American CultureTeenage Preganacy Essay Research Paper In — страница 2

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mothers as the source of many society s ills. Illegitimacy is an important social problem, I believe more than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare, or homelessness. The reason why is because unwed parents are the main drive for all of these other social problems that are due to the illegitimate parenthood. Individuals want to belong; they want to be accepted by other people. Therefore, they tend to conform to the behavior of their immediate group as well as to the wishes of society at large. ( Conflict and Order Chapter 4-Culture) The unstable parenthood of a child affects these young ones because society tells us we need both a mother and a father and their children living in a happy home. When illegitimate children see other children have this parental bond in other

kids, they know, that is what s missing in their lives. The child may think to itself as abnormal. This will take a strain on them and may subconsciously become problematic to themselves and society. Look at Teenage Wasteland by Donna Gaines. The four teenagers who commited suicide could not take the town s harsh name-calling and the looks they would get from them. They were brainwashed by the people around them into thinking they were loosers , or druggies. These teenagers started to really believe it and that is what led to their unfortunate suicide. After becoming mothers, young woman are confronted with a lack of affordable childcare and a job market pay women (especially minority women) low wages. The low wages is due to the discontinued or lack of education and therefore a

lack of experience. The only jobs these teenage parents could obtain are minimum wage manual labor-type jobs. The new trend that threatens the United States is white illegitimacy. In 1991, 707,502 babies were born to single white women, representing births. In 1993 a Census Bureau study of fertility among all American women go headlines for a few days because it showed that birth to single woman with college degrees doubled in the last decade to 6% from 3%. The real news of that study is that the proportion of single mothers with less than a high school education jumped to 48% from 35 % in a single decade. Whites dominate these numbers. For white women below the poverty line in the year prior giving birth, 44% of births have been illegitimate, compared with only 6% for women

above the poverty line. White illegitimacy is overwhelmingly a lower-class phenomenon. This brings us to the emergence of a white underclass. European-American whites are the ethnic group with the most people in poverty, most illegitimate children, most women on welfare, most unemployed men, and most arrests for serious crimes. And yet whites have not had an underclass as such, because the whites that might qualify have been scattered among the working class. But now the overall white illegitimacy rates as 22%. The figure in lo-income, working class communities may be twice that. On black crime, dropout fro the labor force and illegitimacy rage passed 25%. Teenage pregnancy has costs to the mothers, to the children, and to the larger society and nation. In 1987, more than 19

billion in public funds was spent for income maintenance, health care, and nutrition for support of families begun by teenager. Babies born to teenagers have a high risk of being born with low birth weight and low birth weight requires initial hospital care averaging $20,000 per infant. The total lifeline medical cost for each low-birth weight infance average $400,000. Moreover, members of this single-parent headed, welfare-receiving families are at very high risk of remaining poor and not well educated throughout their lives. Usually, when married woman go on welfare, they tend to get off welfare within a few years, and when women go on welfare, they tend to remain there permanently. Hardship is a big factor in teenage pregnancy, especially single parents who struggle with work,

and raising a child in America. The ages of these teens are so young that they have not fully grown into woman. They are forced to grow up, and take responsibility for themselves and their child. But there are the ones that do not have the adult mentality and since they are still kids having babies at a young age, they are prone to making wrong decisions. About two years ago we all heard about how teenage pregnancy has turned into murder when trying to throw their newly born babies in the dumpster, or flushing them down the toilet. This is devastating to hear. These teens were attempted to take immediate measures in trying not to get in trouble by their family or parents. Not even that, just the fact that these teens think they were grown enough to have sex, but in reality they