Commentary: Mom too young, too many

By Brittney Dillon

Harlan Community Academy

“Friends can wait. My baby comes first!” It’s not something you would expect a 19-year-old girl to say, but in the case of teenage parent Shantel Adams, it is something that she says very often.

Shantel and Lamonte Hayes are the parents of 4-month-old Lillian. Lamonte, 19, works at a Kmart as a stock clerk. My god sister Shantel is a student at Olive Harvey College. She is studying criminal justice and is currently looking for a job. They both graduated from high school, but Lamonte does not pay child support.

“I sacrifice my freedom of having fun and going out with my friends because I don’t want Lillian to grow up without a mother,” says Shantel.

Teen pregnancy is a bad idea because girls my age are having children before they become adults. It transforms their lives and they become parents long before they are ready.

“Teens should take birth control as directed because it helps prevent unplanned pregnancies,” says Shantel. “It’s easy and simple to take. More teens should try it!”

Sex education classes should be an important part of the curriculum in all Chicago public schools to ensure that students are informed about having intercourse. Sex education could also be a helpful alternative for kids who don’t receive “the talk” at home. Teens who talk to their parents and other adults most likely would make better decisions about having sex.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that all middle and high school students in the city would be required to take sex education classes. The goal is to improve the lives of African-American and Latino teenagers, who are far more likely to have unplanned pregnancies than the whites, according to the city’s statistics.

“It’s obviously something that applies to all boys and all girls,” Linda I. Gibbs, New York City deputy mayor for health and human services, told The New York Times. “But when we look at the biggest disadvantages that kids in our city face, it is blacks and Latinos that are most affected by the consequences of early sexual behavior and unprotected sex.”

WebMD, the medical website, cites a study that shows 66 percent of schools in the U.S offer classes on practicing safe sex. My school, Harlan, is among the 34 percent of schools that do not have a safe sex curriculum. That is one reason there are so many pregnant girls at the school.

According to the Pregnant Teen Help resource website, statistics show that every year around 750,000 teenagers will become pregnant. As a result, more than two-thirds of all teenage girls who have children will not graduate from high school or college, which hurts their chances for future employment and self-sufficiency.

The good news is that teen birth rates have dropped by almost a third since the beginning of 2007. Hopefully more young women can get motivated, employed and involved with more than just sex. That way they can get back in school and back on track to where they need to be.