According to a recent
article, “Guatemala- Regional Leader In Teen Pregnancies”, teenage pregnancies
have drastically increased, including an increase in the drop-out rate in
schools, family breakdown and many other social ills. Traditionally, there are many
factors playing a role in early motherhood, such as lack of sex education, ban
of contraceptive use in Catholic Churches, and impunity for statutory rape.
Furthermore,
results showed that last year there were 21 babies born to underage mothers
around 10 years of age. However as a whole there were over three thousand
births resulting from teenage pregnancies. In addition, many of these pregnancies
were the product of statutory rape. Also, most cases of rape were never
reported or never appeared in court for prosecutions. Even more so, the
Guatemalans found it to be problematic to punish offenders in these types of
cases.
Second
of all, the article stated that one out of five Guatemalan mothers are aged
between 10 and 19, also they have the highest adolescent fertility rate in
Latin America. To decrease and help prevent teenage and unwanted pregnancies, the
Family Welfare Association of Guatemala has implemented and new programs in
school for young people of both sexes, to educated the children of motherhood
and fatherhood. For instance, the program uses aids such as the pregnancy
simulator and an electronic baby for the children to learn what parenthood is
actually like.
Finally,
teenage pregnancies are not acceptable in most countries, however there is not
much justice being done to prevent underage mothers from becoming pregnant or
any punishment to the rapist. This is clearly a social problem because young
teenage girls are being physically harmed and taken advantage of by men and the
men are getting away with doing so. Also they are forcing such young teens to
care for babies when they are still young themselves. In other words, how could
you expect a ten year old girl to raise a new born baby? Lastly, there should
be more methods implemented to help prevent such bad things from happening.
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