenagers, are beginning to look for, opposite sex (or same sex in today’s world) companionship and kids learn by watching.
Consequently, while conversations on birth control and abstinence may be effective to a degree, behavior is most important in shaping young attitudes.
And that’s the way I see it!!

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