Teen pregnancy is a problem that the united states is faced with. Some people even consider it a new fad thanks to mtv shows like teen mom and sixteen and pregnant. Why do kids think that being a parent at such a young age is a good idea? Instead of learning about the issues and problems that these young mothers go through they want to end up like them? I personally don’t find the situation that these girls are in appealing at all. I feel horrible for the girls that have to go through that’s why I had to share this article with yall.
one of the points brought up to why teen pregnancy exists is that
Having a baby at 16 doesn’t change the “low economic trajectory” of poor girls; they’re going to be poor whether they’re doing 2 a.m. feedings or not.According to the authors, poor teens know this. “[I]f girls perceive their chances at long-term economic success to be sufficiently low even if they do ‘play by the rules,’” they write, “then early childbearing is more likely to be chosen.” Sex education and more access to birth control don’t make much difference because, in economist-speak, early childbearing is a rational choice for poor girls.
Though this seems to be a resonable way to look at the situation it should not be the way that young girls should be looking at their situation. They should not be setteling for what they have they should be looking and finding ways to excell in life. My mother always says that if you eat beans right now you should find a way to eat rice and meat in the future. Your lifes dicissions are up to yourself and you should try hard to make the most of your life.The truth is
that poor girls who “play by the rules” actually have a pretty good chance of moving out of poverty. According to the Swedish economist Markus Jantii, Americans have the lowest rates of upward mobility of any developed country; a full 42% of men born to a father in the bottom fifth quintile are still there as adults. But for women, Jantii found, the odds are very different.About three-quarters of daughters of low-income men managed to move out of poverty. In fact, when it comes to economic opportunity, American girls are much closer to their counterparts in the egalitarian Nordic countries than they are to American boys.
Scholars who study mobility have learned a bit about who the movers are. Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, both of the Brookings Institute, have calculated that if someone at the bottom does three things — completes high school, works full time and marries before he or she has children — the chance of staying poor falls from 12% to 2%, and the chance of joining the middle class or higher rises from 56% to 74%.
so ladies why settle when you can excel?
