Can someone help me write a paragraph about summary this article….?? I do not know how to start a summary
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Get Help Now!Bad for the Mother
Future prospects for teenagers decline significantly if they have a baby. Teen mothers are less likely to complete school and more likely to be single parents. Less than one-third of teens who begin their families before age 18 ever earn a high school diploma.
There are serious health risks for adolescents who have babies. Young adolescents (particularly those under age 15) experience a maternal death rate 2.5 times greater than that of mothers aged 20-24. Common medical problems among adolescent mothers include poor weight gain, pregnancy-induced hypertension, anemia, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and cephalopelvic disproportion. Later in life, adolescent mothers tend to be at greater risk for obesity and hypertension than women who were not teenagers when they had their first child.
Teen pregnancy is closely linked to poverty and single parenthood. A 1990 study showed that almost one-half of all teenage mothers and over three-quarters of unmarried teen mothers began receiving welfare within five years of the birth of their first child. The growth in single-parent families remains the single most important reason for increased poverty among children over the last twenty years, as documented in the 1998 Economic Report of the President. Out-of-wedlock childbearing (as opposed to divorce) is currently the driving force behind the growth in the number of single parents, and half of first out-of-wedlock births are to teens. Therefore, reducing teen pregnancy and child-bearing is an obvious place to anchor serious efforts to reduce poverty in future generations.
Bad for the Child
Children born to teen mothers suffer from higher rates of low birth weight and related health problems. The proportion of babies with low birth weights born to teens is 28 percent higher than the proportion for mothers age 20-24. Low birth weight raises the probabilities of infant death, blindness, deafness, chronic respiratory problems, mental retardation, mental illness, and cerebral palsy. In addition, low birth weight doubles the chances that a child will later be diagnosed as having dyslexia, hyperactivity, or another disability.
Children of teens often have insufficient health care. Despite having more health problems than the children of older mothers, the children of teen mothers receive less medical care and treatment. In his or her first 14 years, the average child of a teen mother visits a physician and other medical providers an average of 3.8 times per year, compared with 4.3 times for a child of older childbearers. And when they do visit medical providers, more of the expenses they incur are paid by others in society. One recent study suggested that the medical expenses paid by society would be reduced dramatically if teenage mothers were to wait until they were older to have their first child.
Children of teen mothers often receive inadequate parenting. Children born to teen mothers are at higher risk of poor parenting because their mothers—and often their fathers as well—are typically too young to master the demanding job of being a parent. Still growing and developing themselves, teen mothers are often unable to provide the kind of environment that infants and very young children require for optimal development. Recent research, for example, has clarified the critical importance of sensitive parenting and early cognitive stimulation for adequate brain development. Given the importance of careful nurturing and stimulation in the first three years of life, the burden born by babies with parents who are too young to be in this role is especially great.
Children with adolescent parents often fall victim to abuse and neglect. A recent analysis found that there are 110 reported incidents of abuse and neglect per 1,000 families headed by a young teen mother. By contrast, in families where the mothers delay childbearing until their early twenties, the rate is less than half this level—or 51 incidents per 1,000 families. Similarly, rates of foster care placement are significantly higher for children whose mothers are under 18. In fact, over half of foster care placements of children with these young mothers could be averted by delaying child-bearing, thereby saving taxpayers nearly $1 billion annually in foster care costs alone.
Children of teenagers often suffer from poor school performance. Children of teens are 50 percent more likely to repeat a grade; they perform much worse on standardized tests; and ultimately they are less likely to complete high school than if their mothers had delayed childbearing.
Bad for Us All
The U.S. still leads the fully industrialized world in teen pregnancy and birth rates—by a wide margin. In fact, the U.S. rates are nearly double Great Britain’s, at least four times those of France and Germany, and more than ten times that of Japan.
Teen pregnancy costs society billions of dollars a year. There are nearly half a million children born to teen mothers each year. Most of these mothers are unmarried, and many will end up poor and on welfare. Each year the federal government alone spends about $40 billion to help families that began with a teenage birth.
Teen pregnancy hurts the business community’s “bottom line.” Too many children start school unprepared to learn, and teachers are overwhelmed trying to deal with problems that start in the home. Forty-five percent of first births in the United States are to women who are either unmarried, teenagers, or lacking a high school degree, which means that too many children—tomorrow’s workers—are born into families that are not prepared to help them succeed. In addition, teen mothers often do not finish high school themselves. It’s not easy for a teen to learn work skills and be a dependable employee while caring for children.
A new crop of kids becomes teenagers each year. This means that prevention efforts must be constantly renewed and reinvented. And between 1995 and 2010, the number of girls aged 15-19 is projected to increase by 2.2 million.
II
Research has identified a host of factors—related to individual behavior, family and community situations, and cultural pressures—that contribute to teen pregnancy. Most programs to prevent teen pregnancy focus on one of these groups of factors.
Behavior and Risk-Taking
Teens who get pregnant or cause a pregnancy are often engaged in a pattern of poor choices. Teens who use or abuse drugs and alcohol, who have had a history of violence and delinquency, or are failing at or dropped out of school have higher rates of sexual activity. Teens using drugs and alcohol are more likely to put themselves in sexually risky situations and are much less likely to use contraception. Teen girls whose first partners are older teens or adult men are also less likely to use contraception and are more likely to report that their first sexual experience was involuntary or unwanted. And, teens who begin intercourse at a young age have a higher risk of getting pregnant or causing a pregnancy.
Giving teens the skills and motivation to make informed decisions about sexuality can reduce sexual risk-taking. Helping teens avoid other risk-taking behaviors may also help teens avoid a pregnancy.
The Environment
The environments that children grow up in have an important influence on their risk of teen pregnancy. As [researcher D. Kirby] recently wrote:
“Research shows that youths at greatest risk [for teen pregnancy] are more likely to live in areas with: high poverty rates, low levels of education, high residential turnover, and high divorce rates. Their parents are more likely to have low levels of education, to be poor, to have experienced a divorce or separation, or to never have married, and their mothers and older sisters are more likely to have given birth as adolescents.”
Increasing the capacity of families and communities to nurture teens and help them stay in school and set goals for their lives may contribute to lower rates of teen pregnancy. Young people who feel supported by parents, school, and community during their adolescence are buffered against the risk of too-early pregnancy.
Cultural and Media Messages
Teens are barraged by TV shows, films, songs, and advertising in which sex has little meaning, unplanned pregnancy seldom happens, and sexual partners are rarely married, let alone committed to each other. Sexual themes permeate the pictures and plot lines. Teens may spend more time in the presence of these messages than in the presence of alternative messages that value staying in school and preparing for adulthood.
Teen pregnancy is just one problem young people face in our culture today—and perhaps not the most pressing one. Parents identify violence, gangs, drugs, and pressure from peers to engage in unhealthy behaviors as even greater risks than early pregnancy.
Communities can help prevent teen pregnancy even when that issue is not the primary focus of an initiative. Pregnancy prevention can be adopted as part of a strategy that focuses on more immediate concerns of that community.
Categories of Prevention
Most teen pregnancy prevention programs have emphasized education, skills, abstinence, and access to contraception. However, the definition of what constitutes teen pregnancy prevention is best expanded to include activities that seek to instill teens with confidence and a sense of the future. This speaks to motivation to avoid pregnancy, a critical element in a pregnancy-free adolescence.
Many different kinds of programs exist to help teens avoid pregnancy. They can be divided into several categories:
education for teens about sex, relationships, pregnancy, and parenthood;
reproductive health services for teens;
programs to strengthen teens’ bonds with family and community;
youth development and school-to-career programs;
media campaigns; and
multiple component campaigns.
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