When I saw Sarah Palin on the tube for the first time, it was due to her pregnancy with her fifth child. In my mind, I saw a successful mother of four about to do number five. Wow. That's what I've always wanted... I really want a family (someday maybe) and would really like to have some sort of career to speak of. But then, just as she breaks as the VP nominee, we hear about her seventeen-year old daughter who is five months pregnant. Opps. Yeah, big opps. But what did I want to say here really...? I really wanted to mention the fact that while in many other countries, the rates are a lot lower. My only experience is with Belgium where I don't remember any girls being pregnant in my school. And there, I can say for sure that the reason why they weren't pregnant wasn't because they didn't have sex. Sex was more accepted I guess... Everything from more acceptance of the body which could be shocking to most Americans... Like for example that they had "Show girls" of all movies on regular TV
(reminder: Commercials had naked women in them too)
I would say I felt as though many young women had better self-esteem too.
Check out the figures:
17 Belgium: 287.051 births per 1 million people
1 United States: 1,671.63 births per 1 million people
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_tee_pre_percap-health-teenage-pregnancy-per-capita
DEFINITION: Number of births to women aged below twenty. Data for 1998. Per capita figures expressed per 1 million population. Convienetly, this was the year that I was living in Belgium at the time. So I do remember what it was like.
Want to get grossed out? Here you are. Numbers for USA are rather skewed, to say the least.
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/factsheet/fsest.pdf
Just something to think about. But I can certainly say that just because you're a teen mother doesn't mean you're "bad" or whatever. That's so stupid. I really don't think you're a bad parent if your kid gets pregnant either... Anywho.
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