TEENAGE PREGNANCY AND POVERTY HAVE A POSITIVE CORRELATION.

Dear Sir/Madam, According to the latest report (2009) from the Centre for the Study of Adolescence9 (CSA), Kenya is confronted with an escalating epidemic of teenage pregnancies. In spite of the Government upping its efforts in attaining gender parity in education and in spite of the increased levels of knowledge about modern methods of contraception, rates of teenage pregnancy remain unacceptably high. Note that I deliberately use the term “epidemic” because unsafe sex results not only in unwanted pregnancies but also in HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases not to mention the gruesome dark alley abortions that quite often lead to the death of the vulnerable teenagers. Studies carried out in Kenya (Njau and Radney, 1995) indicated that as many as 285,000 pregnancies occurred in Kenya among teenagers aged between 15 to 19 years old. That was then. Today, the figure has of course doubled. Why? Because poverty has over the years more than doubled. In other words, teenage pregnancy and poverty have a positive correlation. As poverty bites so do we see the increase in teenage pregnancies in the country. Dr. Saadhna Panday, etal, in their study titled “Teenage Pregnancy in South Africa with specific reference to school going Teenagers” (2007) found that a larger percentage of teenage pregnancy is the result of a complex set of varied and inter-connected factors that are quite often related to the environment under which teenagers grow. I cannot agree more. This is because when teenagers grow up in informal settlements and other residential settlements where poverty is deeply entrenched they will hardly resist the lure of the fallen seraphim often from the leafy suburbs. What follows is reciprocity of sex in exchange for material goods. In such instances there is absolutely no freedom for the teenager to negotiate safe sex thus the risk of pregnancy is increased. Sex education knowledge is rendered meaningless by a starving teenager who discovers that by peddling her ‘wares’ she can see the day through. Does it surprise us that teenage pregnancies are much higher in schools that are located in poor neighborhoods? Ojwang and Magwa (1991) opine that the teenager`s urge to temporarily eschew poverty initiates a trajectory of lifetime poverty. She becomes pregnant. Later, the teenager is expelled or excluded from school and will quite often lack material and social support besides the physiological harm. Furthermore, the children of teenage mothers are at greater risk of lower intellectual and academic achievement, health complications, social behavior problems and problems of self-control than are children of older mothers, primarily due to the effects of single parenthood and lower maternal education. And the vicious circle of poverty continues. Besides poverty, another predisposing factor is the mass media that has sunk to unimaginable low levels in their blind aping of westernization which is unfortunately a euphemism for moral decadence. In their book titled “Facts in Brief: Teen Sex and Pregnancy (1996), The Alan Guttmacher Institute states that teenagers are constantly bombarded left, right and centre with perversion. Talk of sex fills the airwaves; teenagers are portrayed as sex objects; and sex is used to sell everything from clothing to news. Yet we all pretend to be shocked at the rising numbers of teens who become pregnant! If we are truly concerned about the welfare of teenagers, we must move beyond the moral panic and denial. Designing effective solutions will require the thoughtful separation of fact, assumption and wishful thinking and an honest acknowledgment that concerted efforts are required in mitigating against the debilitating teenage pregnancy. What is evident though is that a magic bullet for teenage pregnancy does not exist. Given the multiple levels of predisposing factors on teenage sex and pregnancy, single intervention strategies by single sectors will not solve teenage pregnancy. What is required is a comprehensive approach that incorporates the home, the school, the community, the healthcare setting as well as change at a structural level. TOME FRANCIS, BUMULA CONSTITUENCY.