Pregnancy and Education

The famous American TV show "Teen Mom" shows us reality of teen mom in America. This TV program is very popular especially among college students. Students often talk about this program in many places. Then, I started to think that teen pregnancy could be related with their education. I found a very interesting web site about the relationships between teen mom and their education.

According to the website teenpregnancy.org, "about half (51%) of teen moms have a high school diploma compared to 89 % of women who did not have a teen birth." It also says that young teen mothers are even less likely to graduate from high school. I think this could be a huge problem because without having high school education causes many difficulties for teen moms. For instance, they would have hard time to get jobs, and they have possibility not to raise their children well compared to people who have high school education and college degree.

It also talks about the children of teen moms. It says "Children of teen mothers are more likely than mothers who have birth at age 20-21 to drop out of high school. In fact, only about two-thirds of children born to teen mothers earned a high school diploma compared to 81 percent of children of later childbearers." This is also problem because many children of teen moms have tendency to drop out high school and not do well in society.

This article reminds me of the newspaper I read a couple years ago. It says Japanese students who drop out high school have tendency to work as sex workers because they usually have no place to work and Japanese sex industry is one of the big industries in Japan. It makes a lot of money, and it does not require high school and college degree. I was very sad because Japanese education has very good quality, and we have free high school education in public high school.

Teen pregnancy would cause some problems not only for mothers, but also children. I believe people should have at least high school education to be a member of society. This website also says that teens who had high school education are less likely to get pregnant. Attending college and get more education is associated with a lower risk of pregnancy, too. We need to think about this problem for the future. I hope many children will have bright future.