THE EFFECT TEENAGE PREGNANCY HAS ON SOUTH AFRICAN GIRLS
Teenage pregnancy in the eighties rose to forty-six births per one thousand women. In the nineties, it dropped to forty-two births per 1000 women. These rates are for teenage women who got married.
For the unmarried, there is a continuous rising of teenage mothers. From twenty-two out of one thousand women, it rose to thirty-nine out of 1000. This is in existence even if South Africa is experiencing deterioration of unmarried adult women’s fertility in the same period. Observationists noted that the rise in unmarried teenage pregnancy corresponded with a huge political transition South Africa was into that time.
However, a report by Moultrie and McGrath illustrated that teenage pregnancy went down by ten percent between the years 1996 to 2001, from seventy-eight per 1000 to sixty-five per one thousand. It went down further to fifty –four per one thousand based on the Community Survey done by the Statistics South Africa in 2008. Again, there was a socio-political upheaval in South Africa that time.
Studies concluded that South African teenagers usually become pregnant from ages fifteen to sixteen at seventeen percent and thirty-four percent for ages seventeen to eighteen. . Abortion is less rampant in higher adolescent pregnancies thus contributing to higher ratio of pregnancies.
World Fertility Surveys state that pregnancies in urban areas are declining because of higher availability to contraception, to education, and economic development.
Fast modernization of South Africa has resulted to a vast number of underprivileged populations living on the borders of urban areas in unofficial communes or informal settlements. Based on the study made by Budlender in 2007, the young population is the most itinerant as they move to cities looking for work and seeking education.
In a study conducted by Harrison, 2008, informal settlers consists of from fifteen to thirty percent of youth ages fifteen to twenty-four. It is also interesting to note that data from a 2003 survey pinpoints the core of risky or unsafe sexual behavior among informal settlers. HIV is twice the number of cases in urban informal settlements as compared to other places.
Factors affecting teenage pregnancies are primarily caused by South Africa’s ethnic categorization that goes hand-in-hand with flagrant disparities in terms of education, financial opportunities and, health and medical services.
One of the most significant causes of the decline in teenage pregnancies is the rising availability of education to South African women. Admittance to primary school is nationwide and enrolment to succeeding levels is quite high, around eighty percent. A 1998 data indicates that as education goes up, pregnancies especially among teenagers, go down.
Less than forty percent of teenage mothers come from women who only reach primary education. Percentage declines as women gains higher education: less than thirteen percent for those women who reach secondary education; less than eight percent for those who reached matrix; and a very small percentage of four percent goes to women with higher education.
Education causes lesser pregnancies as girls in school are found to engage in sexual behaviors less actively than girls that do not go to school, and if they do, most likely they will be using contraception.
One problem of education in South Africa is the high numbers of repeaters, dropouts, late entries and re-entries which means that older learners mingle with younger ones which sometimes causes teenage pregnancies.
However, schooling is found to exert power over the sexual behaviors of teenagers. The more connected to the school they feel, and the more successful they become at school, the lower is the chance for them to get pregnant. Higher and greater aspirations induce students to avoid the lure of engaging sexually.
Nonetheless, the opposite will happen if the student does not like school, has no sense of achievement she can be proud of, and further expectation of educational attainment is nil, then teenagers are more prone to pregnancy.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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