Parental Guidence

                 Teen Pregnancy is definitely not preventable and so we need to take action on how we educate our young teen mothers and prepare them for the future. A psychology class from UCLA took a new approach to teen pregnancy. They formed six different approaches.

1)     Reduce Adult Discomfort with their own

2)     Develop a Family Approach to Teenage Pregnancy Prevention and Promote Healthy Sexuality

3)     Promote Caring, Consistent Adult Involvement for Every Child

4)     Build Healthy Communities Through Sound Economic and Social Development

5)     Promote Media Responsibility and Counteract Negative Media Images

6)     Reaffirm the importance of values and involvement of Religious and other organizations.

These different outlooks on teen pregnancy, in my opinion, are what every person and teen parent should have.

           Overall I think the reason why more and more teens are getting pregnant is because the parents are not there anymore. Parents are afraid to talk to their teens about sex because that concept of their children being sexually active scares them.  My mother told me that that the years leading up to her pregnancy with me, there was no talk on sexual education. Partly because we are Catholic and Catholics believe that sex should be after marriage but not all follow this rule.

As a growing community we need to “Help parents become more comfortable with their own sexuality and better able to communicate with their children about difficult issues,” (UCLA).This quote reinstates my point made earlier. Parents need to become more comfortable with their sex lives and stop quivering at the word ‘sex’. It is a way of life, and there is nothing we can do about it. By the parents becoming more aware with their sex lives, then they can take baby steps on asking about their children’s sex lives. This article also states that they need to “Raise community awareness that research is clear that there is no correlation between sexuality education and increased rates of intercourse,” (UCLA). I find this quote very interesting because according to my other posts I believed that there was some sort of affiliation between the  two but according to research theirs isn't and I can see why now. Just like parents can tell children what they can and cannot do, but they still don’t follow the rules, teenagers when it comes to sex is the same way.

                                                             Cited:

"Lessons Learned, New Approaches to Teen Pregnancy Prevention." Lessons Learned, New Approaches to Teen Pregnancy Prevention. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.