Disparities In Teens

Although pregnancy in teens has declined immensely across all demographics sense the 1990’s , it is still a prevalent issue in many areas in the United States. In 2014, for every 1,000 female adolescents (age 15-19), there were an average of 24.2 babies born, compared to 61.8 in 1991: that’s an over sixty percent decrease (“Disparities in Teen Birth Rates”). The most prominent issues with teen pregnancies are that the mothers are less likely to finish school, the children are more inclined to have behavioral problems in their futures, the grandparents become parents again, and young families are broken. Teenage pregnancy can significantly derail education plans, both in high-school and college. Thirty percent of female high-schoolers that dropout site pregnancy or parenthood as the primary reason. Of that thirty percent, only about half receive their high-school diploma by the age of 22, whereas ninety percent that do not give birth in their teens graduate with their class. Among older teens that are in college when they have an unplanned pregnancy, sixty-one percent drop their classes and fail to earn their degree, sixty-five percent higher than students that do not have children (“High School Completion”). …show more content…
Children of teen mothers are less likely to perform well in school compared to children of older mothers. They are, for example, twice as likely to repeat a grade, score low on standardized tests, and only two thirds of children born to teen mothers earn their high-school diploma (“Intergenerational Impact”). In addition to doing poorly in school, male offspring of teenage mothers are more inclined to commit a major crime and be sentenced to prison as young adults. The female offspring, however, are three times more likely to become teen mothers themselves (“It’s Hardest on the