Why Pregnant Teenagers Should Ask for Financial and Emotion Support

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Pregnant Teenagers Should Ask for Financial and Emotion Support During and After Birth and Not Abort.
Approximately twenty-one million females aged between 15 and 19 years get pregnant annually and twelve million of them give birth. In developing countries, teenage girls aged 15 years and below give birth to at least 777,000 babies every year (World Health Organization 1). Adolescent pregnancy is a significant global problem that affects low, middle, and high-income countries. In reality, many of them who become expectant have to drop out of school to cater to their babies’ needs. Transitioning from adolescence to parenthood is a challenging process, particularly when teenagers are not well-supported. Sarah Clark, an associate research scientist and co-director at Michigan University’s department of pediatrics, affirmed that adolescent pregnancy comes with multiple unexpected financial problems that numerous families are unable to cope with on their own (Mostafavi Paragraph 5). In a poll conducted by University of Michigan, 56% of adult participants agreed that teenagers should be supported financially by their parents when they get pregnant (Mostafavi Paragraph 6). As such, teenagers who become pregnant should be allowed to keep their children and be helped by the state and their parents to get the appropriate resources required to raise their babies without straining.
I. Teenagers should not abort their pregnancies but they should ask for financial and emotional support after birth. Specifically, these young individuals should be supported by their parents, guardians, and caregivers to prevent them from abortion, which might ruin their reproductive life. They should be counseled and provided with finances to ensure that they are regularly checked by qualified healthcare professionals throughout their gestation period.
A. Parents and guardians understand their children well and they are in a position of supporting pregnant adolescents emotionally, psychologically, and financially. For example, they can know when teenagers are pregnant due to behavioral and emotional changes. Despite adolescence being a period where young people undergo various physical changes, observing adolescents carefully is important to know if they are pregnant and support them accordingly.
i. Clark is right by asserting that teen pregnancy is accompanied by numerous unexpected challenges that young individuals cannot deal with alone (Mostafavi Paragraph 5). Parents and guardians understand well the cost and process of raising healthy babies, which is why they should prioritize the health of expectant teenagers.
ii. Early accessibility of antenatal care among expectant teenagers decreases maternal mortality and morbidity (Erasmus et al. 469). However, many adolescents do not have a source of income and they cannot keep up with the cost of sustaining healthy pregnancy or raising the baby after birth without financial and emotional support from their parents and guardians.
B. Parents and guardians should spend more time with pregnant teenagers and counsel them appropriately. In reality, pregnancy has numerous ups and downs, and when adolescents become pregnant, they might find it challenging to cope with these challenges alone. Despite teen pregnancy being highly discouraged by many parents, when it happens, parents need to be emotionally supportive since they are more experienced.
i. Some of the crucial factors related to adolescent pregnancy include loneliness, low self-esteem, feelings of abandonment, and poor communication between expectant teens and their mothers (Samano et al. 3). Parents and guardians should try to build a good relationship and guide pregnant adolescents on how to overcome various issues.
ii. The lack of emotional support for pregnant teens can lead to numerous problems, namely drug abuse, depression, stigma, and pregnancy complications (Boobpamala et al. 98). Parents’ and guardians’ presence during teenage pregnancy can prevent the above issues.
II. States should be entitled to offer financial and psychological support to pregnant adolescents. Although they should promote public awareness campaigns in high schools and colleges against teen pregnancy, young people who become pregnant should be helped. As such, states should have a program to follow up on the well-being of pregnant teens, particularly those with no parents and guardians.
A. States should intervene to offer financial support when pregnant teens have no one to look after them. For instance, they can provide paternity testing or help teen mothers to get financial assistance from the biological baby’s father (Mostafavi Paragraph 2).
i. States should lead public awareness campaigns against teenage pregnancies, but they should not ignore those who get pregnant. They should encourage the community to accept pregnant adolescents, and if possible, the baby’s father needs to offer financial support to ensure that teen mothers get everything they require during their gestation period (Mostafavi Paragraph 8).
ii. States can decrease some of the barriers that make pregnant teenagers not access early antenatal care. For instance, they can eradicate the discriminatory practices that tend to exclude expectant students from getting maternity care from government health institutions (Erasmus et al. 470).
B. States should encourage physicians to counsel adolescent girls and inform them to take pregnancy tests when they have unprotected sexual intercourse for early diagnosis. However, the primary emphasis should be on promoting awareness to teenagers to avoid unprotected sexual intercourse, since it might have numerous consequences among them being pregnancy.
i. Over 550,000 young females below the age of 20 years, which is approximately 5% of all teenage girls, get pregnant (Hornberger 1). States can encourage physicians in public and private hospitals to offer counseling services and pregnancy diagnoses for ...