It is no longer news that teenage pregnancy is a personal challenge that is fast becoming a universal challenge through which illiteracy and poverty are recycled.
Before now, I used to erroneously believe that poverty is the only reason why teenage girls fall pregnant, but working with young people has opened my eyes to how wrong I have been all these years.
What if I tell you that there are many other ‘flimsy’ reasons why some teenagers DECIDE getting pregnant?
You know, there is this belief out there that every teenager falls pregnant by mistake, but this is not entirely true. While many become pregnant due to poverty, ignorance, and a lack of proper education about their bodies, there are also a few who deliberately choose to get pregnant for other reasons.
At this point, I know your eyes 👁️ are popped out 🙄 and your ears 👂 itching for the full gist 😂. It’s indeed an amebo (gossip) generation. 🤩
Okay, let me help your amebo ministry by breaking the suspense. Lol.
There are many flimsy reasons why some teenagers decide to fall pregnant, but for the sake of not making this piece too lengthy, I will just list two.
Reason 1 – some teenagers get pregnant as a way of getting back at their parents.
Oh yeah, you read that right. Some teenagers decide to get pregnant to get back at their parents for whatever wrong melted to them. For instance, a teenage girl who is constantly ill-treated and trash-talked might think that since she cannot get back at her parents directly, at least bringing a child home will hurt them, so they go on to get pregnant in other to pepper the parents. Funny, right?
Reason 2 – there is also another set of teenagers who willingly submit themselves to be put in a family way as a means of getting out of the grip of their domineering parents. Another flimsy reason, right?
Now, this usually happens when a child feels that the parents are too mean, domineering and always resorting to authoritarianism. You know that moment when parents do not know how to draw the line between demanding obedience and denying their wards some breath of fresh air.
Children who live in such an environment often feel choked and terrorised by the presence of their parents and that can adversely affect their thought patterns and identity, which is why teenagers from such families usually feel a need to leave home, and for the girls, getting pregnant for any available man or running off with him can be their way of attaining liberation.
Parents, as flimsy as these two reasons stated above sound, the truth is that they are the issues. The earlier you all wake up to your responsibilities, the better for us all.
In as much as you are the parent and your child depends on you for almost everything, I also think it will be fair to at least once in a while give them a breathing space. Don’t choke them in the name of parenting.
Don’t use humiliating words on them, they are not wood, they also have feelings as you do, words can tear people apart and make them think so low of themselves, and the last I checked, people who constantly think low of themselves often act low and give others the chance to treat them in the same manner.
Let your words and actions build your wards up and not tear them apart.
To the girls…
Do you know that running off with a man or falling pregnant as a way of getting back at your parents or liberating yourself from their control is synonymous with picking coal of fire 🔥 with your hands and expecting it to burn another person?
When you do such, you hurt yourself even more than you hurt your parents, you are the one who will bear the brunt of carrying the child for nine months, and you are the one to go through the pain of labour and childbirth, it is you who gets to nurse the baby and stay up at night, it is you who will go through the major stress and not your parents as they can only assist you, but you will be the person to carry your cross. Above all, it is you who gets to drop out of school to birth and nurse a child.
And even if you get the opportunity to return to school after childbirth, you will no longer be in the same class or level with your mates as they must have gone way ahead of you.
So, you see that you are the only person who gets to suffer the consequence of your action the more. You cannot sow a foolish action and expect another person to reap the consequences of your unwise decision. It is what you sow that you reap.
If your parents are ill-treating you or they always condescendingly talk to you, I would advise you to find a way to talk it out with them, you can involve a relative or family friend that they respect if you cannot do it alone, but disrespecting them or bringing home a child as a way of getting back at them is a no-no.
Again, if they are too domineering to the point that you are being choked, you can also talk it out with them, and respectfully let them know how their attitude affects you emotionally and mentally. Off course, starting a conversation with such parents can be an uphill task, however; you’ve got to summon the courage to do it instead of using pregnancy to get away from them, as I said earlier, remember that you will hurt yourself the more by doing so.
Above all, learn to always pray for your parents. Their attitude towards you could be a result of all the stress that comes with trying to live up to their responsibilities to you and your siblings. They might not mean to hurt you. So, always pray for them and hope that they learn to do better.
In a nutshell, pregnancy will not solve your problem with your parents, rather it will compound it.
- Ugoma Johnson is a journalist, published author of 3 books, a social worker, and founder, Teens Empowerment And Rehabilitation Centre (TercHub), a foundation that is saddled with the mandate to curb teenage pregnancy, illiteracy and period poverty, through transformational teachings, provision of school materials and sanitary pads for teenagers in ruler communities.
