Journal #2

   Studies claim that there are certain health risks for pregnant/parenting teens. These claims state that children born to young mothers are subject to suffer from health problems as well as social and emotional problems. The mothers are subject to suffer from pregnancy complications also, such as premature labor and low birth weights for the babies.
   This article was responding to the last article I read because of the statistics. The last article said that the number of teen pregnancy cases have stayed about the same since the 1900's. In this article, the author argues that statement by pointing out that the number of teen birth rates has dropped 7.5% in the last 4 years. Both authors agrees that the use of contraceptives have gone up among teens.
   This article didn't tell me much that I didn't already know. It explained mostly the same things that my last article had explained but did so in a different manner. While my last article seemed to defend teen parenting in a way, this article made it very clear that the author was not supportive of this cause what-so-ever. I understand that in a lot of cases, teens just aren't ready for this responsibility. Many have gotten pregnant and had never considered what it may actually mean. In a different article that I have read, one girl states that she was treating her child like a doll, only playing with her every once in a while and that was just to dress her up and show her off. She realized she was in the wrong but it took her a little while. Teens like that are the ones that make up these statistics, they go into parenting expecting that their own parents will do most of the work while they go on living their lives. A lot of these statistics depend on who they are basing the statistics on. It seems to me that they look for the teens who are obviously in over their heads and do the research on that. This infuriates me, I know so many teen parents who went on to graduate from high school and are now in college and an active part of their child's life. It doesn't seem right for them to be labeled the way they are by statistics that only tell about the bad young parents.
   New questions that I have because of this article are where so the statistics come from and how are they found. I plan to find my answers by doing more research on statistics. I hope to find statistics that go the opposite way, such as ones that stick up for the good parents out there who are doing their best and could most definitely compare to an older couple who are parents.